Reiki Chakra Art Therapy

Spiritual Art ~ Tashi Mannox ~ Om Mani Bêmê Hum ~ Imee Ooi

Desire and Destiny Day 18: Creative Me

“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.”  —Vincent Van Gogh

How often have you had the experience of struggling to remember a person’s name only to have the name effortlessly revealed to you when you were engaged in something entirely different? The same thing happens when we wrestle with our minds for ideas or solutions. Once we let the challenge go and engage in something that frees our minds, the lightning bolt strikes!

This is the value of play. Play opens the pathways for creativity to flow freely. When we are engaged in play, we connect with the heart, rather than leading with our minds. As we access the essence of pure potentiality, transformative ideas and solutions come to us spontaneously, and we are boundlessly creative.

Our centering thought for today is:

I play. I create. I succeed.

Our Sanskrit mantra for today is:

“Om Bhavam Namah.” I am absolute existence. I am a field of all possibilities.

MINDFUL MOMENT

Take some time today to engage in a playful activity that you really enjoy. Challenge some colleagues to a pickup basketball game at lunch or after work. Walk with your friends, or dip your feet into the office-park fountain. Whatever you choose to do, allow yourself to enjoy the freedom of playfulness and notice what unfolds.

My last playful moment was yesterday, throwing sticks on the frozen lake.

It was a GIANT drum begging to be played. The water spirits were happy as their echos bounced back several times in melodious music. I cannot take credit for this idea however, there was a cute Scottish couple who were doing it for quite some time. At first, I thought they were just being mischievous deviants…but then…

My mind stopped thinking in such a left-brained rules and regulations mindset.

Once I saw what was really happening: the music making, the fun, the play. I smiled and I laughed.

Today we studied the effects of relaxation and play has on inspiration.

Sometimes, play is the greatest form of healing.

Playing allows us to free ourselves of the challenges of paperwork and into challenges of discovering and exploring a new sport or dream. Playing allows u to connect with our friends and relatives and even our partners. Play gives us the greatest gift of all: laughter.

And laughter is the ultimate soul medicine. 

How will you play? Create? Succeed?

How can you incorporate this medicine into your daily life?

Ever more in health and abundance
We are all one.
Namaste

Rebirth Transformation Meditation

If you choose to come back after this lifetime, what would you choose to come back as?

Art as Therapy: Alain de Botton on the 7 Psychological Functions of Art by Maria Popova

The following article is from Brain Pickings. Here we take a look at the psychological functions of how art is medicine and how it works. Through remembering, hope, sorrow, rebalancing, self-understanding, growth,and appreciation art can be therapy.

How can you incorporate Art as therapy?

What are some ways that you can use Art Therapy in your daily life?

“Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.”

The question of what art is has occupied humanity since the dawn of recorded history. For Tolstoy, the purpose of art was to providea bridge of empathy between us and others, and for Anaïs Nin, a way to exorcise our emotional excess. But the highest achievement of art might be something that reconciles the two: a channel of empathy into our own psychology that lets us both exorcise and better understand our emotions — in other words, a form of therapy.

In Art as Therapy (public library), philosopherAlain de Botton — who has previously examined such diverse and provocative subjects as why work doesn’t work,what education and the arts can learn from religion, and how to think more about sex — teams up with art historian John Armstrong to examine art’s most intimate purpose: its ability to mediate our psychological shortcomings and assuage our anxieties about imperfection. Their basic proposition is that, far more than mere aesthetic indulgence, art is a tool — a tool that serves a rather complex yet straightforwardly important purpose in our existence:

Like other tools, art has the power to extend our capacities beyond those that nature has originally endowed us with. Art compensates us for certain inborn weaknesses, in this case of the mind rather than the body, weaknesses that we can refer to as psychological frailties.

De Botton and Armstrong go on to outline the seven core psychological functions of art:

1. Remembering

Given the profound flaws of our memory and the unreliability of its self-revision, it’s unsurprising that the fear of forgetting — forgetting specific details about people and places, but also forgetting all the minute, mundane building blocks that fuse together into the general wholeness of who we are — would be an enormous source of distress for us. Since both memory and art are as much about what is being left out as about what is being spotlighted, de Botton and Armstrong argue that art offers an antidote to this unease:

What we’re worried about forgetting … tends to be quite particular. It isn’t just anything about a person or scene that’s at stake; we want to remember what really matters, and the people we call good artists are, in part, the ones who appear to have made the right choices about what to communicate and what to leave out. … We might say that good artwork pins down the core of significance, while its bad counterpart, although undeniably reminding us of something, lets an essence slip away. It is an empty souvenir.

