Heart cells from different donors, when placed in petri dishes next to one another, will immediately begin beating together as one. Similarly, a child’s heart will bond with their caregiver and accepts everything that happens to them or models as a form of love. All the good/bad behaviors and emotional patterns from our parents are hardwired into our biology and become a Primary Love Template.[1] Once our caregiver’s emotional patterns are internalized, they create a core template of how we will treat ourselves in the future. This exercise is designed to help you sort out true love from the gifts and/or illusions of your primary caregivers.
Start with a prayer asking for truth and wisdom for your highest good.
Then focus on your heart with complete awareness. Notice and appreciate how your four chambers work together to keep you alive. Consider how much loving energy this organ must create to sustain and nurture you. A beating heart is a living vortex of love and joy. This is where poets find passion and songs stir our soul. A human heart is the vehicle that transforms spirit into matter and is a living expression of our soul. With love as your focus bring awareness and unconditional acceptance into each chamber. The first chamber holds your mother’s teaching and modeling about love. The second chamber holds your father’s teaching, and the third chamber expands to how others taught and modeled love to you.
Begin with the first chamber and answer the following questions in sequence before moving to the fourth chamber:
- What did she/he/they teach me about love? Did they treat others lovingly?
- Could I feel their love in my heart?
- Or was love demonstrated with words and actions?
- How much love was in their heart? (self-love, towards others and especially you)
- Did I experience a loving god through them…or a punishing deity?
- Was love conditional or unconditional?
- Was I loved and enjoyed for who I was, or were there strings attached?
- What did they teach me about respect, forgiveness, honesty, trust to self and others?
Bring awareness and acceptance to each of the first three chambers. Sweep, heal and mend each chamber with acceptance. Amplify your love by embracing each chamber with kindness and understanding. The fourth chamber is a sacred chamber that includes how I treat myself. It holds the sum total of what you have learned on your earth walk.
Explore your fourth chamber by answering the following questions:
- Do I love and respect myself? Can I nurture every part of myself without conditions, including my inner child?
- Do I treat myself at my core like my parents or how others treated me?
- Do I treat others in the same way as others treated me?
- Am I self-critical and perfectionistic? Can I forgive myself and others?
- Do I have parts of myself that judge and diminish other parts of me?
- Can I share my love with others and the divine?
The higher self is a frequently used term nowadays and resides in our heart. A place of pure love, it isn’t just a Hallmark phrase to say. Pure love is an in-depth understanding about love that goes beyond any explanation. When we come to a true understanding of what love is, we come to realize love has always been and will always be. We are love and made of it. Explaining our origins in any other way will fail to capture the pure essence of who and what we are. Love just is and endures after death. Self-love opens one’s heart to yourself, then it becomes easy to pay love forward. Tasks done with love always have a better chance for success. Every cell of your being is made of love just like everyone else. When we unite with the greater heart of the divine, we can reach the highest levels of love within the universe. So, enjoy this meditation and remove every illusion about love that no longer serves you.
[1] Eric Ehrke, The Promise of Wholeness, (Rowman and Littlefield Press), pp34-38.