I knew the Bible spoke of loving yourself but I had never experienced that until now. I have a revelation. I have an experience, and that experience changed everything for me, not; but a great deal, of how I see things, see life, and experience it now. It’s revelation. It’s a revelational experience that I have had, just days ago, that I experienced me with. I was the love of me pouring out on me, and it’s transformational nature transformed me; momentarily not, but forever one with me became me for I love love knew what it meant to love me, exceedingly rare in this world, not; but I shall preach this far and wide, as I write about it even now. I love me.
Simple. Simple. As simple as it sounds, I didn’t know how to love me, like this. I never had a clue. In all the sermons and searches for excellence in my path, over these years, I never addressed this. Self love was love of self somehow defined ambiguously by others and I never understood the foundational aspect of this beginning, revelation, power, thereof. I love me. You see.
I am reading “The Art of Sexual Ecstasy: The Path of Sacred Sexuality for Western Lovers” by Margo Anand, not alone. Chapter 2 is entitled “Awakening your inner lover”. I read it and said aloud, “I don’t relate to that at all”. It was truth, that I spoke, with, about me. I pondered this for several days. The next Sunday morning a service I attended focused on self love. Self love was an extraneous concept for me. It was outside of me, that I knew about, but had never experienced. It was just an “of course” statement that I knew about; “knew” about, having no idea of how to go about it or why I needed it. Other materials I came across suddenly addressed self love also. I experienced something; I was experiencing something; revelation was breaking loose within me, about it, about this, about this thing called “self love”. The conceptual framework I had of it was breaking down. I was letting me be free to learn, to ponder, and let resources come to me, and teach me, to think about, consider, and consider, and yes I said consider, that I may not know. Maybe I was right when I said “I don’t relate to that at all”, but having even stated that, realized that, what was I to do about it? What was I going to do about it?
The above referenced book has practices to prepare for and do, and I began to try again to do them, several times. I seemed to make no headway, when all of a sudden, I began to repeat to me a simple phrase: I love me. Music was playing, candles were lit. I was susceptible to what I wanted. I wanted to experience something that, may can be of value, to me, and others. I was simply sitting surrenderedly on the couch offering to love myself somehow. How? I was just being willing, when the force of something came forth so tenderly, so powerfully, so tenderly, tenderly, I began, I began to say out loud, “I love you Theodore Cottingham”, “I love you Theodore Cottingham”, “I love you Theodore Cottingham”. I envisioned me saying that to me. It was as if I was there in intangible form looking at my tangible form, that I call me, that I have called me, and professing love, to me. I began to cry.
I began to experience love wash over me. I began to experience love, love for me, to me, and through me it went, to behold a new experience. Experientially I experienced my self love, and I KNEW something was happening, significant. This was special, beautiful, cleansing, healing, far-reaching. Limitless. I knew I would teach this. This was something that had been lacking, to me, in me. I was having something go on in me that would never end. The beginning of something new, was taking place. It was lovely. I felt my love, for me. I had projected love for others, I had loved, I had felt my love so tangibly for others, many times, so many times, but I never felt it like this, for me. I was stunned. It was beautiful, -ly me. Saying to me I was one, with me. I was love, to myself. It was beauty, beautifying itself, by simple surrender and acting accordingly with, my wishes to become one with the knowledge I need with the experience of what a beholden me can attune to. I cried. I loved, me.
Some minutes later I laid down on the couch, feeling the warmth of my love, in tangible fashion, somehow. I felt enveloped in love. I felt free, freedom. I found something, of my own love, and I let me experience it. I let me out to see me feel me experience me and become one with it me I am love.
I pray that you can experience it too, a self love that never fail, to recognize you, as I am, love. Love beings now arise, who beholden make of their own experiences, not without love again, as the centered core of me, love speaking, that you beholden behold you of. A given me, that love is, resigns to no other, but love Herself, to be it. Love all equally, and yourself first. Love and give it away, to replenish the never ending source of I am, you. Love equals love and love abounds now in the experiences of who will birth it, secrecy no more about birthing love to be it, in you first.
I release you to love you. Like I did, and more. Perfect, become, in self love, for all, we are one. When you birth it in you, it comes out. It comes out of your speech, your thinking, your inner voice, and transforms the beautifying nature of the real you, into the tangible you, in intangible form also. The beautifying power of love is infinite. Be the infinite, to you. Amen.
Theodore Joseph Cottingham
June 3, 2017
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