‘We don’t just observe her, we get to know what is important about her.’ Johannes Vermeer, ‘Woman in Blue Reading a Letter’ (1663).

Art, then, is not only what rests in the frame, but is itself a frame for experience:

Art is a way of preserving experiences, of which there are many transient and beautiful examples, and that we need help containing.

2. Hope

Our conflicted relationship with beauty presents a peculiar paradox: The most universally admired art is of the “pretty” kind — depictions of cheerful and pleasant scenes, faces, objects, and situations — yet “serious” art critics and connoisseurs see it as a failure of taste and of intelligence. (Per Susan Sontag’s memorable definition, the two are inextricably intertwined anyway:“Intelligence … is really a kind of taste: taste in ideas.”) De Botton and Armstrong consider the implications:

The love of prettiness is often deemed a low, even a “bad” response, but because it is so dominant and widespread it deserves attention, and may hold important clues about a key function of art. … The worries about prettiness are twofold. Firstly, pretty pictures are alleged to feed sentimentality. Sentimentality is a symptom of insufficient engagement with complexity, by which one really means problems. The pretty picture seems to suggest that in order to make life nice, one merely has to brighten up the apartment with a depiction of some flowers. If we were to ask the picture what is wrong with the world, it might be taken as saying ‘you don’t have enough Japanese water gardens’ — a response that appears to ignore all the more urgent problems that confront humanity. . . . . The very innocence and simplicity of the picture seems to militate against any attempt to improve life as a whole. Secondly, there is the related fear that prettiness will numb us and leave us insufficiently critical and alert to the injustices surrounding us.

But these worries, they argue, are misguided. Optimism, rather than a failure of intelligence, is a critical cognitive and psychoemotional skill in our quest to live well — something even neuroscience has indicated — and hope, its chariot, is something to cherish, not condemn:

Cheerfulness is an achievement, and hope is something to celebrate. If optimism is important, it’s because many outcomes are determined by how much of it we bring to the task. It is an important ingredient of success. This flies in the face of the elite view that talent is the primary requirement of a good life, but in many cases the difference between success and failure is determined by nothing more than our sense of what is possible and the energy we can muster to convince others of our due. We might be doomed not by a lack of skill, but by an absence of hope.

Put simply and poignantly, it pays to “imagine immensities.”

‘What hope might look like.’ Henry Matisse, ‘Dance’ (II), 1909.

They offer an example:

The dancers in Matisse’s painting are not in denial of the troubles of this planet, but from the standpoint of our imperfect and conflicted — but ordinary — relationship with reality, we can look to their attitude for encouragement. They put us in touch with a blithe, carefree part of ourselves that can help us cope with inevitable rejections and humiliations. The picture does not suggest that all is well, any more than it suggests that women always delight in each other’s existence and bond together in mutually supportive networks.

And so we return to why prettiness sings to us:

The more difficult our lives, the more a graceful depiction of a flower might move us. The tears — if they come — are in response not to how sad the image is, but how pretty.

[…]

We should be able to enjoy an ideal image without regarding it as a false picture of how things usually are. A beautiful, though partial, vision can be all the more precious to us because we are so aware of how rarely life satisfies our desires.

3. Sorrow

Since we’re creatures of infinite inner contradiction, art can help us be more whole not only by expanding our capacity for positive emotions but also by helping us to fully inhabit and metabolize the negative — and by doing so with dignity and by reminding us “of the legitimate place of sorrow in a good life”:

One of the unexpectedly important things that art can do for us is teach us how to suffer more successfully. … We can see a great deal of artistic achievement as “sublimated” sorrow on the part of the artist, and in turn, in its reception, on the part of the audience. The term sublimation derives from chemistry. It names the process by which a solid substance is directly transformed into a gas, without first becoming liquid. In art, sublimation refers to the psychological processes of transformation, in which base and unimpressive experiences are converted into something noble and fine — exactly what may happen when sorrow meets art.

