PART TWO I DESERVE LOVE Self-Esteem ----------- Although all of my clients have benefited from affirmations, the one that strikes me as showing the best results in terms of self-esteem is that of Greg, aged 26. When I first met Greg, he was living the life of a recluse in a one- room basement. He was not working and he was not going out. He was afraid of social contacts and especially terrified of women. Greg had undergone a great deal of therapy before seeing me, so he was aware of the origin of his problems but was still unable to get out of them to any degree. His feeling of self-hate was so strong that I started him out with the following affirmations: I AM MORE AND MORE PLEASING TO MYSELF EVERY DAY. I AM BEGINNING TO LIKE MYSELF AS A MAN. I NO LONGER HAVE TO HATE MYSELF AS A MAN TO PLEASE MY MOTHER. I AM MORE AND MORE LOVABLE. Later on he was able to write, "I like myself; I am a lovable person." "Women are becoming interested in me" was another one. He put these on tape in addition to writing them., Now, one and one-half months later, Greg is moving out of the basement room, has returned to college, is getting a part-time job, and has a good ongoing relationship with a young woman. Self Esteem Affirmations ------------------------ I place these first because self-esteem really is the crucial element in an individual's capacity for sexual fulfillment or, indeed, fulfillment of any kind. If you work with these until they are assimil- ated, you will not only note the results quickly in your sexual life, but in all other areas of your life as well. 1.I, _____, am highly pleasing to myself. 2.I, _____, am highly pleasing to myself in the presence of other people. 3.I, _____, am learning to love myself more every day. 4.I, _____, respect my own uniqueness. 5.It is more important that I, _____, please myself than to please men. It is more important that I, _____, please myself than to please women. 6.I, _____, am no longer dependent on a man's approval for my self-esteem I, _____, am no longer dependent on a woman's approval for my self- esteem. 7.I, _____, like myself even if men are not present. I, _____, like myself even if women are not present. 8.I, _____, deserve sexual pleasure. 9.I, _____, deserve sexual pleasure and so do other people. 10. I, _____, accept and acknowledge my individual tastes and pleasures in sex. (It is not necessary for me to enjoy what I think everyone else does.) 11.Because I, _____, like myself, I feel free to ask my partner to satisfy my individual sexual needs. 12.I, _____, have the right to ask for what I want in sex. I deserve all I can get . . . and so does my partner. 13.I, _____, am now good enough to satisfy myself all of the time. 14.I, _____, can trust myself and go at my own speed. 15.I, _____, am no longer helpless in sex. 16.I,_____, am self-determined and can play any role in sex I want to. 17.It is healthy to assert my right to pleasure during lovemaking. 18.My worth as an adequate male is not dependent on demonstrating my capacity for sexual conquest and potency. (Or - my worth and social status as a man do not depend on pleasing and seducing.) My self-esteem as a woman is not primarily related to my capacity to arouse lust in men. (Or my worth and social status as a woman does not depend on pleasing and seducing.) 19.I, _____, have the right to say NO without losing my partner's love. 20.I, _____, have the right to say YES without losing my partner's love or my own self-esteem. 21.Any reaction I have during sex is totally okay. 22.Anything I feel like doing in sex is fine. 23.I, _____, am successful enough to please everyone. 24.I, _____, am good enough to please everyone and good enough to be satisfied by other people. 25.I, _____ am good enough to be loved by _____. 26.I, _____, am good enough to be satisfied by sex all the time. 27.It is okay for me to have a man/woman who totally satisfies me. 28.Men/women now eagerly want to have sex with me. 29.I, _____, now practice being good to myself. 30.I, _____, am not a failure. I, _____, am a total success. Love ---- Eileen, age 29, became totally possessive of the man whenever she fell in love and knew this had driven all her boyfriends away. She didn't know how to get out of it and always found herself sitting by the telephone waiting in agony. She had learned as a child to feel that possessiveness was a way to keep a man. At least she had concluded that by observing her mother, a very possessive woman whom Eileen had copied. Eileen had constantly had to compete to get the love of her father and since she never quite managed to do so, she became more and more like her mother in hopes that if she learned well enough she finally might get her father's love. She acted this out with all the men in her life, still trying to get the love of her father through each man. To make matters worse, her father beat her fairly often so she somehow had love hooked up with pain and tended to choose sadistic types for lovers, hoping to turn them into loving fathers, something she had never been able to do with her own father. Her distorted notions of love had been learned very early in life and she seemed unable to figure out how to love in any other way. After she had worked on self-love and self-esteem affirmations, I gave her the following: I, EILEEN DO NOT NEED TO BE LIKE MY MOTHER IN ORDER TO WIN MY FATHER'S LOVE. I NO LONGER SET UP OTHER MEN TO BE MY FATHER. I DESERVE A MAN WHO LOVES ME AND TREATS ME WELL. LOVE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PAIN. I AM NOW