How to heal self-hatred

the journey back to love, in four easy steps...ok, maybe not so easy

I got my annual hair cut at The Blower Bar, inside the Walmart building in Escalon, for $20. Pretty sweet.

I don’t know how to write this post to you this week. It feels important and my state is somehow altered right now, like I am swimming in a transformational sea and trying at the same time to tell you how things are going whilst I flail around, glistening drops flying into the air catching rainbows of light. In the midst of it all I call out to you, “Hey! What do you think? Want to give this a shot?” And I know it matters. I know you and I can change the world and we are doing it right now as you are reading. We do it together by swimming. Differently. The image is a bit funny. If it calls to you, let’s keep going.

I came downstairs to write. I haven’t been able to write since I returned from Thanksgiving, which is why I probably had the impulse for a few weeks to write my posts ahead of time and schedule them accordingly. God had a few surprises for me and I didn’t even know what was coming. I simply thought inspiration was flowing rather quickly, and who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth?

I know God is laughing at me right now. Anyway…

Here we are. It is Tuesday. Well it was Tuesday. I am still working on things so technically this sentence right here is coming to me on Wednesday, but we don’t need to pick things apart now do we? Life is full of so much of that already. Overthinking. Over-efforting. Too much swimming (yes I am looking at God right now who is still laughing at me). I have two chapters on my book I intend to polish today, along with this… for you. And this is where I am starting because it speaks most poignantly to why I write here for us both.

I write to change things.

I write so that I can both align myself with the divine, with reverence and joy, and offer something that might help you, if it has helped me.

I write because I can do this from a distance. Because sitting in front of a workshop of people, as a friend I sat with the past few days just did, and navigating the group energy feels like too much for me at this point.

That is because partly I believe I am still healing.

You and I are always healing of course. That doesn’t mean we are wounded for life or lifetimes. It is a part of growth, to heal things. Once you are wounded and you heal from it, you can offer something beautiful to the world and if you are reading this, then I believe you have come to do just such a thing.

Many people will look at the title of this post and not read it. They will tell themselves they have no issue with self-hatred. They will tell themselves they are “above” such things.

And I understand.

I don’t know how to write this as I wish, as I sometimes can, as a series of steps for you. Because what I want to convey today is about energy and unwinding programming that certainly I have been carrying and that you may wish to free yourself from as well. I wish this process for us both to be joyful, supported, and easy.

Step 1 (and yes, God is laughing at me more now as I received this step from the field of Grace unexpectedly): You can let this be easy.

Let’s both keep that in mind as I feel there is a resistant layer in me that thinks for sure for things to be meaningful and deep, they have to be hard. Otherwise, why would I need all this healing (and yes, now I am grumpily talking to you and God…as it is useful to also include one’s resentment around these things—stuff we push under the rug just can’t be addressed if you know what I mean?).

Reminder to self of Step 1:

You can let this be easy.

Ok. Fine. “Fine for you,” I think as I glare at something that would smite me to dust from too much of a good thing if I could actually see it. So I squint at God sideways. I know what I’m doing.

(And yes, this is actually how I talk to God sometimes and it isn’t pretty.)

I am going to intersperse these words with images from short stories and experiences as the images carry the frequency I wish to convey that I hope you can receive. (And no, I am not trying to make you grumpy. I intend to help you heal your self hatred right along with me… and Wednesday is different than Tuesday… so it seems Grumpiness along with some humor is part of the process. That must be Step 2. Let’s give that a shot because we don’t know anything unless we try it out now do we? Enough of “experts” and “spiritual teachers” and “techniques.” Today is about self love and healing. Period. It doesn’t come from in your head. It’s not a mental thing.

Step 2:

Grumpiness along with some humor is part of the process.

You see, as you learn to love and accept yourself…not from your mind or from a technique…but deeply, on a soul level…I repeat, deeply…you vibrate this into the world and it becomes a gift you bring. But don’t do it for that reason. Do it because you matter Darling. You are a divine creation and all this has been about fighting against the reality of that. So let’s change things together now shall we?

Do you think Jesus loved himself? Did Mary? Buddha…

I imagine they did. I like to think of Rama rescuing his beloved Sita from Ravana, the so-called evil demon, who captured her and held her hostage. Let’s call him what we do when we look outside ourself for healing. When we try to covet our neighbor’s belongings, or happier life, or better family. Ravana was unconscious and suffering. I can’t fault him for that and I tell myself he simply didn’t know what he was doing. He was never going to get internal satisfaction from Sita. But, let’s move out of my brain’s dialogue around this and back to the story I am relating from memory (and I haven’t read it for over twenty years, so take it with a grain of salt. The Vedas await you.) The devoted monkey king, Hanuman, leapt over a great stream to free Sita from the clutches of the so-called evil Ravana with his ten heads and twenty arms. I imagine he was really flailing around with all of that going on.

