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August 2007
“Life is going to give you a difficult lesson very soon,
unless you learn to love yourself. You can change this; you can
change what will come. You have an infinite capacity to love others
why do you not love yourself?”
As he spoke the sounds in the lunchroom muffled to
silence. A slow fading hush fell over me as his words burrowed into
the deeply hidden place inside of me, the secret room where no one
was allowed. He held my hand, tracing the etched lines of my
outstretched palm with his finger. This Uncle, the Shaman from
Greenland had my full attention. “You can change this, first,
you must love yourself.” he said, and then went onto another topic.
Love myself? What does that really mean?
I remember the moment when my oldest son as
a baby looked into a mirror and recognized himself. An expression of
pure delight, wonderment and love filled his face as he put his
little hand on his mirrored reflection. His whole being glowed with
self-love. I love me his child’s gesture declared to the world.
I have a history of mirror avoidance,
deliberately looking beyond the chronicle of time recorded there. So
it was a slightly dangerous act of self-examination when I agreed to
meet an old friend for coffee. After 30 yrs, what would I see in this
mirror of me? At first, I did not recognize him. Slowly, I
began to get glimpses as I put the past into present tense. Later I
realized that it would be very hard to recognize him because at the
time, I knew him, I didn’t recognize myself. At 19, I was
anorexic and deeply hidden in the folds of my baggy jeans. I did not
look with love into the mirror. I did not see me at all.
Later in the same day, a group of college
students came for their first Inipi. The girls were so lovely, the
young men so&ldots;.young. They were the same age as we were when we
met. Their confidence and spiritual awareness was so apparent, in
marked contrast to my memory of self at their age. They prayed with a
fearless love that was stunning. It took me well into my 50’s to
pray aloud without fear choking back my words.
I’m writing a book for Angaangaq. It is
his book, The Teachings of the Far North. The core teaching is
that when man can learn to melt the ice in his own heart then he
will begin to use his knowledge wisely and look with eyes of faith
into an incredibly beautiful future. Angaangaq teaches that
nothing else in the history of mankind has worked to create peace, to
ease suffering, to bring a world into harmony and balance. He
teaches that we must first love ourselves and then, only then will
things on the Earth change.
How do I love myself? How do I change an entrenched
behavior? How do I nourish myself, physically, spiritually,
emotionally? Who Am I really?
Not too long after the palm reading session,
I was traveling north on I-90 with Triz. I had been working with an
old energetic pattern that I wanted to shift but it wasn’t
holding. I asked her what I had to do. She said, “Let
go.” At that moment, the image of another man I knew came to
mind. He too struggled to love himself. It was not until he let go
and allowed himself to love himself that he healed. I was there when
he let go. It was Angaangaq who held him. I knew what to do, he had
showed me the way. So right there on I- 90 with my hands the wheel, I
let go and all at once, I saw who I am.
What I saw is beyond words, beyond my
ability to describe or even to comprehend. What I saw is that
everything is alive. Everything is an act of on-going creation.
Everything is part of everything. Everything is Love and I, Kate
DeChard am at the center of creation. I am in a fundamental,
essential, elemental way, the act of creation itself. I am the I am
of the creator. I could not speak. Fortunately Triz could and she
guided me to the side of the road where I wept, overwhelmed with the
incredible beauty of this knowledge.
I got it, the teaching of Melting the Ice in
the Heart of Man is the teaching of self-love. The ice in my heart
melted and I was able to see that held within the temporary form of
Kate, I am a reflection of the Creator. Knowing that, how can I do
anything but love myself? How can I do anything but nourish, care and
cherish myself? To do anything other would be to turn away from the Creator.
Turning toward the mirror now, I reach with
my hand, touching my reflection with love.
August 1, 2007 |
