Testimonial: Love... and health!

These are often the wishes that we offer our loved ones almost automatically at the beginning of each new year: love and health!

Many of us mistakenly believe that only a select few receive these precious gifts to be happy in life. Sometimes we can feel like we don't have either and that our lives don't seem to live up to our expectations.

And yet, we ALWAYS have a lot more than we think!

In fact, we are waiting to regain our health or to receive love when we are asked to BE love and to ENJOY the health that we have as a privileged teaching about the areas of ourselves that need even more love.

Let me explain myself.

The purpose of our time on earth is to learn to love. More. Better. Without judging. Everything we experience, absolutely everything, without exception, is sent to us for this precious learning: to learn to love.

Learning to love ourselves first because it's hard to love others if we don't love ourselves. Learning to love ourselves can be the most important challenge we face in our lives. Whatever our physical, financial, social, personal, or family condition, we must learn to love ourselves as we are with what life has put in our way as teachers, in various forms, to teach us.

Do not wait to be loved to love ourselves or to love others. A fireplace does not emit heat until we put wood, paper and fire into it! First, let's start by loving ourselves, loving ourselves as we are, loving what we are experiencing, even if it doesn't suit us, even if it's a more than daily challenge. Because in the love we will have for ourselves are the keys to our happiness.

This learning cannot be avoided or delayed for the rest of our lives. It is the basis for everything, for our happiness, for our openness to life, for our acceptance of what we are experiencing, for our openness to others and for our ability to receive love from others. Have you noticed how we doubt the love of others when we don't love ourselves? To accept being loved, you must first love yourself.

It is sometimes a long and difficult apprenticeship, because we are not taught it much, but it is a daily journey that gives us a lot of joy... and love!

Let's learn to love ourselves by doing something kind to ourselves every day. By taking care of ourselves for example or by doing something we like, by recognizing our qualities, by finding the child in us to take care of them. By listening to our heart too, by putting ourselves at the service of our soul, which will thus be able to guide us fluidly towards our own life mission.

Because we all have a life mission, no matter what physical abilities we have.

We are always given the best possible conditions for our evolution. Oh! Of course, we are far from often agreeing with what is “imposed” on us. However, if we open ourselves to life, we will understand that everything serves our greatest good, whether it is to achieve our mission in a way that is unique to us or to finally learn to love ourselves as we are, or to learn to better love others and life, and thus put ourselves at the service of it.

Our health, or rather our health conditions, often seem to us to be a limitation to what we want to do. What if these were the conditions we needed for us to fulfill our life mission in this way? And then, even if we are concerned about our health problems, don't we have mental health, heart health, and relationships elsewhere in our lives?

Byron Katie, a world-renowned American author, reminds us: “How do we know if we really need this thing (such as this illness, this problem, this event) in our life? If we have it, if we are living it, it is because we need it! Likewise, what we don't have is that we don't need it right now.

I know, for many of us it is probably a drastic change in our perception of life. And any change, especially of this magnitude, requires time and openness. The most important thing, in fact, is to remain open to these thoughts and not to reject them out of hand. Let them find their way into us and see if they can give us anything valuable.

I know I don't have cystic fibrosis, but I've had my fair share of challenges and illnesses in my life. When I finally agreed to open myself up a little bit to a new vision of life, my life started to change. For the better. All in all.

Our level of openness to life determines the level of happiness we let in. The more open we are, the more we welcome what life throws at us, the more we understand that everything has a place in our lives. And that we also have our own place.

So, every difficult event experienced is necessary to make way for something bigger. Each abandonment teaches us to love ourselves better and to never give up on ourselves again. Each failure is a springboard for us to go further; so there is no real failure. Each betrayal teaches us to love better and to forgive. Each disease teaches us to love better, to choose the essential, to not judge, to develop qualities and abilities that we might not have developed otherwise. Each challenge serves our evolution. Each heartbreak teaches us to keep an open heart. There is a wonderful Sufi proverb that says, “Life breaks your heart, again and again and again, until it stays open! ” Isn't Leornard Cohen singing that cracks are the places where light can enter our soul?

Thus, one day we come to “welcome” what is offered to us, day after day, with more and more openness because we know intrinsically that there is a gift for us behind each situation. Sometimes the gift is poorly packaged, I agree. But there is ALWAYS a gift. The heavier the burden, the bigger the gift!

So, from the bottom of my heart, I wish you to find your exceptional gift in what you are experiencing!

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