{"id":1370,"date":"2024-11-09T19:16:00","date_gmt":"2024-11-10T02:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/?p=1370"},"modified":"2024-11-09T19:16:01","modified_gmt":"2024-11-10T02:16:01","slug":"demonstrating-love-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/2024\/11\/09\/demonstrating-love-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Demonstrating Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"Demonstrating<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

If you care about someone we want them to be healthy and happy.  Yet, as it has been said, we are our own worst enemy<\/u><\/strong>.  So for the most part, each of us is the one who is creating our own unhealthy life and making ourselves unhappy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The person who loves us will engage our worst enemy by confronting our unhealthy behaviors and our tendencies toward making ourselves unhappy.  Often people do not recognize this engaging or confrontational behavior as coming from love. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Most of us still believe the Greatest Lie that words can harm us, so we blame others for our emotional reactions to what they say.  The Greatest Lie is what the ruling classes want us to believe so that they can use words to control, manipulate, and punish us when we get out of line.  They want to be able to say things to us stimulating our emotionally self-abusive behavior which will cause us discomfort or pain thus getting us to punish ourselves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The one who truly loves us will continue to engage our worst enemy even though that person is resisting our loving engagement.  The wise person recognizes there is no harm in this engagement or confrontation even if our habit is to resist.  The wise person recognizes that our resistance is what we have to overcome and hence we learn to practice relaxing and not reacting to people\u2019s words.  When we are not reacting to people we are open to their love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The best way I have found to relax and stop reacting to people is to practice positive emotions; love your enemy type of behavior.  I first try to be grateful to them for their offering, recognizing that they are only confronting me because they care about me.  If they didn\u2019t care they would not point out how I am harming myself. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes people are not trying to be helpful or caring about me but their words are still creating an emotional reaction in me.  Because I care about myself I CHOOSE to react to their words by being grateful for the opportunity<\/em> to practice loving myself in the presence of their words.  Gratitude is one of the positive emotions that neutralizes my unhealthy habit of contracting or tensing up when stimulated by words.  In this case, I am the one demonstrating love for myself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, I don\u2019t always remember to do this and I get angry with people for what they say.  Eventually, I recognize that anger is always a sign of unconsciousness or stupidity and I laugh at my silliness, thus ending the abusive behavior.  It does take a lot more work to go further and be grateful to others for stimulating my unhealthy habit.  And, it takes even more courage to acknowledge that they might just be demonstrating love for me where I was not demonstrating love for myself.  The ego does not want to acknowledge that behavior.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The ego here is a fear mechanism (habit) that is there to protect me but at times can get out of hand and become a self-destructive behavior that is not working for my long-term benefit. Our ego is about defending our idea<\/em> of self which is entirely imaginary. Once we awaken to that, we can laugh at anything that threatens this idea we have of this imaginary thing of ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

An added benefit of practicing these positive emotional behaviors is that you are demonstrating to others that love has to start with loving ourselves FIRST.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There will always be those who cannot see any demonstration of love.  Part of loving ourselves is to recognize that some will not get it and accept them in all their unhealthy habits and behaviors.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you care about someone we want them to be healthy and happy.  Yet, as it has been said, we are our own worst enemy.  So for the most part, each of us is the one who is creating our own unhealthy life and making ourselves unhappy.  The person who loves us will engage our […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,45,115],"tags":[97,119,141,63],"class_list":["post-1370","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-mental-health","category-lovefear","category-understanding-ourselves","tag-love-2","tag-relationships","tag-self-love","tag-words"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1370"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1372,"href":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1370\/revisions\/1372"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1370"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1370"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jimfreedom.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1370"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}