WILLING TO HAVE A MAN WHO LOVES ME. I FORGIVE MY FATHER FOR NOT LOVING ME IN THE PAST. Eileen first began to clear up her relationship with her parents. She went home and tried to communicate to them exactly how she felt. Although they were not able to treat her much differently, she was able to begin to let go of the drama she had been recreating merely by expressing her feelings to them. She stopped hoping that she could finally change them and that they would meet her needs. Instead she began to meet her needs for love in more appropriate ways. She attended massage classes where she was finally able to work through her fear of being punished when men touched her. For her it was a gradual process of letting go of inappropriate behavior. Next she began to acquire male friends whom she learned to love as friends only. When she felt ready to risk a new kind of relationship, she listed all the qualities she wanted in a man and wrote her own affirmation: I, EILEEN, CAN NOW ATTRACT A MAN WHO LOVES ME AND WHO IS TENDER, KIND, INTELLIGENT, OPEN, AFFECTIONATE AND EASY-GOING. She met him one week later. ULTIMATELY LOVE IS SELF-APPROVAL. Love is the place you are coming from, your ground of being. You are love. Love is the divine force everywhere, the universal energy, the moving power of life that flows in your own heart. Love is accepting someone as he or she is and as he or she is not. Love is the acknowledgment of a union that already exists. You already are part of this universal unifying essence called love. In addition, you are either loving or not loving. If you are loving, people will feel this attractive force and will appear in your path so you can love them. And there are multitudes of people who want to express their love to you. It is important to realize, however, that you cannot accept any more love than you are willing to give of yourself. Self-love - many people have had so much disapproval, they have forgotten how to go about loving themselves. What is self love? Self-love is acknowledging and praising yourself verbally to yourself. Self-love is approving of all your actions. Self-love is having confidence in your ability. Self-love is giving yourself pleasure without guilt. Self-love is loving your body and admiring your beauty. Self-love is giving yourself what you want and feeling you deserve it. Self-love is letting yourself win. Self-love is letting others in instead of submitting to loneliness. Self-love is following your own intuition. Self-love is making your own rules responsibly. Self-love is seeing your own perfection. Self-love is taking credit for what you did. Self-love is surrounding yourself with beauty. Self-love is letting yourself be rich and not staying in poverty. Self-love is creating an abundance of friends. Self-love is rewarding yourself; never punishing yourself. Self-love is trusting yourself. Self-love is nourishing yourself with good food and good ideas. Self-love is surrounding yourself with people who nourish you. Self-love is enjoying sex. Self-love is getting a massage frequently. Self-love is seeing yourself as equal to others. Self-love is forgiving yourself. Self-love is letting in affection. Self-love is authority over yourself; not giving it away to another. Self-love is developing your creative drives. Self-love is having fun all the time. Self- love is really talking to yourself gently and lovingly. Self-love is becoming your own approving inner parent. Self-love is turning all your negative thoughts into affirmations. You can start loving yourself this very minute and see how "high" you can get. All you have to do is make up your own affirmation from the foregoing page. It's easy. I,_____, NOW PRAISE AND ACKNOWLEDGE MYSELF VERBALLY TO MYSELF. I, _____, NOW APPROVE OF ALL MY ACTIONS. I,_____, NOW HAVE CONFIDENCE IN MY ABILITY. Write down other affirmations as you think of them. Notice how good you are starting to feel. The fact is, you are loving yourself as you write all the affirmations in this book. So where is love? Nowhere is love not! Mostly it is there in the unfolding flower of your heart. I think you are getting the idea: it is better not to go searching outside yourself to find love. You must experience this self-love first before you can really experience anyone else's love. That is so important: YOU MUST EXPERIENCE SELF-LOVE BEFORE YOU CAN EXPERIENCE ANYONE ELSE'S LOVE. Already we ARE the ever sought wonderful thing we seek and seldom find. Finally, when you truly love yourself, your new problem will be how to handle all the love coming to you at once. And remember, love does not "run out." It is the moving power of life. So how about you? Are you, or have you been, disappointed by love? Remember that you create your own experience with your mind. So if you have been creating everything that does not work in love, you can just as easily create everything that does work in love by the very same power. Just change your thoughts. Would you like to experience so much love that you would be in ecstasy all the time? Try loving unconditionally. Just try it. Would you like it if people were so attracted to you that they gravitated to you wherever you went? Would you like to give up having to search for love? Would you like to stop making such an effort? would you like to have nothing but successful relationships? It really is easy. You are already on the way by doing these affirmations. 1.I, _____, have love here inside me. 2.I, _____, do not need to struggle and drive for love. It is complete and absolute already. 