We are at a time of year that draws our attention to love. This is the time that focuses on Valentine’s Day. It is actually “Saint Valentines’s Day”, but the Saint has been dropped for the sake of pleasure and profit.  So I am going to attempt to nudge some of the sacred back into the festival and add a big dose of self-reflection.

What if we looked at St. Valentine’s Day as a time to explore the mysteries of true love that can only come about through self-love?

I have been romantically  in love, deep, passionate, erotic, demanding love enough times to write a pretty juicy memoir of dreams come true, hearts broken, of the slow death of adoration and the growing nightmare of unavoidable boredom.  In all these love stories, I was always seeking a sense of myself outside myself.  I wanted to be made whole.  I wanted to be seen and known but instead of taking the steps to be vulnerable and transparent, I projected all that I wanted to find and know and become in myself on to my lover. And vice versa, I was loved because I could carry their projections.

I now realize the only love that endures the challenges of time is the love that springs from the fulness of self-love.  No holes, vacuums, or voids that need to be magically filled by another. Nor do I feel any need to be a filler of holes, vacuums or voids in another.  I can just be me, full of self, eager to embrace the fulness of the other.

Old habits, hormonal leaps and collapses, and the great love scripts and vanities  still smell sweet and seduce me, but self-love has strengthened my soul.  I am no longer seeking the love found in Hollywood or Hallmark, I am still tempted, and may briefly succumb, but I know the spoilers.

Maya Angelou in all her outrageous wisdom shared it this way:

“I don't trust people who don't love themselves and tell me, 'I love you.' ... There is an African saying which is: Be careful when a naked person offers you a shirt.”

And let me take Maya’s wisdom further:  You cannot love the world, if you don’t first love yourself.  You cannot love the unknown future, if you do not love the unknown, unfolding mysteries of your own soul.

I do not want to be a naked person, I want a closet full of shirts!

Through sacred self love our inner attention and activity would be to know the pure sweet joy of self-loving free of should’s, wishes, judgments, and inflations.  Neither overvaluing aspects of yourself nor undervaluing them. Neither obsessive fascination with yourself nor anxious avoidance…just self-love as a solid ground and an ennobling goal for meaning, significance and purpose.  And the recognition that self-love is the true path to loving all other human beings.

Self-love is not about a passionate, driving desire to adore, possess, or surrender to an object. It does not take hold of you nor promise ecstasy. It is not about falling, but rising.  It is not about madness, but sobriety, temperance, and serenity.

Self love is about living at your core, your holy of holies.  It is about being observant, about attending to the configuration, complexity, coherence and changes of all that you consist of in your individual expression of being human.

Oh, how love for another soul, for the world, and for the future can flow freely from the fountain of self-love.

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In a couple of days, I will be sending you your invitation to enroll in the Core Imaginations Curriculum, a schooling for self-love.

Meanwhile, contemplate loving yourself, and if you find self-doubt, self-fear, or self-contempt give yourself some flowers, chocolates, essential oils, a beeswax candle and take a nice warm bath.  Call on St Valentine to stand behind you and place his hand at the back of your heart and  then go to your heart and revisit yourself with loving interest. Put on a shirt and drink from the fountain.

If you still struggle, please schedule a complementary call with me. 

Inner work is tough work and hitting the mysterious and labyrinthine trenches of your soul requires guides, tools, support, creativity, humor and perseverance. 

Books, prayers, coaching, counseling, meditation, workshops, good friends...every kind of help is needed and available.  But ultimately, only you can do the work of becoming you. 

Below are the ways I can help you with your 2015 inner work of finding, knowing and becoming yourself… and making sense of it all. 

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Conversations with Me

Is this the year to answer a question, solve a mystery, survive a crisis, take a leap, imagine a future, find self-compassion, balance inner extremes, connect with a spiritual mentor and friend???  Can I support you, coach you, mentor you, celebrate you as you take on this threshold experience consciously and creatively.  

Why don’t you schedule a complimentary 20 minute conversation here...let’s talk about what you want and how I can help.  

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The Imagine Self Academy

All Imagine Self Academy courses are offered online through recorded presentations and loads of valuable materials. Some include live group conversations and Q & A with me. Everything is downloadable. 

I just want to give you a brief rundown of the major courses available in 2015. I’ve included dates and costs so you can plan and budget.  I will be sending out detailed descriptions for the courses closer to when each one will be opening registration.

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Core Imaginations

the Imagine Self Curriculum for Imagining the

Whole Core Reality of Yourself

...the most powerful, healing, liberating curriculum in the Imagine Self Academy.  You will want to come back to these courses many times throughout your life.

Created in 2014, Core Imaginations is a year long, life long, curriculum that teaches you how to do self-compassionate observation and guides you to a fully alive imagination of yourself: 

Imagine Your Fourfold Self:

Your Physical Self and Living in Space

Your Living Self of Biology and Biography and Living in Time

Your Conscious Self of Thinking, Feeling and Willing and Living in Relativity

Your Absolute Self of Pure Spirit, 

Imagine Your Ways of Knowing & Being: 

The Four Temperaments, 

The Twelve Senses, &

The Seven Life Processes.

A new class will begin Core Imaginations in Mid-February. Cost is $477 for the entire curriculum (monthly payments available).

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Holy Imaginations & The New Festivals

I have found that the Christian Festivals (including the Marion festivals) offer extraordinary insights for individual inner work. I offer blogposts and courses inspired by the festivals. I approach these with an esoteric, non-religious, universal, 21^st Century understanding, not for belief or tradition, but for a brilliant yearly path for self-development.  The blogposts including the Inner Christmas Messages are a gift (but again, donations are so very welcome.)

The New Festivals courses are for self-study with one or 2 live Conversations with Lynn. Cost is $47 each.

Inner Lent 

begins February 15^th  

5 lessons on facing the mysteries of temptation and overcoming all that challenges the well-being of your soul.

Learn more about Inner Lent here.

Inner Advent

begins November 25^th 

4 lessons for recollecting, reviewing and releasing your year...preparing for Christmas and the Holy Nights 

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Wisdom Imaginations

the Imagine Self Curriculum for inner love and inner freedom

Imagining Your Inner Misfit

available now

guides you into a new relationship with the difficult parts of yourself. $27

 click here to register

These two courses are excerpts from the Inner Mother Inner Father course.  We need an inner mother and an inner father to meet the needs of our inner child.  

Imagining An Inner Mother

May, 2015  ~ 4 sessions

We will look at the four great maternal gestures and recognize their presence or absence in our childhood.  We will learn how we can awaken each of these maternal gestures in our own soul for self-mothering. Cost: $97

Imagining An Inner Father

June, 2015 ~ 4 sessions

This course brings to our souls the great paternal gestures for self-fathering. Cost: $97

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The Retreat for Women Seeking Outrageous Wholeness: 

Save the dates: July 9-12 in Chapel Hill, NC

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Here’s to your inner work and becoming new in 2015!

Blessings & Imaginations,

Lynn

The NEW Imagine Self Website

For the last three years, I have had a beautiful, content rich website that did not function to serve you or me.  I've been busy creating curriculums and courses for the essential task of finding, knowing and becoming yourself, but the website which should be a map leading you to all the support and inspiration for this work has failed to provide a workable guide.  

This is changing, transforming, blossoming!  A new website is in the works. I'm very excited.