Ladder of Love by Kids Inc.

The ladder of love 5 Steps to More Love in your Life By Aine Belton

“The salvation of man is in love and through love."

- Victor Frankl

Love allows life to become the effortless dance it was always meant to be. It opens the doors to happiness, joy and dreams come true, and returns you to a place of clarity and truth. It is the ultimate consciousness raiser and purifier. Love lies at the heart of all that you seek, and separation from it at the root of your troubles and pain. There is

ultimately nothing that enough love can not heal, transform and transcend. We all love to love and be loved! It doesn’t get better than that! “The greatest thing you'll ever learn, is to love and be loved in return.”

- Natalie Cole

The more you love yourself and others, the brighter and more successful your reality will become. Magic, flow and serendipity abounds in the grace and embrace of love. The Ladder of Love is a 5-step process to help you access more love in your life. Loving yourself and others can be easier at certain times than others. When everything’s going great, when you’re on a high and life is singing sweet tunes around every turn, loving yourself and others can be easy, effortless and natural. Yet it is when things are not so smooth, when you face challenges, blocks or negativity that you need love the most, yet sadly when it can most avail. The steps outlined in the Ladder of Love below can be used in relation to yourself, another or any situation

where you are experiencing struggle, challenge or blocks to happiness and success. For the purposes of the example below, it has been explored in relation to loving yourself. "There is no difficulty that enough love will not conquer." - Emmett Fox

Foundations Before you climb your ladder, it is important to place it on a firm foundation - the foundation of your loveability and knowing that you are loved. You are loved not only by people in your world, but by the source of creation itself, what ever name you hold for that. You are loved totally and unconditionally. There is nothing you need to do to win that love and nothing you can do to lose it, for you are loved completely. The Universe loves you more than you are able to fully know. It loves you more than you love yourself. There are no bounds to that love.

You are, and always will be, inherently loved, loveable and loving. Becoming aware of this truth connects you to your true value, increases your sense of worth and deserving, heals the pain of separation and opens you to the love that is there for you in every moment.

The sides of your ladder The two sides of your ladder are compassion and responsibility. These hold the rungs in place, guide and smooth your journey, and keep you from falling off into traps such as blame, judgment, guilt or victim.

Climbing the ladder – The 5-Steps 1. Acceptance It begins with Acceptance. Accept yourself for where and who you are right now. Accept all parts of yourself, especially the less-than-pretty sides, for it is these parts of you that need your love the most. It is impossible to love yourself (or others) without acceptance.

Rather than resist, deny, judge or condemn that which you dislike about yourself or others, acknowledge and accept. In such you create the opportunity and space for letting go, healing and transformation. You are not your dark sides, negative self-concepts, failings or mistakes. Your negativity is sourced in misunderstandings about yourself and life; faulty perceptions and beliefs about who you truly are and a blindness to your true worth, value, beauty and goodness. When you accept yourself for who you are right now you will automatically begin to transform and change for the better. What you accept you can more easily let go of and release to unveil more of who you truly are. It is what you resist that persists. Accepting yourself also means accepting and honoring your emotions. Trying to love someone (including yourself) through a wall of anger, for example, simply doesn’t work. Acknowledge and accept your feelings and allow them to be expressed. In such you will facilitate their release. There are numerous techniques nowadays for releasing and transforming emotions, from journaling, Emotrance, Emotional Freedom Technique, Sedona Method, Release Technique, communicating them to a loved one, expressing them through creativity, and many more.

I find feeling them works just fine! Honour your emotions and listen to what they are telling you about what’s going on inside. If they are negative, stressful, painful or uncomfortable, what thoughts, attitudes, beliefs and assumptions lie beneath them? Work to adjust and replace these with positive, serving alternatives. Express and release your feelings, rather than deny, repress, control or judge them. This doesn’t mean wallowing in them or giving them undue attention if they do not serve you (i.e. nip that self-pity in the bud!), nor does it mean venting them at someone inappropriately (writing a letter and burning, or punching a pillow, would be far ‘cleaner’, than dumping anger on someone else, for example). Allow your emotions to have voice. Your feelings are teachers and allow for growth, aliveness, and movement in your life. They invite evolution and becoming. Let them flow and learn from them. What are they telling you about your internal processes; what inner dynamics are igniting or giving rise to them?

It is only when feelings are denied or repressed that they become problematic or detrimental and can leak into your world via the people and situations you attract. 2. Forgiveness When you have reached a place of acceptance you can further let go of that which stands in the way of love through forgiveness. You are human, you make mistakes. Whilst itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s essential to take responsibility for your self and your life, it is also important to forgive yourself for any perceived failings or mistakes. With forgiveness you can return to a place of truth and love. Forgiveness is one of the most powerful tools for healing and transformation and a most gracious gift to give both yourself and another. Forgiveness liberates you from toxic emotions and draining attachments. It is the ultimate mind-body-soul detox, returning you to truth and love. To forgive it can be important to accept and release any existing feelings first, such as any anger, resentment, hurt, pain, remorse, guilt, righteousness, and so on, as addressed in the previous acceptance step.