3.I, _____, know love is here and as I, _____, am experiencing it, the search is over. 4.The sooner I experience my own self-love, the sooner I, _____, can experience the love of others. 5.I, _____, no longer deprive myself of the expression of love. I feel wonderful when I express love. 6.I, _____, do not hold back any of the love inside me. I express it, knowing that as I distribute it, I'll always be supplied with more. 7.The more I, _____, love myself, the more others love me. 8.The more I, _____, love others, the more others love me. 9.The more I, _____, love others, the more others love themselves. 10.The more others love themselves, the more they love me. 11.I, _____, daily make contributions to the alive-ness and love of myself and others. 12.I, _____, am becoming passionately interested in everyone. 13.The more I, _____, participate, the more I am loved. 14.I, _____, do not resist love. I can let it flow in and out like water. 15.I, _____, radiate love to all persons and places and things I contact each day. 16.My purpose in live is to be loving and expanding and I, _____, do this naturally and effortlessly. 17.People are just waiting to love me; not letting them do so is cheating them. 18.I, _____, am a free channel through which love always flows into expression. Nothing exists within me to block this flow. 19.I, _____, breathe in universal love and it enters through every pore and fills every cell of my body. 20.Love flows through me, _____, to all humanity. 21.I, _____, attract into my life now and always only loving and beautiful people. 22.I, _____, am a unique and priceless person, coming from a unique and perfect pattern hidden within me. 23.Others are inspired by the love I, _____, diffuse. 24.I, _____, deserve to be happy and I have the ability to rejoice in the happiness of others. (The more happy people I have around me, the happier I am.) 25.Everyone who tunes in to me from near or far is now receiving this message of love. 26.My love is instantly transmitted to the subconscious of another telepathically. 27.I, _____, do not allow myself to be affected by any ugly thoughts or worry, doubt, anxiety, fear, anger, or hate. 28.I, _____, instantly replace ugly thought with beautiful thought of love, peace, security, joy, confidence, happiness, and prosperity. 29.I, _____, am constantly turning negative thoughts into positive ones. 30.The love in me makes me forgive all and everything. 31.Love is my natural birthright. I, _____, claim it. 32.I, _____, am now a loving person worthy in all respects of having the kind of mate I desire. 33.As I, _____, send out this mental vibration of love _____ will be drawn to me. (I do not need to scheme or to force this to happen.) 34.The more beautiful thoughts I, _____, have, the more beautiful loving friends and partners I will attract. 35.I, _____, am filled with this magnetic power so I can draw to me the right type of loving relationship. 36.My true lover(s) are now being attracted to me. 37.I, _____, am an irresistible magnet filled with love. Love alone goes forth from me, and true love alone flows back to me. 38.I, _____, am love personified. 39.I, _____, am loving. 40.I, _____, no longer stop the flow of love trying to come to me; I let it in. 41.I, _____, am lovable. 42.I, _____, can draw to me the friends and lovers I have been waiting for. 43.I, _____, always deserve love. I deserve love for just being alive. Loving Relationships -------------------- At one point in my life, I seemed to be in a pattern of attracting men who were very dominating, super-perfectionistic, critical, and exciting. I usually "set them up" as father figures, if they were not already. To complicate matters, I also set them up to leave me. This was because my father frequently left me to go to the hospital when I was little. One day he left me for good. My predominately negative thought structures, generalized toward all men, were centered around the idea: "Men leave me." Until I did affirmations I was unable to figure out how it was that men left me even though they seemed to really care for me. When I finally got fed up with all my neurotic relationships ( that were not working), I decided I was ready to have a good relationship with someone very special. I did not feel like figuring out where to meet him nor did I feel like searching. I turned to affirmations and wrote "I, Sondra, am now willing to let into my life the kind of man I desire." (At that point in my life I was clear enough on the kind of man I did NOT desire anymore so I merely made a list of the qualities in a man I DID desire.) As I mentioned previously, I met my man only four days later at a seminar on self-expression. At the very beginning of our relation- ship I wrote "I am now developing a loving, harmonious lasting relationship," and I also did most of the affirmations in this chapter. Our relationship has continued for two years and has been completely nourishing and effortless to both of us. If you have a good relationship with YOURSELF, you will automatically have a good relationship with others. "The soul attracts that which it secretly harbors." In other words, you will attract the person who has harmony with your thought structures. If you feel really good about yourself. you'll attract someone who also feels good about him/her self. By the universal law of attraction someone will respond to the mental vibrations you exude. You can relate the perfect relationship for yourself by sitting down and listing the things you want in such a relationship. Meditate