Love is Service

In our current culture, there is a deeply underdeveloped understanding of what love and service are. Being of service is truly the deepest form of self love. It is saying, I have something to give the world with my being. I have something to offer. Who I am and the way I am, matters and is medicine for the world. But we have confused love and service with martyrdom.We think to be of service we must put ourselves last. We think to love someone we must give to them until we are empty.But these are the immature (and by immature I simply mean less developed) versions of love and service. The more developed, mature truth is that we all come from the same Source.And when we all come from the same Source, loving me is loving you. I could not possibly be of service to you if I am not full myself. And yet, from an underdeveloped place we also assume that being “full” has some sort of rigid parameters. For example, to be full I must have had 9 hours of sleep, a massage and time to meditate every day. If I am full I must not feel dysregulated, frazzled or frustrated. If I am resourced I must always be calm, collected, nice. Whereas, from a more mature place we can see that being full is simply about how we relate to our humanity. Humans don’t always get 9 hours of sleep. Humans get dysregulated. Humans get frustrated. Humans are not always nice. How I am with myself in the very human moments of increased pressure; determines my ability to be full. How much can I be within what is actually happening in my life? Can I stay with myself in these moments of dysregulation and touch into what I actually need, right here, in this exact moment? Can I meet my hungry, exhausted, activated selves with compassion and curiosity, asking them what they need right now? When my day doesn’t go as planned and I’m hungry and hurt, do I stop to take a breath, eat something and turn toward the hurt and see what it’s asking for or do I just push on ignoring my needs? And the beautiful nuanced truth of what happens in these moments of self-attunement is that we are practicing service and love towards ourselves. This is what resources us. This is what fills us up. Our own attention, in the present moment. Life doesn’t need to be a certain way for us to be full.  We simply choose to have a relationship with life built on service and love, starting first, with ourselves. Motherhood is the perfect practice ground to start to develop and mature these concepts because we are constantly being asked to give of ourselves and because becoming a mother infuses us with so much true love. If love is service and service is love, the mother knows them both well. Part of the threshold that motherhood invites us to cross is the growing up and maturing of these concepts of love and service. The mature feminine, the mother, understands that serving and loving her family begins with this mature service and love towards herself.I have found this to be so true. The more I am attuned to myself and my needs, the more attuned I am to my children’s needs, because we come from the same Source. The more I’m in true service to my family, the better taken care of I am.  This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit clarabelize.substack.com/subscribe