Cultivating self-love is possibly the most powerful benefit of mindful drawing. Because when you grow self-love it affects everything.
It becomes the rock-solid foundation for many other benefits – such as better relationships, forgiveness of yourself and clearing trauma from your past that you still may be lugging around.
When you grow self-love it becomes the cornerstone of owning your authenticity, increasing confidence and enjoying solitude.
You cannot have authentic healing on a deep level until you grow self-love, so this benefit right here is a golden master key.
Lack of self-love was a whopping problem for me. Looking back, I can see how how toxic this belief was – as is it with many people – because lack of self-love on earth is rife.
Lack of self-love can always be traced back to somewhere.
You may not remember exactly what caused it. Often the program is seeded before seven years of age, and it may well have something to do with a parent leaving (separation, divorce or death), rejection, abandonment or being made to feel not good enough.
Maybe a sibling was praised more. Perhaps you were repeatedly told that you were dumb or stupid, or that what you did was not good enough when you tried your best. Maybe you were laughed at or teased.
Even if your parent said in anger one time, ‘I wish I never had you’ – if this event made an emotional imprint on you at the time? It shaped you.
Seemingly ‘small things’ are often not small to children – they hurt. If the event had any emotion attached to it, it becomes powerful enough to form our programs. The memory itself may fade (or be repressed or blocked out), but the program stays.
And our subconscious programs run our show.
You cannot grow self-love until you clear the subconscious programs that block it.
My own lack of self-love was created by several incidents up until the age of 15. These incidents formed programs which then affected (and infected) my entire adult life.
As a child, I was physically punished a lot because I was not ‘obedient’. I was raised in a cult under strong control, and I was a stubborn and rebellious kid so over a number of years on a regular basis, I copped it.
These ‘punishments’ caused me to feel very confused, wounded and hurt – physically – but far more so emotionally. Because I was a highly sensitive child it formed a subconscious program that I was not acceptable or worthy how I was – I carried this program (as well as PTSD from developmental trauma) all the way into my 40s.
More life events reinforced this toxic 'lack of self-love' program.
When I was 5, my real dad – who lived with us – left the church. Church rules dictated that we cut him off and disown him, which we did.
When my dad disappeared from my life, child-me simply stored this as a program of abandonment and unlovability. I was 5. Kids don’t understand the context of events, but we absolutely feel them.
It’s not what happens to you that shapes you,
it’s how that event made you feel.
At 15 years of age, my subconscious program 'I was not worthy', was one strong beast. And over the years it grew.
I never stopped to think about it consciously because I had no awareness. Instead, I gravitated hard and fast to anything that distracted me from feeling, and addiction became a focus of my life.
Over the years self-sabotage also became a feature of my life. I wrecked all my relationships because of the core belief I was not lovable.
Lack of self-love poisons everything. When you don’t feel worthy of partners, friends or anything good, it’s a gnawing discomfort that sticks to you like black sticky cobwebs – you just cannot get it off.
It’s a big reason so many of us socially over-drink – so we forget our discomfort for a short time.
All this shitty dysfunction was my normal behavior, because I had nothing to compare it to. It’s just the way I was.
A lack of self-love program affects everything.
It affects the way you behave – with yourself, with partners and in groups. It’ll mess with your confidence and it sets the standard for your levels of self-care (or lack thereof). It’s a major root cause of addiction.
It poisons EVERYTHING.
Mindful drawing brings this core belief back out into the light – into
your awareness where you see it. You begin to see how it shapes your
behaviour, and only then can you unlearn/detach from it because it has nothing to do with you anymore. It actually never did.
You see it as nothing but a false program.
How mindful drawing taught me to grow self-love
It sounds like a big call, that drawing can do something this huge – but it’s not about drawing – it’s about what’s going on inside your consciousness. The way I practice mindful drawing, is as a powerful meditation.
When I began to grow self-love, I observed it closely, and I journaled about it.