on them. Imagine already having such a relationship. Imagine the person you want for a partner. If you really are willing for it to happen, someone will come into your life just as you imagine, by this universal law of attraction. Thought creates vibrations which inevitably attract that which is in its image. If you are already in a relationship, the same procedure will work. Picture these positive, divine qualities coming out in him or her. Your partner will soon develop and become as you imagine. Jesus often spoke of the law of attraction. "As ye believe, so shall it be done unto you." "Unto him who hath, shall be given." When you come to understand that there is only one universal mind which is every place at the same time and in all things, you will see that the differences between you and others are illusionary. We are all just vibrating at different levels. Raise your vibration level and you will attract people on higher and higher levels. Do not dwell on thoughts of the lack of things. There are no limita- tions. There is no lack in the universal mind (God) of which we are all part. Whatever you dare ask for you will be given. Watch yourself. Watch your thoughts. If you are thinking "I'll never meet somebody who _____ etc.," you never will. Immediately invert the thought to something like this: "I am now attracting someone who _____" etc. What you are willing to accept comes your way. Ken Keys said "Happiness is experienced when your life gives you what you are willing to accept." So take responsibility for the thoughts you choose to think regarding relation- ships. Remember, we really are all related so you don't have to search and make effort. You can bring people you like into your life with your thoughts. The logical person to put into your circle is someone with whom you are in harmony - whomever you think you deserve. Let's say you are now in a relationship. You may wonder how to make or keep it successful. It's easy. A successful relationship is based upon one being nourished by the other person's presence. That is enough. You don't have to do anything else except set up certain agreements; make it a game. Don't get stuck in the rules, however. You might want to change them as frequently as every week. All you have to do is negotiate. It is important to remember that you must experience your own self- love before you can experience another's. A loving relationship is when two people experience each other's being. In a loving relationship, the loving is absolute already. It is in the "relationship" that the action comes in. Loving relationships can benefit you immensely. (So don't deprive yourself.) Another person can enrich you. Another person can assist you to grow faster. Another person can enlighten you, fast. Your negative patterns are likely to come up quickly for you to see. Since you attract what ;you are, you have a mirror at all times to see yourself. Your partner can be your personal Guru. You always get value. Loving Relationship Affirmations -------------------------------- 1. I, _____, am no longer looking for the right person, I am becoming the right person. 2. I, _____, am a responsible person who is happy and free with or without a mate. I can survive equally well with or without a man or woman. 3. As I, _____, learn to please myself, I can have more mutual and honest relationships. 4. I, _____, am a full person, capable of an open, loving relationship. 5. As I, _____, think more positively, I will attract positive thinking people into my life with whom I can have nourishing relationships. 6. I, _____, am now attracting into my life someone who is loving and pleasurable. 7. I, _____, have a lot of love inside me that flows outward easily thus making me even more able to love. 8. I, _____, am able to handle an intimate warm, affectionate and close relationship. 9. I, _____, am now able to intuitively experience the BEING of another. 10. I, _____, no longer need _____ for my survival and _____ no longer needs me. _____now loves me and enriches my alive-ness and I, _____, love _____ and I am enriching his or her alive-ness. 11. I, _____, think highly of myself and therefore it is easy for me to accept _____ thinking highly of me. 12. I, _____, am careful to state the type of relationship I want rather than how _____ should change. 13. It is okay to disapprove of my partner's actions as long as I am not disapproving of his being. 14. I, _____, am careful to state my feelings rather than judge _____ and his feelings. 15. I, _____, am equal to my partner(s) and he or she (they) is/are equal to me. 16. There is an abundance of lovers who are just right for me. 17. I, _____, no longer experience anxiety about the loss of those people who really count in my life. My love objects have permanence. 18. I, _____, now feel secure about the dependability of my relationships., 19. My relationships last as long as I want them to. 20. The satisfactory ending of a relationship frees me to enjoy other refreshing new ones. 21. I, _____ am now developing loving, harmonious relationships with men/ women. 22. I, _____, now have a success consciousness with all my intimate relationships. 23. I, _____, am already related to everyone in the universe so I do not have to "work at" forming relationships. 24. I, _____, can easily have relationships for the purpose of recreation. 25. I, _____, no longer resent people coming into my space because they love me. 26. I, _____, get value out of every relationship because I use it for expansion and enlightenment.