Hi everyone,

It’s been a little while but as we move into 2022 I wanted to share something with you all and of course wish you well for the year ahead.

But maybe thinking in years isn’t always that helpful?

One day at a time is enough.

One moment at a time is really all we have… in which case I wish you well in the passing moments which are combined to form our linear notion of time… **Mind Blown**

As I’ve entered this New Year, fluidly, rather than sealing it off from the previous or those to come with a mind inclined to compartmentalise, the days have moved through me bringing with them reflections on Self-Love.

Ah. Two little words. Yet not one simple thing. Tell me about it, right!?

Much is spoken about Self-Love, in various ways stemming from various depths.

“Love yourself” they say, but who is self? And how exactly do I love?

We never really pause to consider this do we?

But without a deeper understanding of who we are (the dimensions of the self and the canvas upon which they play out) and an understanding of how to practice love well (with discernment of the differences between our mental concept of ‘love’ and the embodiment of love, learned only through communing with our silent messenger: the Heart), our capacity to love ourselves arrests at a superficial level and is often found crumbling at the slightest bump in the road.

Not because we’re bad just because we haven’t yet learned how to grow the roots of our Self-Love, affording us the strength to allow the inevitable tempests of our inner realities to clear us out and reveal the next greatest thing.

And who can blame us? An education of the Heart tends to evade our western society for the most part.

Amidst a culture laced with perfectionism we forget that our capacity for deeper Self-Love is forged in the crucible of life’s challenges. It’s not a pre-packaged thing, essential to attain prior to showing up and meeting the reality of our present experience.

“When I love myself more, then I’ll do X” “When I feel good about myself, then I’ll do Y”.

The painfully unglamorous truth of it is that it’s cultivated one messy step at a time, fuelled by a willingness to find a better way, a willingness to learn to love oneself.

Self- Love is not something that has come naturally to me. (This may be the greatest understatement in my entire life…!)

In fact, on my journey to uncover the truth of Self and move into the world from that place there have been parts of me (confused, misunderstood, fragmented parts) that would rather me die than expose that place.

And I’m happy to share that with you.

Because if I have learned anything, it’s that I am not alone in this.

I have moved myself, one breath at a time from my own personal self-created hell to a place that I can truly call Self-Love.

Which scares me.

Saying that out loud is scary.

And this brings me back to Self- Love.

There’s a paradox to the understanding of Self- Love.

Rather than how much can the self love, let’s instead consider this: how much love can the self handle?

How much love can my nervous system sustain before it freaks out?

Love is much scarier than hell.

With suffering you know where you’re at, you know where the sides of the cage are and you’re familiar with them. 

It may be miserable, but ultimately, you know where you stand. 

Comfortably miserable.

Love, however, is groundless.

There’s nothing to hold onto here. 

The idea of ‘self’ cannot reaffirm its existence in such a fresh, wide-open space and you’re forced to acknowledge a Self beyond the self we usually refer to. 

Uncomfortably liberated.

Here you find Self- Love is more of an allowing than it is something that a self fabricates.

An allowing of the self to be loved.

Which is reminiscent of Rumi when he says:

“Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it”.

So now I find myself asking this:

 Are you a self doing the loving, or are you a self allowing the love in? 

Are you a self which is formulating, or a self which is surrendering? 

Today I enter my 30th trip around the sunny sun here on our beautiful blue dot and I wanted to share these musings with you.

I cannot offer anything tied up neatly with a bow – the perfect pill if you will, but I can offer a space in which to explore that which is much too boundless to ever be tied down into a stagnant state of perfection: Self-Love.

Through prompting curiosity into the deeper truths beneath the words Self and Love I hope to offer some illumination of your own inner doorway, through which the understanding and ultimately the remembrance of who Self truly is and what Love really is can be found.

Self. Love. At the deepest and truest level: Two sides, same coin..?

The writing of this is, for me, an act of Self-Love.

The courage to step out of my own self-inflicted cage of unworthiness, which I have clung to so very stubbornly in the past (I really can be the Queen of determination in this sense haha), into a place where I can be seen.

To love the Self is to let the Self be seen.

So, this year, a little wiser, a little braver – no doubt due in huge part to the love of those around me – I’ll be showing up more visibly, steadily growing and sharing my work with the world.

As it unravels, you may well witness a breadth of seemingly unrelated topics, and I’ll be doing my best to take us on a journey back to their common roots – that silent realm where true healing, connection and evolution take place.

As ever, all I share is born from insights and observations arising from that silent, mysterious and un-fixated realm that exists where worlds intersect – most fundamentally for me, the worlds of Horse and Human.

I can’t wait to share more with you as the year unfolds!

Sending you so much love,

Ruby

(& the 4 legged ones – Libby, Misty, Kissi & Bob)

P.s. In the interest of showing up, here I am, candles and all!