‘Sublimation: the transformation of suffering into beauty.’ Nan Goldin, ‘Siobhan in My Mirror’ (1992).

Above all, de Botton and Armstrong argue, art helps us feel less alone in our suffering, to which the social expression of our private sorrows lends a kind of affirmative dignity. They offer an example in the work of photographer Nan Goldin, who explored the lives of the queer community with equal parts curiosity and respect long before champions like Andrew Sullivan first pulled the politics of homosexuality into the limelight of mainstream cultural discourse:

Until far too recently, homosexuality lay largely outside the province of art. In Nan Goldin’s work, it is, redemptively, one of its central themes. Goldin’s art is filled with a generous attentiveness towards the lives of its subjects. Although we might not be conscious of it at first, her photograph of a young and, as we discern, lesbian woman examining herself in the mirror is composed with utmost care. The device of reflection is key. In the room itself the woman is out of focus; we don’t see her directly, just the side of her face an and the blur or a hand. The accent is on the make-up she has just been using. It is in the mirror that we see her as she wants to be seen: striking and stylish, her hand suave and eloquent. The work of art functions like a kindly voice that says, “I see you as you hope to be seen, I see you as worthy of love.” The photograph understands the longing to become a more polished and elegant version of oneself. It sounds, of course, an entirely obvious wish; but for centuries, partly because there were no Goldins, it was anything but.

Therein, they argue, lies one of art’s greatest gifts:

Art can offer a grand and serious vantage point from which to survey the travails of our condition.

4. Rebalancing

With our fluid selves, clusters of tormenting contradictions, and culture ofprioritizing productivity over presence, no wonder we find ourselves in need of recentering. That’s precisely what art can offer:

Few of us are entirely well balanced. Our psychological histories, relationships and working routines mean that our emotions can incline grievously in one direction or another. We may, for example, have a tendency to be too complacent, or too insecure; too trusting, or too suspicious; too serious, or too light-hearted. Art can put us in touch with concentrated doses of our missing dispositions, and thereby restore a measure of equilibrium to our listing inner selves.

This function of art also helps explain the vast diversity of our aesthetic preferences — because our individual imbalances differ, so do the artworks we seek out to soothe them:

Why are some people drawn to minimalist architecture and others to Baroque? Why are some people excited by bare concrete walls and others by William Morris’s floral patterns? Our tastes will depend on what spectrum of our emotional make-up lies in shadow and is hence in need of stimulation and emphasis. Every work of art is imbued with a particular psychological and moral atmosphere: a painting may be either serene or restless, courageous or careful, modest or confident, masculine or feminine, bourgeois or aristocratic, and our preferences for one kind over another reflect our varied psychological gaps. We hunger for artworks that will compensate for our inner fragilities and help return us to a viable mean. We call a work beautiful when it supplies the virtues we are missing, and we dismiss as ugly one that forces on us moods or motifs that we feel either threatened or already overwhelmed by. Art holds out the promise of inner wholeness.

Viewing art from this perspective, de Botton and Armstrong argue, also affords us the necessary self-awareness to understand why we might respond negatively to a piece of art — an insight that might prevent us from reactive disparagement. Being able to recognize what someone lacks in order to find an artwork beautiful allows us to embody that essential practice of prioritizing understanding over self-righteousness. In this respect, art is also a tuning — and atoning — mechanism for our moral virtues. In fact, some of history’s most celebrated art is anchored on moralistic missions — what de Botton and Armstrong call “an attempt to encourage our better selves through coded messages of exhortation and admonition” — to which we often respond with resistance and indignation. But such reactions miss the bigger point:

We might think of works of art that exhort as both bossy and unnecessary, but this would assume an encouragement of virtue would always be contrary to our own desires. However, in reality, when we are calm and not under fire, most of us long to be good and wouldn’t mind the odd reminder to be so; we simply can’t find the motivation day to day. In relation to our aspirations to goodness, we suffer from what Aristotle called akrasia, or weakness of will. We want to behave well in our relationships, but slip up under pressure. We want to make more of ourselves, but lose motivation at a critical juncture. In these circumstances, we can derive enormous benefit from works of art that encourage us to be the best versions of ourselves, something that we would only resent if we had a manic fear of outside intervention, or thought of ourselves as perfect already.

