There is only one sure way to love. It is not by falling into it but by choosing to love yourself. Children are force-fed statements they cannot live up to. “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Children, in their innocence, don’t have a clue about what this means because it is an intellectual exhortation hurled at them while they are hurling toys at each other. Wisdom is wasted on the young.

Actually, adults can’t live up to this wisdom themselves until they choose a path to awakening, to esoteric insight as to what loving your neighbor as yourself means. Once you do, it is the simplest thing in the world. But while asleep, it is your worst nightmare.

“Love my neighbor,” a sleeping human being says, “he owes me money.” Or “She is full of herself.” And so it goes. Everyone pays lip service but not heart service. No judgement here, they simply don’t have it in them.

Hypocrisy was something Jesus was heavy-handed about. He wouldn’t put up with it, not for a Jerusalem minute, whatever that means.

So awakening is about becoming unstuck from what we have been coerced into believing. We have tried our best to be good citizens, but the news keeps us well-informed on how that is going.

Try saying this: “I choose to love myself.” No thought allowed. Just the conscious statement. And watch how quickly your energy mends itself. No one is taught this to children because wisdom is protected until the time is right for it to be revealed. Until then, it is clothed in parabolic language.

And now I say to you, “Love, your neighbor IS yourself.”

Vicki Woodyard