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Join Brooke Snow in the journey of co creating a life from a place of unconditional love.
Hello my friend. Welcome to the One Heart Podcast. I'm your host Brooke Snow, and I'm so grateful to have you here.
In this episode we're going to talk about #1 tool for accessing love. Notice that I say access, because the truth is, you are love. And you always have love inside of you. We just block our access to the love within with all our judgements of ourself. In this episode I want to share with you my fastest and most effective tool for returning back to the natural state of love that you are.
Before we begin, I invite you to join me in a three breath meditation to settle into your own heart.
Breathing in, come back into awareness of your body and descend to your heart.
Breathing in, opening your heart.
Breathing in, embody the love that is always inside you.
Say to yourself, I love and accept you.
Thank you, friends for joining me for the One Heart podcast.
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So my #1 tool for accessing love, is... the meditation we just did together. Three intentional breaths.
There is a reason I start every single episode with this short meditation, and today I thought I would walk you through it in more detail. I knew I wanted this to be part of every single podcast, because I want this to be something you can quickly memorize and repeat for yourself every moment you need it.
The first breath is all about coming back into awareness of your body and descending to your heart.
Always, if I find myself spun up in life over something and feeling anxiety, stress, or fear, it is because I have separated myself from my body and I am living exclusively in my head. And your head can be a dangerous place to live. Mostly because so much of what goes on in your head is not true.
We ruminate on the past. We worry about the future. We imagine people's opinions and reactions and tell stories on repeat that fire up uncomfortable emotions. We begin to see the external world through this illusion our mind creates from all the stories and judgements.
But dear one, the world looks very different when you see it from the heart and you come back into your body.
Our first breath is all about coming back to your body and descending to the heart.
I love those words, descend.... come down. Come down from the stories. Come down from the judgements. Come down from all the things you think you know in your mind...
Come down down down into your heart. Forget about all the things you THINK... and allow yourself for a few moments to just FEEL.
What is it you feel? Can you come down from your thinking and just feel?
You might find that what you feel is closed. Tight. Shut. Detached from love.
And this is why our next breath is all about opening.
The second breath invites you to open your heart. And open it just a little more. Use this breath to help you move whatever you are feeling through your body. If you're resisting emotion you trap it inside. If you allow it to flow you let it go.
Open up your heart. And open it just a little more.
And finally, our third breath is all about accessing the love that is always inside you.
Just as we learned in the last episode, You are love. You always have love inside you. Always. It is who you are. It is your natural state of being. Most importantly, it is within you.
Yet how often do we go seeking for it like it is outside of us? We search and search. We look for it in the approval of others. We look for it in our achievements. We look for it in evidence on the outside... what we look like, what we think our circumstances say about us, we look for it in our relationships.
For most of my life I have sought outside of myself for love. I didn't know this was what I was seeking. I just knew that I desperately wanted to feel loved and accepted by others.
Often times, life will teach us important lessons through contrast. You can learn so much about unconditional love by experiencing the opposite... conditional love.
You can learn so much about acceptance by experiencing the opposite, rejection.
In the past year, I have experienced deep rejection and conditional love, both in my personal relationships, in my community, as well as from complete strangers. I'll save those details for another time or place, but I will say I have learned profound lessons through this rejection. Profound enough to change the focus of my entire life's work to be about love and acceptance.
As I went through these devastating challenges, I was immersed in studying Eastern philosophy and the writings of the mystics. I was learning about love. I was learning that love was always inside me, and that love was my natural state of being. I was learning the importance of loving myself, all parts myself. The light and the dark, the human part of me and the divine part of me. I was learning how to forgive myself and offer myself compassion.
An amazing thing began to happen within me. As I compassionately offered myself love and acceptance, other people's opinions and their acceptance or rejection of me began to affect me less and less.
I discovered that as much as I so desperately craved the love of other people, even in the moments where I was told I was loved and accepted by someone else, the feeling was fleeting. It certainly felt good in the moment, but it didn't last. I would thirst for it again.
But accessing the love already within me was different. I was learning for myself that the love I give myself and accessed within me was everlasting.
As I pondered upon this, I recalled the story of Jesus and the Woman at the well. The two of them have an interesting conversation about water. In reference to the water in the well, Jesus tells the woman,
"Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
Of course this sounds amazing, and the woman responds saying, "Sir, give me this water so I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water." (John 4: 13-15)
I was beginning to see how I had spent my whole life thirsting for love and acceptance from other people. When it was offered to me, it would quench my thirst for a moment, but then I would thirst again. Always I was thirsting again. Always I was thirsting for love and acceptance from outside of myself and when I would receive it, it would satisfy for a moment, but never last. I had to keep coming back for it.
As I began to access the love already within me, I discovered it was everlasting. Indeed, just by nature of it always being available within me, I could be filled and never thirst. When you drink of the water within you, the love that is within you, given you by God as your natural state of being, it becomes a spring of water welling up to eternal life. It is always there. It is the source of all life and love and peace. And it is inside you. It is unconditional. It is who you are. The only thing that blocks you from this nourishment, is your own mind.
Which is why we are going to descend out of the mind and down to the heart.
Come down from your judgement.
Come down from your stories.
Come down to your heart and open up.
Access what is already there.
Access what is always there.
The love within you is a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
Dear friend, if you learn to access this state, you will never thirst. You will stop seeking the love and acceptance of other people to sustain you. Instead you will be filled on the true wellspring source in your own soul. And when you are nourished on this love, a beautiful thing happens. You begin living your life from this place and offer this love to others. Unconditionally.
Accessing love from within me, instead of thirsting after it on the outside of me, has completely changed my life. It is changing my relationships. It is bringing me into heaven on earth.
Am I able to stay in this heaven indefinitely? Not yet.
Which is exactly why I have created this meditation for myself. It is my path back. It is the way I return.
And it can be as simple as three intentional breaths.
Breathing in, come back into awareness of your body and descend to your heart.
Breathing in, opening your heart. And exhale opening just a little more.
Breathing in, access and embody the love that is always inside you.
Say to yourself, I love and accept you.
Repeat as many times as you need. This is my #1 tool for returning to love. Get out of the mind and come back to the heart. Stop seeking for love on the outside of you. Stop trying to earn it or deserve it. Those are judgements. True love is unconditional. And it is always within you.
Depending on what you've been taught about love and your own conditioning, it may take some unlearning to help this be more and more effective. It's worth experimenting with. After all, how well is the other way working out for you? Seeking for love outside of you based on conditions will not satisfy your thirst long term. You will always have to keep coming back. You will always have to keep meeting the conditions. And you will never quite be enough.
There is a better way, dear one. There is a better way. And you already have it within you.
Return to the heart.
The light in me honors the light in you.
Namaste.
Hello friend, If you enjoy this podcast, it would mean so much if you would take the time to rate, review, and subscribe. This is a brand new podcast and this does so much for helping this podcast to grow and reach more people.
As a thank you, I have also created a free "One Heart" meditation that goes through these simple three steps with a little more guidance and encouragement. Truth be told, most times, three breaths is enough for me to get back in alignment again, but you know, ever so often I have a moment where I'm feeling a whole lot more resistance and I need a little more than three breaths. That's why I created an extended version for you available on the Co Create app. Simply download the Co Create app from the App Store and it's waiting for you in the Free Meditations. You can find a link to Apple or Google app stores in the shownotes of this episodes. You are love. Namaste.