Three Breaths: Connecting to The Holy Fire of Truth Within

Through breath and meditation we can reconnect to the voice within, the holy fire of our truth — and return to ‘human love’

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I wish I had a magical mantra you could repeat when needed and poof– suddenly – you don’t just know, but FEEL the love that you are. The hard part about loving ourselves is that it takes hard work. It takes daily, inner doses of raw honey — of letting love reach within us where it has never been before.

I don’t know why so many of us were wired this way — to love others with ease even through their massive failings and faults, but then judge the slightest little thing wesay or do. And then use our human mistakes as reasons to withdraw or withhold our own love for ourselves. Or worse, allow those mistakes (which are the whole point of being here) to convince us that we aren’t worthy of love.

The grace, the silver lining, the miracle in all this, is that so many of us are in this together — this calling to become the love we seek to give others.

The greatest spiritual tool I can offer you is something we all possess. I call it the ‘Soul-Voice Meditation’ — the capacity to turn our focus and attention inward, to the heart.

Whether you take a minute in the shower, five on the commute to work, or twenty minutes before bed at night, that intention of going within and meeting the presence that exists within you (that is you) will melt those obstacles that can block you from feeling the love that is yours.

I call it the Soul-Voice Meditation because that’s what I meet with when I go within, the presence and uncompromising reality of the soul. It’s like stepping into a vat of honey that I keep forgetting is right here. It’s this endless supply of love that I never have to earn access to or prove I’m worthy of; I just have to remember that it’s right here in my own imperfect and terrifically flawed heart.

This, I think, is the whole point: that something as divine as love (which never ends) lives and breathes within this shifting, temporary space of the human heart — and that it’s ours to experience and share and to ultimately become. I don’t think the point is to be that love all of the time. I think the point is to be both this eternal love, and also this fumbling, lost-in-the-dark type human. That’s the work, the paradox, and the opportunity we’re handed in coming here. To be human love. And to get better and better at returning to the source of love whenever we think we’ve been separated from it, or when we mistake its origin in someone or something else. With less and less time, and with more and more forgiveness.

So, what I suggest is to just start. Just do what you can to love yourself right now.

Take one breath, close your eyes and intend to enter your heart. Take a second breath and know that you are meeting with the truth of who you are, a soul of love. Take a third breath and surface from behind your eyes to see out now with the eyes of love.

Then just let that love guide you. Start with those three breaths at some point in your day. No one needs to know you’re doing it. You don’t need a meditation cushion or a candle, or incense — all you need is this desire to encounter the love that you are. You and your soul will take it from there, knowing that with love you’ll find all your own answers within you.

I often hear the adage, or some version of it, that “we must become who we needed most when we were young.” When I was a little girl, I needed to be led, again and again, back to the truth that I contained the love I seek. I needed to be reminded that as a female, I am not an object, or a commodity. Love is my birthright, and I am entirely worthy of it. I am beloved here on earth, and that no matter what happens, my body is sacred.

I needed to know that this quiet, unassuming voice inside me is actually a holy fire; it’s the most powerful force in this world.

It’s the force of unfaltering love. I can trust it to guide me. I can trust this voice, if I dare to follow it, to become not what someone else needs me to be, or wants me to become, but simply the truth of who I am.

I can choose to be nothing less or more than exactly who I am; and this is enough.

I needed to be taught that there have always been divine ladies of an uncompromising love that have existed throughout history and in all the world religions. There have been Goddesses and female Buddhas and human women who embodied a love that allowed them to transform into warrior-saints, and mystics, and poetesses, in order to rise above the limits of what their cultures and religions allowed for them as females; so they could demonstrate to the world what happens when a woman sets her own soul free.

When I was little I needed The Divine Feminine Oracle.

I needed the Soul-Voice Meditation.

I needed to be the love that I already am.

And so, this is what I have created.

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You may also enjoy reading Stories in Motion: Oracles for the Modern Seeker by Colette Baron-Reid