You and I, we are Rama, Sita, and Hanuman today in this story I am relating. And Ravana represents the self judgement I am unwinding in myself, and hope to help you with as well, if you find such frequencies in your body.

Consider this a tune up for the magic wand that is you. The world is waiting for you and I to do this thing.

Awareness is of course, as always, key.

This is a good time to reiterate Steps One and Two for us both, don’t you think?

Step 1:

You can let this be easy.

Step 2:

Grumpiness along with some humor is part of the process.

I thought I had worked on my self-judgement more than enough. The moment I lay on a treatment table in Sedona over ten years ago and realized an event I had blamed myself for most of my life had happened when I was only a child, and that I was not at fault…well, I threw the old belief out into the river and my system started healing.

But now, ten years later, I believe the deeper layers are arising for me. The parts of me that have blamed myself for other people’s experiences, perhaps even things from past lives (if you believe in such things) I experienced and choices I made that my soul, or some part of me considers less than ideal and my ego tells me that I should have known better and that I need to do things differently….

Step 3:

If you find yourself using the words SHOULD or NEEDED TO, you are close to the part of you that is waiting for some self-acceptance, grace, and love. Come on now. We can do this thing.

Really, any belief that has kept me from holding myself with care, just as I would a young child, who learns by experimenting and making so-called “mistakes” which are always, at their core, simply learning opportunities…Well, I am called to bring a different frequency to myself now. I am called to sit with myself in the morning and feel held, by me, cared for…by me, compassion for myself without judgement…from a part of me that has done the opposite for a long time.

Here are some scenes for you from this past week:

I am on a park bench at a Bitcoin meetup in San Salvador. There is an Osteopath with me. A few minutes before, I mentioned I had just done a personal breathwork session with Robin Clemens the night before and I felt there might be some stuck energy around C1 and C2 in my spine (the upper cervical vertebrae). She looks at me and tells me spines are her specialty. She charges $300 an hour in London. The man next to me speaks of a concussion from years ago and I feel how much her work could help him. I feel that he needs it more than me. But he says he has to leave, his wife is waiting, he doesn’t have time, he cares about his partner…and I feel the beauty of the care and how much and how profound the treatment could be for him and the positive effect it would have on her and their future family.

But he leaves. There is something about positive masculine energy around all that I try to take in.

The Osteopath gazes at me. I tell her it is no big deal, I don’t want to take away from her time at the park on her visit here with her partner. There is no table. She won’t be comfortable. How can she work on me with no table? She tells me she works on park benches. She works on anything. She is a healer and does healing. The lack of a silly table is not about to stop the woman.

She tells me I said something to her so I had a need. She said none of it was by accident and God sent her to me. She is not worried about money. I can pay her anything.

What am I going to do? What would you do?

God had me. Point given, point received

Dr. Michelle Davies

I walk to a picnic table and lay back on the rough wooden bench; I bend my knees. She, I think, may have kneeled in the dirt to cradle my head in her hands, but of course I wasn’t looking. She moved my heavy skull quickly back and forth. She told me her sense of the state of my energy system was at about a three (out of 10). She said something about the lymph not moving.

I knew I was healing…tired, doing energetic work, and participating in the dojo of God which had been rather intense lately. That my energy was low was no surprise to me. It was hard to hear, but my glazed eyes said everything.

She moved to my pelvis, and cradled my sacrum. She spoke of the fluid that surrounds the brain and the spine…it is called the “Christ" something. I had heard the term before.

She told me she works with Jesus and his energy and she felt called this day, to work with me.

All craniosacral work I have learned and received in the past is slow, and gentle. This woman moved quickly. As she finished, she mentioned she felt anger in my pelvis and that it needed releasing.

Once again, (as this has been happening in my life recently) she recommended the Ho'oponopono prayer to me:

I’m sorry

Please forgive me

Thank you

I love you

And once again, I thought about how I found the words challenging. I never felt good about the energy of forgiving someone as I always feel my ego kick in and make me “right” while they are “wrong.” I don’t want to feed an egoic state in myself. I want to be compassionate for God’s Sake (and yes, I am glaring at God again right now as I type). My guides are laughing. “Well,” I fume, “it’s all good for you. You are not in a body right now like me!” I glare at them too.