When you forgive a burden is lifted. You will feel lighter, freer and happier and will have created the space for more love in your life. Forgiveness allows for a new birth in your reality. It is a gift your give yourself. Some things may seem unforgivable, however, forgive the 'why' behind a behavior (i.e. the dysfunction or pain that lies at its root), rather than the 'what' (the behavior itself). Forgiving yourself is a great place to start. We can be our own worst enemy and are often most harsh and hold the greatest grievances against our self. Until you forgive yourself, you may harbor guilt and shame and punish yourself consciously or unconsciously, sabotage your progress and deny yourself the love, happiness and success you desire. A lack of self-forgiveness can lead to feelings of undeserving and an inability or unwillingness to receive, which can block or repel the beautiful realities you desire and deserve from manifesting in your life. Also, from a quantum perspective, when you take full responsibility for your reality and realize it is a hologram of the entirety of your consciousness, all forgiveness can be seen as self-forgiveness.

The more you forgive yourself, the more forgiving and compassionate you become towards others, for you no longer blame them for your projected self-judgments. Allow yourself to recognize your inherent innocence and worth, and give yourself the gift of forgiveness. You are not your mistakes, failings or dark shadows. The truth of who you are is more beautiful, loving and magnificent than you may ever comprehend. When you do this you will forgive others more freely and too. Forgiveness of yourself and others will bring freedom, renewed energy, and create the space for a fresh start and new beginnings. 3. Appreciation Once you have forgiven, you can move on up the ladder to appreciation. Appreciate yourself for your gifts, qualities, strengths, and talents, your loving nature, goodness and beauty, your desire to love, to give and to grow, the love and care you have for yourself, others and the world One way to appreciate yourself more is to look at what you appreciate in others. In that you will find your own light, for you would not appreciate a quality in another unless those very qualities existed within you at some level.

The people and qualities that you admire and appreciate can represent your ‘light shadow’ - denied positive aspects of yourself. Own them and appreciate them for being a part of who you are. Whatever you focus on grows. When you appreciate yourself (or others) and recognize and acknowledge your value and beauty, those qualities will expand and grow in your life. Write down or say to yourself in the mirror at the end of each day at least 5 qualities you appreciate about yourself (perhaps that you witnessed that day, or perhaps from a past time or event - whatever comes to heart and mind). Recognize and acknowledge positive qualities, attributes, strengths, gifts, talents, successes and achievements, where and how you make the world a better place simply by being alive, your love, your care, your desire and willingness to grow, and so on. 4. Gratitude From a place of appreciation gratitude begins to flow. It is a natural extension of appreciation and opens you further to that which you love about yourself, others and

the world, attracting more of those qualities into your life. Gratitude opens your heart with its giving and receiving energies and invites greater love into your life. Acknowledge all that you feel grateful for in your past and present, from experiences and qualities to people and things. Feel grateful to your future also – to who you are becoming and the dreams you are creating. Feel grateful even to those even that may have challenged or hurt you in your life, for they will have been catalysts for growth, healing and learning and a gift in that. Feel grateful to the universe for its abounding love and support every step of your journey. And feel grateful, of course, to your wonderful magnificent self, and all the qualities you appreciated in the previous step! 5. Love The door has opened! When you can feel appreciation and gratitude for yourself and others the gateway to love is ajar. Allow love to fill your heart and being. Imagine it as a beautiful light, liquid or energy flowing through you in whatever way feels right, growing and expanding from

your heart, and spilling out into your world to bless, transform and brighten your life and the lives of others. There is nothing that will raise your energy and transform your reality more swiftly, elegantly and profoundly than love. Let your love dissolve and heal darkness, pain and negativity. Let it cleanse, restore and change you in its energy. Bathe in the healing, transformative wonder of love. Spend time in a relaxed meditative space each day to get in touch with love, the love you have for others, the love you have for yourself, love for your life and your world. And express your love, both energetically through extending its vibration out into your world in visualization such as with the exercise above, and through action. Give voice to your love with positive loving actions for yourself and others, be that saying ‘I love you’, or taking an action that will express that love. Share your love freely and openly. It wants to dance in the eyes and hearts of others!

Express your love in all that you do; your work, relationships, the people you meet in your day-to-day life. Let it grace your life in magical ways. You can express love through giving, respecting, honoring, caring, listening, valuing, trusting, understanding, and forgiving, for example, as well as being open and honest with yourself and others to enable greater intimacy and trust, expressing more of what your heart really feels. When you experience love you connect with the highest aspect of your being and radiate more of your true nature into the world. In the resonance of love, you more easily access your Higher Self, its unconditional love and wisdom, and the insights and inspirations that will most serve you others in the best way at any given time. Let love bless and illuminate you and your world. Found your choices in love. The beauty and purity of love grants quality choices and accelerates manifestations that will serve you optimally. Choice source in loved can only ever win, giving birth to successful, honouring, joy-filled realities aligned to your heart.

Seed and weave your dreams from love. Let your vision and imagination soar upon its wings. Let Love live and breathe, through every thought, word and deed, beckoning always the most beautiful becoming.

- Aine Belton

www.GlobalLoveProject.com

Love and joy, Aine Belton (that’s ‘Onya’!)