The best kind of cautionary art — art that is moral without being “moralistic” — understands how easy it is to be attracted to the wrong things.

[…]

The task for artists, therefore, is to find new ways of prying open our eyes to tiresomely familiar, but critically important, ideas about how to lead a balanced and good life.

‘A reason to say sorry.’ Eve Arnold, ‘Divorce in Moscow’ (1966).

They summarize this function of art beautifully:

Art can save us time — and save our lives — through opportune and visceral reminders of balance and goodness that we should never presume we know enough about already.

5. Self-Understanding

Despite our best efforts at self-awareness, we’re all too often partial or complete mysteries to ourselves. Art, de Botton and Armstrong suggest, can help shed light on those least explored nooks of our psyche and make palpable the hunches of intuition we can only sense but not articulate:

We are not transparent to ourselves. We have intuitions, suspicions, hunches, vague musings, and strangely mixed emotions, all of which resist simple definition. We have moods, but we don’t really know them. Then, from time to time, we encounter works of art that seem to latch on to something we have felt but never recognized clearly before. Alexander Pope identified a central function of poetry as taking thoughts we experience half-formed and giving them clear expression: “what was often thought, but ne’er so well expressed.” In other words, a fugitive and elusive part of our own thinking, our own experience, is taken up, edited, and returned to us better than it was before, so that we feel, at last, that we know ourselves more clearly.

More than that, they argue, the self-knowledge art bequeaths gives us a language for communicating that to others — something that explains why we are so particular about the kinds of art with which we surround ourselves publicly, a sort of self-packaging we all practice as much on the walls of our homes as we do on our Facebook walls and art Tumblrs. While the cynic might interpret this as mere showing off, however, de Botton and Armstrong peel away this superficial interpretation to reveal the deeper psychological motive — our desire to communicate to others the subtleties of who we are and what we believe in a way that words might never fully capture.

6. Growth

Besides inviting deeper knowledge of our own selves, art also allows us to expand the boundaries of who we are by helping us overcome our chronic fear of the unfamiliar and living more richly by inviting the unknown:

Engagement with art is useful because it presents us with powerful examples of the kind of alien material that provokes defensive boredom and fear, and allows us time and privacy to learn to deal more strategically with it. An important first step in overcoming defensiveness around art is to become more open about the strangeness that we feel in certain contexts.

De Botton and Armstrong propose three critical steps to overcoming our defensiveness around art: First, acknowledging the strangeness we feel and being gentle on ourselves for feeling it, recognizing that it’s completely natural — after all, so much art comes from people with worldviews radically different from, and often contradictory to, our own; second, making ourselves familiar and thus more at home with the very minds who created that alien art; finally, looking for points of connection with the artist, “however fragile and initially tenuous,” so we can relate to the work that sprang from the context of their life with the personal reality of our own context.

7. Appreciation

Our attention, as we know, is “an intentional, unapologetic discriminator” that blinds us to so much of what is around us and to the magic in our familiar surroundings. Art, de Botton and Armstrong argue, can lift these blinders so we can truly absorb not only just what we’re expecting to see, but also what we aren’t:

One of our major flaws, and causes of unhappiness, is that we find it hard to take note of what is always around us. We suffer because we lose sight of the value of what is before us and yearn, often unfairly, for the imagined attraction elsewhere.

While habit can be a remarkable life-centering force, it is also a double-edged sword that can slice off a whole range of experiences as we fall into autopilot mode. Art can decondition our habituation to what is wonderful and worthy of rejoicing:

Art is one resource that can lead us back to a more accurate assessment of what is valuable by working against habit and inviting us to recalibrate what we admire or love.

‘Paying attention to ordinary life.’ Jasper Johns, ‘Painted Bronze’ (1960).

One example they offer comes from Jasper Johns’s famous bronze-cast beer cans, which nudge us to look at a mundane and familiar object with new eyes:

The heavy, costly material they are made of makes us newly aware of their separateness and oddity: we see them as though we had never laid eyes on cans before, acknowledging their intriguing identifies as a child or a Martian, both free of habit in this area, might naturally do.

