We are wanting you to awaken within you your memory of how wonderful you are!  How good you are, and how worthy of whatever you are wanting you are.  Abraham-Hicks Well-Being Card  (abraham-hicks.com)

Studying LOA has given me so many answers, and the guidance of Abraham-Hicks has made it easy to understand and to even see LOA at work in my life and the lives of others.  And in many ways I’ve become an expert in applying the principle and attracting the changes I wanted in my life.  But still, being able to apply LOA in certain other areas of my life has been illusive for me.

I’ve come to realize that the one thing that has been missing in those areas is love.  The areas I’ve been most successful in creating in my life are areas I find it easy to love.  And even the smallest measure of love can be enough to springboard me into incredible experiences if I am open and allow it.  I realized I simply hadn’t learned to allow love in those areas where attracting my desires had been illusive.

Love is the Spiritual key to applying LOA to the aspects of our lives that seem to be the most difficult for us to create the way we want them.  It’s the Spiritual key to unlocking resistance and allowing everything we desire.  Love is the key to attracting anything, from a butterfly to your garden to your bodies perfect point of health.

I realized the vast majority of overweight people are overweight because we weren’t taught to love ourselves.  We weren’t taught effective ways to nurture ourselves.  We weren’t taught the unconditional love for ourselves that is required to be passionate about our own lives.

We WERE taught that if we showed signs of self love we would be branded as vain, self centered, selfish and uncaring.  Most of us were taught to be people pleasers, and the cost of pleasing others was denying ourselves.

Bless the hearts of those who taught us, they were doing the very best they could with what they had been taught and what they had experienced in their lives.

But I had to accept that that attitude was completely wrong, it might have worked for those who taught me, but for me . . . that attitude is simply wrong.  I began to understand that I simply had to love myself and my body.

To understand that I’ve got to love my life, myself, more than anyone or anything else in order to do for me to accomplish my life time goal of achieving my bodies natural place of perfection.  And yes, I mean love myself more than a spouse or those beloved kids, or anything.  Absolutely anything.

And the magnificent byproduct of loving ourselves first and foremost is that we expand our ability to love those closest to us.  Loving us first doesn’t limit the love we have for our spouse and kids, it expands our ability or capability to love them.

Now the tricky part, how do I even find a small measure of love for an area I’ve always been ashamed of, always doubted and even sometimes hated about myself?

I really don’t assume that everyone is exactly like me.  But I do believe that most people, no matter how much extra weight they actually carry, feel pretty much the same way that I did about mine.  I’d look in the mirror and any positive feeling I had about my appearance was always shadowed by the big but (not to be confused with the big butt, though sometimes the big butt too) . . .

“The big but” is in there between the acceptance and the accurate statement of my actual vibration, and it usually takes form in the words “if only”.  You know what I mean . . .

“My hair looks pretty good today . . . if only my cheeks weren’t so chubby”  or  “This dress looks good on me, I like the way it hangs . . . if only my hips (belly, thighs, legs - take your pick) weren’t so big it would hang even better.”

I know that my vibration was definitely never in the beginning part of the thought.  My vibration was always solidly in the words after the "if only".  My vibration was in the part that I was so used to thinking that I didn’t even hear myself thinking it anymore.  And it was what was and had always been attracting my experience.

I realized that vibration was so opposite from how my wonderful Soulself feels about me that it simply had to change . . . or nothing else every could.

However when I sat down and tried to think of things to love about my body, I just became stumped, it was nearly impossible for me to associate those words . . . “love” and “my body”.   But when I started simply looking for things to respect, I found a stream of things that my body does for me that I could certainly respect which was an easy step to appreciating them. 

There is another part of you:  your non-physical inner being.  And that other part of you - that God force within you - adores that which you are.  And the sooner you get to that self adoration, the sooner that you will allow the Energy that is really you to flow.  Excerpt from Abraham-Hicks Oct/Nov/Dec 2001, Quarterly Journal

I learned from Abraham the first step in changing that vibration is based on accepting where I am right now and building upon that.  However I realized the bridge from shame, doubt and dislike to love was simply too big a jump for me.  I had to start with simply respecting myself and build upon that.  As an Aber I knew how to start with respect.  I simply looked for positive aspects.  We are taught that from the minute we discover Abe.  So that’s where I started.  Listing things about my body that I could respect.

