Naughty or Nice - sugar and spice ...
The Love Series
I was talking to my friend the other day and something came up. We were talking about the love series. Said friend turned to me and said ‘well the thing with love is that you have to be nice all the time.’ I think I said something like, ‘well that’s love, but this is inner love that I am teaching, you know self love.’
My mate said, but there’s still that thing, if I am being all loving to myself, then I won't seem loving to other people.
I sat there holding my glass of drink swirling it round and wondering about this. I knew there was something in those words, anything that sparks your thought process is a message to you to take note. So I sat there taking note.
After a short while, an understanding began to formulate, I could see it. You see many of us are led to believe that if we create deep inner healing and love then we will have to be nice all the time and be perfect somehow.
Or have to give up something that we are attached to. The truth is that yes you might have to let go of some of the thoughts you had, beliefs and even situations that are familiar to you. Yet, surely to heal within it’s worth it?
When we are accessing more ways to heal and create inner love we need to protect our inner core. Protecting the self creates boundaries, which means that you will not be able to be nice all the time. We all view behaviour differently and when you are caring for yourself and know that you do not feel like doing a 100 mile drive to pick up your nephew (for example,) however your brother may think that you are being mean. How our behaviour is seen by others isn’t always a red flag that we’re bad, it just means that the other person looks at it in a different way. You may always have said yes before.
So with inner healing and learning to create inner love and care, it is wise counsel to remember that you are not attempting to drop your ego, or be lovely all the time, or to be the best at everything. No, you’re cultivating acceptance of the emotional responses that you have. In fact true inner healing allows you to be human and imperfect and not nice all the time, it recognises that there may be times when the ebb and tide of our emotions are not in kilter.
It’s about being the best person that you can be at any given time, based on the situation, and life circumstance that you are going through.
Deal with your own emotions as opposed to feeling that you are responsible for ensuring that you are making other people happy. True inner love relies on your clear ability to do this. We’re not talking about out and out meanness here we are just talking about clear boundaries, doing what is acceptable to you, accepting and declining at your own pace and not feeling pressurised by others to fulfil their agenda.
What I am getting at here is that inner love is not about being nice, naughty, bad or mean, it’s about inner resilience. It’s about knowing what you want for your own life and achieving it in a neutral way. It is also about accepting that there will be moments when even the best of us can fall short of perfect behavioural ideals. Understanding this comes from recognition and being at peace with who you are. Whichever side of the coin you fall on and at any given time.
There is no such thing as a perfect person. Maybe the Dalai Lama and a very select few are the only one’s that can attest to even being close to such an idea.
Now this whole write up today is about understanding that to create inner loving and resilience does not and would not expect you to be perfectly nice and lovely all the time. You know sometimes you just want to scream, or punch the pillow or tell that person that you just don't like their jumper!!! It’s about knowing that when you are cultivating the conditions to live in a more loving way that you are also able to create the conditions that are accepting of whoever you are, regardless.
Caring about ourselves and creating gentler self talk relies on our understanding that we are allowed to get it wrong, it relies on the understanding that if we are a jerk in the midst of learning this, that’s fine because we will learn, we will pick ourselves up, dust are selves off and start again.
One of the major lessons in life, that we need to be able to be comfortable with, is getting it wrong. We need to be able to be comfortable that we may not get it right the first time. This works with everything and when you are learning to live within healing and experiencing who you really are through love; you’ll need to be prepared to accept the whole of what you are whether that is naughty, nice, bad or mean. Live by your own standards and make them good. Allow yourself slip ups and laugh about it :)
When we are younger we are taught to get love we need to show that we are nice and naughty children tend to get told off more than the ones being all good and nice. Cue twenty odd years later you are going for a job and so is your friend, being of the nice persuasion you fluff up the interview, being self serving he secures it.
Trying to be nice because we were praised when we were good and told off when we did something that someone seemingly felt was wrong, is not productive. Many of us have this thinking wired within us without us even being fully aware that it is there. Now just because someone including yourself may feel that the world at large would think that if you do such and such a thing, then you are naughty, does not necessarily mean that specific behaviour, is really naughty, bad or mean.
It is for you to decide, what you believe equates to naughty or nice, bad or mean.
I am sure some of the people in the oldest profession label their behaviour as both naughty, bad, nice – there are lots of words that could describe it! However there will be other members of society that see it very differently!
Here’s the rub, we are not the best judge in some ways of what naughty and nice is.
Inner Love does not ask you to wear a mask and if you are acting out a role which expects you to wear one then there will be times where you will feel dis-connected. Masks are pointless you have every right to express your emotions in a safe and loving way and as I discussed in my Metamorphosis - Time for Change dealing with the shadow self article, we all hold shadow areas within us that we are not overly comfortable with.
So while you work on healing the way that you talk to yourself and build up your actions that empower you to create a loving self, be gentle with the understanding that you are allowed to make mistakes and might say the wrong thing sometimes, and you might just be plain naughty, bad or mean.
Yet none of this negates you or makes you unworthy as a human being. In fact if you're working on loving self talk and caring about yourself, then you deserve these lapses, because they show you that you are human, that you may get upset, that you may cry, or get mad. In fact you may even say things that you wish you had not said.
None of this makes you bad, it just requires you to be at peace with that part of yourself & if you are not then you work slowly and gently to change the way that you behave in these eventualities…
So I guess the answer to what my mate said is that we have every right to be self caring and loving. Regardless of whether it gets termed by others as selfish behaviour and that sometimes it’s okay to be naughty or nice, or even do I dare I say it? Bad!!!
Check this out – I have been working on getting out there more and this thought ran through my mind - only bad people step out into the world (no insults to anyone that has stepped out, in fact high five to you. ) However, for me the only way to keep moving forward with this is to give myself the permission to be bad, to be naughty!! You couldn’t dream this stuff up could you? *I laugh* … This is the honest truth!
All the love to you all…
Hem xxxXx