Johns is teaching us a lesson: how to look with kinder and more alert eyes at the world around us.

Such is the power of art: It is both witness to and celebrator of the value of the ordinary, which we so frequently forsake in our quests for artificial greatness, a kind of resensitization tool that awakens us to the richness of our daily lives:

[Art] can teach us to be more just towards ourselves as we endeavor to make the best of our circumstances: a job we do not always love, the imperfections of middle age, our frustrated ambitions and our attempts to stay loyal to irritable but loved spouses. Art can do the opposite of glamorizing the unattainable; it can reawaken us to the genuine merit of life as we’re forced to lead it.

The rest of Art as Therapy goes on to examine such eternal questions as what makes good art, what kind of art one should make, how art should be displayed, studied, bought and sold, and a heartening wealth more. Complement it with100 ideas that changed art.

The mental illness monsters: Artist Toby Allen re-visualizes

Depression, Anxiety, Avoidant Personality Disorder, Schizophrenia  Disassociative Identity Disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder, Social Anxiety, Paranoia. (And above Obsessive Compulsive Disorder)

The following eight mental illnesses bring much suffering to those who have them, as well as their friends, family, and lovers. Personality Disorders can either be cute quirks, or they can be down-right dangerous.

In this day and age, I think it is more than understandable that mental illness does exist. But seldom do we have images of what these disorders actually look like. We have descriptions in books, and of course we have the case-files. However, we don’t have the back stories, the “why?”s that have caused such suffering. Here, artist Tobey Allen has re-visualized what these eight disorders would look like if they were fantastical creatures (but aren’t they already?).

He has done this, not to make light of the situation, that mental illness affects us all, but simply hopes that through this project, he will make them more beatable and hopes that the stigma associated with these illnesses will be reduced.

Toby makes these common disorders more personable, more alive, and more vivid for others who may find it difficult to empathize and understand. He is also working on Sets of other Eight, and can be found on his tumblr page.

If you are struggling with any of these monsters, may you find the way out of their grips and into the arms of someone who loves you. May you break from their chains, and live a life worth living!

Namaste

The following article was written by Emma Innes, of the UK’s Daily Mail.

Depression has often been described as the black dog, but now one artist has taken a very different approach in visualising mental illness.

Toby Allen, a Cornish artist, has imagined what eight common mental illnesses would look like if they were monsters.

He drew what he believed anxiety, depression, schizophrenia, social anxiety, avoidant personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, paranoia and dissociative identity disorder would look like as monsters.

Mr Allen’s Depression monster is designed as one that floats around endlessly with its eyes covered to hide itself from the world. This monster wraps its liquid tail around its victim to share its depression with them

Mr Allen said: ‘The artwork is not at all intended to make light of these conditions but instead is intended to give these intangible mental illnesses some substance and make them appear more beatable as physical entities.’

He told Suvudo he hopes the drawings will help to reduce the stigma around mental illness and that they will help bring an element of humour and understanding to the conditions.

Mr Allen says he started by designing the Anxiety monster as anxiety is something familiar to him meaning he found the design came naturally.

He says he designed the monster to be small enough to sit on the victim’s shoulder and whisper things in their ear.

He explained that he made the monster a dark colour to reflect the oppressive feeling he associates with anxiety.

His Social Anxiety monster has pale anaemic-looking skin because it spends most of its life underground.

Mr Allen says he started by designing the Anxiety monster as anxiety is something familiar to him meaning he found the design came naturally

The Avoidant Personality Disorder monster is similar to the Social Anxiety monster except that it prefers to live above ground, mainly hiding in trees. Mr Allen designed this monster with leaf-like wings to act as camouflage so it can hide from people

Mr Allen also drew the monster with hard plates that act as a means of defence.

He says that the Avoidant Personality Disorder monster is similar to the Social Anxiety monster except that it prefers to live above ground, mainly hiding in trees.

He designed this monster with leaf-like wings to act as camouflage so it can hide from people around it.

The Borderline Personality Disorder monster Mr Allen describes as ‘the most delicate but perhaps the most sinister of monsters’.

