The Mastery of Love Part 10 of 10: Healing and Freedom
March 27, 2009 by dr. lam · 24 Comments
How do we restore all of this emotional pain and wounding that resides within us? First, we have to stop believing me, Sam Lam. Second, you have to stop believing yourself. Third, you must stop believing everyone else. When we stop listening to our own lies and anyone around us, we can start to listen to our own hearts. When we come to that peace, we will begin to achieve happiness and freedom.
Let’s imagine one of the worst possible sins against us, rape. What if you were raped 10 years ago? If you continue to hold that anger against someone else, then it will lead to your continued suffering. If you say, “I cannot forgive that person” then you will not be free. You will continue to live in your own personal hell. The past is gone. If you forgive the other person, you are doing it for yourself. You are freeing yourself. Once you forgive yourself, you will forgive those around you. Once you have offered unmitigated forgiveness, you will begin to love again and to be free from your own dream of hell. Forgiveness will give you freedom from your own personal, emotional wounds that dwell so very deeply within you and me. We will be able to offer a voice of healing and by doing so we can create our own freedom from that hell in which we reside. Create your own dream today and create the dream for your life. Begin with forgiveness, starting with your own. Love yourself, and be free. That is the beginning of the mastery of love…a journey that I am on myself.
The Mastery of Love Part 8 of 10: The Dream Master
March 25, 2009 by dr. lam · 8 Comments
As you recall, the Toltecs look at life as a dream. There are two dreams: your personal dream and the collective dream of the world. Those two dreams intermingle. In fact, as we grow up, our personal dream is the dream that is imposed to us through the process of domestication. We accept the larger dream out there because that is what we are taught and what we think is right. However, we can develop our own dream by our perception of that illusion and carve out our life the way that we want to live.
The Toltecs divide people in this world into dreamers and stalkers. Dreamers create their own destiny by changing their perception. Stalkers act and react to the world constantly. Their ego stands in the way, and they take things personally. Like a leopard, they are ready to pounce when they are attacked and they attack back. They are filled with self loathing, self hatred, and self pity. ”Why don’t I make more money? I deserve it. Why am I not happier? I deserve it.” Or, “I am just not good enough. I wish I were smarter.” These ideas of self hatred breed self contempt and are filled with emotional poison. When someone attacks them, they want to release their own emotional poison because they are filled with it and can’t keep it to themselves.
As we talked about yesterday, if you begin with loving yourself, then you can change the world and make your personal dream to fill the collective dream around you. These blogs that I write are my way of changing the way that I see the world little by little and day by day. You are on the journey of self discovery, and I am blessed that you are with me. I feel connected to all of you, my readers and responders. Let’s look at the world today with an abundant energy of self love. Let’s take a step back and remember the 4 agreements: 1. always be impeccable with your word, 2. never take anything personally, 3. never make assumptions, and 4. always do your best.
The Mastery of Love Part 7 of 10: Self Love Vs. Selfishness
March 24, 2009 by dr. lam · 8 Comments
This is a big topic. At first glance, these two things seem to be precisely the same, when in fact they are polar opposites. When we love ourselves we will not act selfishly. When we hate ourselves, we will act out of fear and loathing and will respond to the world in a selfish way. Remember in last week’s blog, we talked about two courses that we can pursue in a relationship: the track of love and the track of fear.
When we love ourselves and are happy/content in our lives, we can radiate love to all those around us. Our magical kitchen we talked about yesterday is full, and we can make any dish that we want. However, when we live in a fearful state that we don’t have love, then we follow the track of fear. By doing so, we only see scarcity and we act out of fear that we will lose that precious relationship because we are needy. Alternatively, we may be just filled with emotional poison that we transmit to all of those around us like the emotional ping pong that we addressed last week. When we are filled with self poison, self loathing, and self hatred, we look at the person next to us with that same dread and we push their emotional buttons to release our own poison. We then have that other person release that poison back onto us, and matters escalate.
When you are accepting of yourself and when you reach a happy state even without reference to another person, you invite love in. As I talked in my leadership series, you must first work on yourself. You must lead yourself. You must love yourself, then others can love you. Or if you are a leader, then others will follow you. All of you who read my daily blog are on the same journey with me toward life fulfillment, enrichment, happiness, and peace. I am honored that you can work with me on our personal journey toward self love and away from selfishness.
The Mastery of Love Part 6 of 10: The Magical Kitchen
March 23, 2009 by dr. lam · 24 Comments
Imagine for a moment that you possess a magical kitchen. You can produce any food that you want any time in any amount without concern for cost or any other constraints. If you want a pizza of the finest quality, you can have one. If you want veal sweetbreads, then your wish is my command. Let’s say one day a stranger comes to your door and says to you, “I can make a pizza for you every day without your thinking. Just allow me to control you.” You would laugh and laugh very heartily, responding, “Sir, I can have anything I want in my kitchen including pizza so why should I assent to being controlled just for having your pizza every day?”
Let’s now imagine that you are starving for a few weeks with no food around you anywhere, and a stranger comes up to you with the same proposition. Perhaps you would respond with a more dire urgency to eat the pizza and be controlled since the choice at this point is rather obvious. Well, the moral of this story is that the kitchen is love and we can either have an abundance of it or a scarcity depending on how we perceive it. The love though is self-love. Once we begin to see that we have all the love in the world without regard to another individual then we can feel comfortable that we do not need to be in a serious state of starvation but that we can be free of a perception of starvation. Tomorrow we will talk more about what self love means.
The Mastery of Love Part 5 of 10: The Perfect Relationship
March 20, 2009 by dr. lam · 13 Comments
We truly want in life the perfect relationship but what does that mean? Let’s use the idea of our relationship with a pet dog. When we come home, the dog is happy to see us. We feed the dog, pet the dog, and treat the dog as a dog because it is a dog. We don’t ask the dog to meow because it is not a cat. If we wanted a horse, we would have gotten a horse. The dog for his part plays the part well. He knows how to bark, wag his tail, eat food, and be happy. Do we accept the dog as a dog or do we ask more of that animal?
Sometimes we just have to know what we want. Too often we don’t accept the other individual the way he or she is but demand certain changes or conditions before we want to offer that love. However, with our animals, we simply see that animal as a being in front of us that need not have certain conditions that we apply. If we don’t know what we want in a mate, then we won’t know how to find it or how to recognize it when we find it.
The simple truth is that when we encounter a love in front of us without preconditions, i.e., when we find someone who we feel is right for us from a spiritual, mental, physical, and at all levels without the need to change the other person then we have found the right love. When we start appending notions like, “Well, I really love this person BUT…” then perhaps we have not arrived there yet. Do we want a dog or a cat? If we know, then we can choose. If we don’t, then we cannot. If we want to change a dog into a cat, we can’t and we won’t.
What if you are with a cat and you want a dog? Well, that is a hard one. Only you will know the truth if you have made a mistake in your choice. I’m not advocating just throwing in the towel, but we need to be honest with ourselves and what we want so that we can make our choices during this short life and be happy.