Self Love Visualization

Use a technique to quiet your mind, to sit or lie down in a comfortable position and allow your mind to settle itself, slowly, gently focusing on your breath. Then in your mind's eye, imagine someone or something that you love and imagine that loved one standing before you and allow yourself to smile as you imagine them smiling at you with so much love in your eyes. Allow the feeling of love in your heart to grow. Imagine that as you look in their eyes in your imagination, imagine that your heart gets warmer and that warmth expands so that you can reach it out and wrap it around them because you could hug them with the warmth in your heart. Allow that warmth to reach out behind you and wrap behind your back and hug you. Allow that warmth to extend around you so that you imagine that you are in a field of light created by this loving that you have for this person. As you sit in this field of light, turn your mind's eye to an image of the path before you. Allow your imagination to look toward that path and when you are ready in your mind's eye, you stand up and you begin to walk down the path. As you walk down the path you see yourself one year ago standing on the sideway of the path. You smile at that person and you walk by and you see that person, you from one year ago, smile back at you.

As you continue to walk you see yourself from two years ago and then three years ago. You find as you follow that path that you are passing versions of yourself as you get younger and younger. You are still your current self walking down this path, but you are passing these beings who are embodiments who you were every year of your life so far until eventually you see yourself as a young adult, a teenager, you see yourself notice what you are wearing as a child, notice your hair. Allow yourself to smile as you see each of these versions of yourself until you finally come to the end of the path where there is an infant; a precious newborn, perfectly innocent, infant child. Allow yourself to sit down and hold this child feeling how innocent, how pure, how completely vulnerable they are. Allow that love that you have built in your heart to extend around this infant knowing without a shadow of a doubt that this infant deserves all the love and support of the world. They could not do anything wrong because they are perfectly good just as they are. Then, knowing that this infant is you. This is exactly as you were at the moment of your birth.

Allow the light and love in your heart to extend again around the infant and then allow that light and glow to reach out behind you and surround you giving you that same warm hug of loving energy as you hold the two of you together in that light. Stay here until you feel complete. When you are ready, find a safe place for the infant, somewhere in your mind's eye where the infant will be perfectly safe and perfectly cared for. Take care to lie them down gently. Invite all of the Spirit Guides and loved ones that you can imagine to come and take care of this infant after you leave, knowing that they will be perfectly safe, knowing that they are perfectly innocent.

Begin to travel back along the path finding yourself as a young child smiling and extending that sense of love to yourself as a middle child, as a teenager, as a young adult. Allow yourself to notice the beauty in the faces of each of these embodiments. As you pass them, and you slowly follow the path, return to yourself at your current age, sitting in a field of light. Take a moment again to feel this love in your heart, to recognize that everything is as it needs to be and to forgive every step of the way recognizing that at each point and time, you have done everything you could to do right. You have done the best you possibly could do with the resources at hand. Allow a sense of relief and forgiveness. As you take in a deep breath and release that breath, you allow a sense of forgiveness, a sense of release trusting that everything that has occurred so far in your life is in harmony with your intentions and where you wish to go.

Take another deep breath and you notice that you are again in your body sitting or lying down wherever you started and you follow with several deep breaths that awaken your mind. Stretch your body and allow you to come back to consciousness. This guided visualization can be used at any point as often as you wish. You might record it in your own voice so that you can listen to the visualization and be led. You might memorize the steps and simply follow it in your mind's eye. You might read it aloud for a loved one and lead them on this visualization. You can use this as often as you wish.

There are so many other meditation techniques that will help facilitate self-love. Any meditation technique facilitates this as we describe before. There are some techniques that specifically lead you to create a feeling of love and dedicate it to the world around you. One of them is the Tibetan Buddhist practice of Tonglen among countless others. Know that any meditation technique, provided that you do it with the spirit of love and tenderness for yourself, will help facilitate self-love. (Feb. 09)