Mr Allen’s Schizophrenia monster is a ‘vile creature’ that manipulates its victims – it also uses hallucinogenic gases to control and influence others

Mr Allen’s Dissociative Identity Disorder monster is able to alter its form into whatever it likes – it can change its physical form as well as taking on different personas

These creatures, he says, gather in swarms around their victims to heighten their emotions.

He designed this monster as made almost entirely of ice so that it is clear and invisible.

Mr Allen’s Schizophrenia monster is a ‘vile creature’ that manipulates its victims – it also uses hallucinogenic gases to control and influence others.

The Depression monster is designed as one that floats around endlessly with its eyes covered to hide itself from the world.

The Borderline Personality Disorder monster Mr Allen describes as ‘the most delicate but perhaps the most sinister of monsters’

The Social Anxiety monster has pale anaemic-looking skin because it spends most of its life underground

This monster wraps its liquid tail around its victim to share its depression with them.

At the same time, it also absorbs the victim’s positive energy.

Mr Allen’s Dissociative Identity Disorder monster is able to alter its form into whatever it likes – it can change its physical form as well as taking on different personas.

Finally, the Paranoia monster has long ears which it can use as radar to look for dangerous activity.

The Paranoia monster has long ears which it can use as radar to look for dangerous activity

However, in reality, Mr Allen has designed the ears so that they are actually useless as they have curled cartilage and thick fur that confuses and muffles noise.

Mr Allen told Suvodu: ‘I have received so many wonderful messages from people who have one or many of the disorders I have drawn, each telling me how much the work means to them and how It has helped them to think about their condition in a different or more positive way.

‘It is such a joy to hear from people who really appreciate all the hard work that has gone into the project and I also received many requests from people that want me to draw their own “monster”.’

For more information about mental illness, visit www.mind.org.uk

An Artistic Pet Eulogy

“Your silence
Assuring.
Your presence fulfilling…
although small,
You lead your loyal heart
to me.
I cherish more
Than what is understood.
You knew me
Like no other would
And never left my side.
Home will miss our unity.
I will miss your company.
Good-bye
my lovely
Lovely, lovely One.” -Artist Unknown

Affirmation: “Just for today, I look with the eye of Autumn.”

Which ideas and structures have you outgrown?

We all go through changes in ideology as we grow.

Sometimes we outgrow social norms, or expectations placed upon us from society or our families.

There comes a time when we realize what no longer speaks to us, that which no longer holds our strongest convictions or our strongest interests.

Sometimes, we just need to strike out on our own and forge our own ideas and structures for living.

When you sit there and think to yourself and meditate on this question, which ones have you outgrown? Which relationships no longer hold strong? Which things in your life no longer hold true to your deepest aspirations? Which ideas and structures no longer serve your dignity nor vibrate with your heart? Are there people, places, or things that just don’t feel right any longer? And are you able to walk away from them with a smile?

Why?

Solar question prompted by Caitlin Matthews, Celtic Devotional

The 5-Step Path to a Life of Love

So, today I am already missing Deepak Chopra’s calming voice.

Now that my 21-day challenge is done, I continue to meditate. I imagine Deepak’s voice, and begin a mantra of my own making.

I found this article he wrote a few years ago, and I just had to share it. I hope you find it just as eye& heart-opening as I did. It is wonderful how such a person can ripple outward so incredibly. His teachings are universal, which is why I feel he is so moving, and inspiring. He transcends all religions and goes straight for the core of spirit: Love.

So, as you go about your day today, think of these 5-Steps. Do you already follow some? Are there some you could work on?

If you have sincerity and love in your heart I know you will be able to take from this article what you can to heal and grow.

Namaste.

Deepak Chopra, co-founder of the Chopra Foundation and co-author of the new book War of the Worldviews: Science vs. Spirituality, reveals how to create a life founded on the world’s most generous and joyful emotion.

Love has arrived at a strange crossroads. It seems very odd to say, “I want to be more loving. Is there a scientist who can help with that?” But in modern life, our notion of love has shifted. More and more we are told—in magazines, learned journals and media reports—that love can be broken down into medical explanations, that it is produced by reactions in the brain, both chemical and electrical. We may wish that love is divine, ideal and life-transforming, the news says, but to be realistic, we should throw out our old, unscientific notions and learn more about what the brain is doing to us.