I started with my senses.

I respect my eyes, they work so well, they let me see the world honestly and clearly.  They are a beautiful shade of gray with gold flecks around my pupils. They show my emotions, and let me shed cleansing tears . . .

Then I moved on to my hands and my fingers always working for me, always moving, giving me what I want taking care of me. They hold the people I love most in life.  They carry life giving food and water to my lips.  They express what is in my heart . . .

You get the point.

Respect opens the door to appreciation and appreciation opens the door to love.

Amazingly I quickly developed a sense of humor about my body that I had never allowed myself before . . . well had only allowed in a self deprecating way in the past.  This was new, this was genuine laughter mixed with appreciation and respect and it felt relaxed, real and wonderful.

And the simple act of finding one area to respect, appreciate and even laugh about opened me to allow my Inner Being to show me more areas about which to feel that way.

Eventually through some wonderful insights and a some fun processes which I am going to share, I learned to really love my body in all it’s overweight wonder.  I learned to appreciate every inch, every cell.  It didn’t happen immediately, but it did happen quicker than I dreamed it would.  And it wasn’t as hard as I would have figured it to be, if I’d ever even imagined being able to do it.

I experienced a natural opening to appreciation that I had never felt before, one which continues to grow and expand.  And one which makes me walk taller, and more confident on any day than I was able to before on my very best day.  What a blessing!

I realized that loving my body as it is, took the pressure off of me “needing” to change it.  It didn’t remove the desire for change, but it did remove the need.  And that is a blessing beyond anything I would have ever expected.

I turned to my Soulself and I realized she is so excited that I am even considering this new adventure.  I realized that no matter how I felt about myself, my Inner Being adores me.  She only sees what is loveable about me and she is more than willing to point out to me what she sees and how she feels about me.

I realized I needed to start looking at myself through her eyes, to pump up my self appreciation.  I need to give myself a break from all of the self-critical thinking I was taught.

I find it amazing that for a person as open minded and unconditionally loving as I have become toward everyone outside myself . . . I’ve always been very critical of myself.  The standard my old thinking held for myself was set up for me to always fail.  It always has been, it was designed to keep me from ever truly loving myself (You don’t want to get a big head do you?) and therefore to never be able to effect any real change.

My Inner Being urged me to start by giving myself credit for all the work I’ve already done.  All the changes I’ve already made and the person I’ve become.

I didn’t say this was necessarily easy, for those of us who rarely every gave ourselves credit for the good things, it can be trying at first.  However the wonderful thing is it builds on itself.  The more open I was to loving myself, the more my Soulself showed me lovable things to appreciate about me, including my body.

Once I opened my mind to the adoration my Soulself already had for me . . . once I opened my heart the tiniest little bit to her love, I was led to an abundance of evidence of my own lovability.  And my capacity to love myself continues to grow and expand every day!

Tigerlily

Look in the mirror, deep into your eyes, and say “Inner Being are you in there?”  Your inner being is in there.  And then say “So what do you think about me?  So what do you think?”  And your Inner Being will look back at you . . . with love so deep . . . so sure . . . maybe you’ll hear.  Your Inner Being ADORES you.  Your Inner Being knows your value.  Your inner being IS you.  Self appreciation doesn’t come easy to you, because you’ve tried to evaluate yourself through the eyes of so many others.  You said “I’m gonna do what must please me.  And at the same time you suffered because you wanted to please them at the same time.  As you look into your eyes and you find your Inner Being who is pleased a large clump of your resistance will dissipate.  And what we’re saying is accept you and love you and accept that all is well with you and then watch the benefits that come from that!  Excerpted from an Abraham-Hicks workshop on January 13th, 2001 (Part