Mindful drawing teaches you to put your FULL focus on what you are drawing.
When practiced consistently, this creates ‘breaks’ in the narratives that reinforce your programs. Your constant thoughts keep your programs solid. With these new breaks in the old program, gradually the TRUTH is able to get in.
The truth is this:
You are perfect just as you are.
You always were.
It doesn’t matter if you’ve done ‘bad’ things in the past, and it’s got nothing to do with what you look like. You are so lovable and you are so worthy to exist.
It’s our programs which are based on false narratives that muddy this truth with darkness. Our programs BLOCK the truth right out.
Our subconscious mind, is estimated to be tens of thousands (to millions) times stronger than the conscious mind.
Can you see why its programs are so strong? See why it cancels out and overrides your affirmations, positive thinking and all the conscious-mind efforts in the world? It’s one POWERFUL MOFO.
You need to get in there and hack the program.
Reprogram it with limitless belief. FULL POTENTIAL. Now the fun begins.
We hack the program by putting the brakes on our thoughts. Cracking holes in the ceiling of crap to LET THE TRUTH FILTER IN. For me, this new truth began to trickle in during my mindful drawing sessions – slowly at first, and over time it increased.
One day I was drawing and a complete paradigm shift happened. As I was drawing with focus and concentration, I went into some ‘altered state’ (I recognise now as the high gamma brainwave state).
When I ‘came back’, in ONE SPLIT SECOND I saw that my 40 year program was false. It had no basis in truth. And this layered, rock-solid belief lost its power.
Now I was genuinely able to grow self-love because there were no conflicting programs blocking it. Now my efforts began to pay off.
What happens in a high gamma brainwave state is you see things from a higher, entirely different perspective.
The truth got pulled in from my higher consciousness (which exists outside the reaches of our conscious ‘thinking’ mind). It pulled the truth down through my subconscious mind, where it overrode my toxic program.
For the first time I could see clearly. I KNEW those things that had created my program happened, yes – but they had NOTHING to do with whether I was lovable or not.
Now I was able to detach from this old load of toxic bullshit, it processed through me and I effectively deactivated the program.
When you clear your lack of love program, you can now view past incidents from a detached perspective. You are no longer stuck in it.
You can see through it and it stops triggering you. Freedom is here.
You do not get to this awareness with your mind – with thinking – you get to it by pressing pause on your mind.
This benefit may not happen the same way for everyone either. We all may grow self-love differently, because we each have different incidents that create our programs in the first place. We have different ways of functioning and different blocks to overcome.
It may happen little by little – like a tiny seed that grows bigger – or if you follow the precise instructions in my tutorials – you may fling open the door to a complete paradigm shift.
What I just described, is commonly reported to occur in a high gamma brainwave state.
The high gamma brainwave state is how you access a complete paradigm shift in perspective. It’s the high-frequency, program-busting brainwave state.
From then on, I became far less triggered by old thoughts. They weren’t mine anymore. In fact, they were NEVER mine to carry. I gradually began to grow self-love like a precious diamond.
It was fundamental in kicking my addictions – because now I’d removed the core belief that enslaved me to addiction in the first place. I still had a lot of work to do, to rewire the ‘habit brain’, but it became so much easier because the root cause of my addiction, was deactivated.
Once you begin to grow self-love, it opens up wave after wave of additional benefits that just keep coming.
I began to be kind to myself and let go of regrets. Slowly I began to level up in self-care because I began to see myself as something beautiful and worthy.
It’s also REALLY fucking nice to be able to look yourself in the eyes in a mirror and love who you see with every part of soul. I was never able to do this.
If you are struggling to grow self-love, I see you. I know your hurt. Know you do not have to carry it if you don’t want to. It has nothing to do with you – it never did.
Set the intention to explore your inner world. You are in there. And you are magnificent.
Reclaim yourself and set yourself free.
Image credit: @thecosmicfeminist