I strongly oppose such a view of love—in fact, it frightens me. On the spiritual side, there’s a completely different and higher view of love, which goes something like this: Love is part of creation, woven into the very fabric of the universe. We love one another because we have tapped into nature at a deeper level. Yes, the brain is responsible for giving love its physical expression, yet ultimately, love comes from the soul.

A catchy phrase from an old pop song said, “Love the one you’re with.” Although you can journey outside yourself, the person to give your love to (and who, in return, must return that love), in truth, the one you are with every minute of the day, is yourself. The more rewarding way to find it is to go inward to the very source of love. If you do not do this, your love will depend on your mood swings, on how others see you and on the lovable and unlovable traits you see in yourself and others.

As soon as we measure people by what is lovable and unlovable, trouble arises. The unlovable person is labeled odd, an outsider, bad or an enemy. We create unhappiness instead. We practice nonlove, that voice inside that whispers in our ears, “They are different from us.” Or, “Fight for what you want and don’t quit until you win.” Or, “When bad things happen to other people, it’s their own fault.”

We need to restore love as the key to happiness—a difficult task. That’s why we need a spiritual path, so that we can walk away from nonlove and its confusions. Here are five basic steps that can lead you to a new life where everyone, most especially yourself, is worthy of loving and being loved.

Step 1: Believe in Love
When you say, “I love my work,” or “I love my partner,” you are expressing belief and showing faith in something outside yourself. As good as that is, even better is to have faith in love as part of yourself. When anyone asks me, “How do I find the right one?” I always give the same advice: To find the right one, become the right one. Belief in love is a spiritual kind of belief. It holds that love exists as a universal quality, outside ourselves, that can never be defeated, only covered over. Thus love and nonlove are not equals. Love is permanent; nonlove is temporary.

Step 2: Don’t Limit Love to a Few People and Deny It to Others
It’s very common to say: “I love my own children, and I love my neighbor’s children. But when it comes to my kids, I love them more.” That’s perfectly understandable. But there’s a spiritual teaching, going back thousands of years, which goes “The world is my family.” If love is universal, no one can be left out. To leave others out of your love is the same as inviting them to leave you out too.

Step 3: Make the Search for Love an Inward Search
Often we feel loved and insecure at the same time. The one we love is somebody we invest in emotionally, and emotions, by definition, are changeable. The one you love may turn indifferent or worse. The problem here is a kind of illusion. When you take someone into your heart, it’s like filling a hole inside. If that person should spurn and reject you, suddenly the hole reappears as a terrible ache. Yet the hole was always there, and only you can fill it permanently. Ultimately, the inward journey is about finding your own fullness, something that no one else can take away.

Step 4: Seek Other People Who Value Love As Much As You Do
There’s an old tradition: If you want to be wise, be in the company of wise people. I’d say the same is true about love. If you want to know about any human experience, seek out those who have walked the path of that experience. In our society, we are embarrassed to talk personally about truth, compassion, faith and love. This inhibition is part of our insecurity. Think of spirit as a community; it’s not a talent you develop like a teenager learning to play the guitar. Perhaps community is too big a word, however. Perhaps you can start by finding one person who is wise in the ways of love, who knows what it means to live at a deeper level. That’s a wonderful step in the right direction.

Step 5: Believe in Love As a Powerful Force
The first four steps depend on this one, believing that love has its own power. This is a power to transform. It’s a power that cuts through doubt, suspicion, distrust and even hatred. Unless love has its own power, there are too many reasons to act from nonlove. We see all around us people who madly pursue pleasure or money or status because they don’t trust in love. Without such trust that love can make a difference, of course you will pursue surrogates. Pleasure, money and status are compensations when love is absent or too weak to transform your life. No one has to give up on such surrogates, but it makes a huge difference to know that they are nonlove. The power of love is that it dissolves nonlove. That’s the kind of power you find on the spiritual path.

None of the steps is automatic. Each takes work and practice. But now, more than ever, it’s all important to reinvent the spiritual side of love. The steps may not be easy, but they are not impossible either. You only need to follow them with all your heart.