I have written about my resistance to and exploration of this prayer before.

She mentions something about saying it to my soul. Hmmmm…somehow, she has thrown me in the water YET AGAIN and is asking me to swim.

Fine. FINE!

No, I don’t smoke. But I was pretending as a cigar-wielding Bitcoiner was passing them out. There is a childhood photo of me on my uncle’s lap with a cigarette hanging out of my mouth holding a bottle of whisky. I took this photo and sent it to him. I imagine my feistiness might cause God some anxiety.

Over the next few days, I start to try Dr. Michelle’s suggestion out. I try it out on myself and talk to myself like I would to a little child in my lap. Just like I imagine Jesus, or Mary, or a kind uncle, or wise adult would do. I tell myself, as I hold myself (metaphorically, ok?) in my lap, Those words… those words that spoke about my self judgement from this life and more at the same time. Words that cast a spell in order to reconnect the threads of love that I, at some point, based on my own faulty beliefs, had torn asunder. I was using them now to re-weave something.

child chasing pigeons on the square in front of The Library, downtown San Salvador

Let’s make them Step 4, but only if you hold your own self in your own lap and say them to your soul. Only like that.

Step 4: said to a sweet part of yourself you only knew how to blame and judge:

“I’m sorry

Please forgive me

Thank you

I love you”

I’ve written a bit and made a few audios about feeling the energy of things in your body, whether that is worthiness, care, or fun, and how feeling is so much more powerful than simply thinking or speaking about such things—like words you chant in a rote way. Let’s not do that.

You and I are surrounded by and made of various densities of energy. If you think about things as concepts, you are trapped in a mental energetic field. But if you feel them, they land in your body and resonate from there, out into the world.

That is what I have been attempting to do.

Meanwhile, I am in what I am now calling, The Magdalene House, where I have been living since November 1st when Grace led me here to finish my book.

A young woman also staying here for a few days is a health-coach, workshop leader, and general bringer of light and healing. She spent the day lying in the sun with me as we discussed things like past trauma, God, and healing. My body was integrating recent transformational movements and so was hers as she spoke of the grass and how it was grounding us. I could feel her strength and integrity. She too, like the Osteopath so recently, said she was guided by God. She told me more than once when I asked a question that when she didn’t know something, she asked Jesus for help.

Mikalya, herbalist, health coach, sunrise gazing woman, and teacher of how to trust and listen

For me, I feel like this is about guidance more than anything and aligning with the frequencies of love and divinity. You can receive guidance in whatever way feels most comfortable for you. Remember—

Step 1:

You can let this be easy.

Many of us have been taught God comes in only one flavor. Jesus or Bust. Buddha or Bust. Non-Duality or Bust. Now, that is rather silly. Do you think God cares what telephone you use? Grab an iPhone if that’s your thing. Scream out loud in the forest “by yourself.” Doesn’t matter. Whisper…so…so…quietly in your sleep. God doesn’t judge those things. It is about your intention and your energy. It either comes from love, or it doesn’t. Easy peasy.

You know what God will say if your heart is in it.

“Message received.”

This doesn’t mean we have to fight over whether God is one being or multiple things. Either idea is so limiting. Let’s agree. God is too much for one human to take in. A cell is a part of a body. It doesn’t have to do it all. It exists in synergy with the environment surrounding it. Hopefully.

So talk and connect to the divine however you like. You can pray to a tree. The key is to attune to a certain frequency, which is a frequency of love, and then allow for Grace to come into your being. If Jesus is not your thing, you can use something or someone else.

But the health coach and osteopath resonated with Jesus deeply and I found their connection quite lovely. The health coach mentioned that she had to learn to attune to Jesus (read frequencies of love here if you like). That she used to “set” boundaries and how it became tiring over time. Now she reached out for support. The process had a certain feeling, like learning to play a key on an instrument. You have to hit the note correctly. She didn’t say that exactly, and that is what I felt as she was speaking.

In the end, as I find myself repeating, all this comes down to love. Self-love is a frequency, like a lullaby you play to yourself.

My mind has become aware that I am God’s prayer and so is everything else. I like to picture things holding crystalline light in different colors and patterns. It is beautiful. If I can see that, other things are less important.

You see, self-flagellation is a thing I am embarrassed to say I have been doing to myself. Not physically, but still... I think it is good for me notice and change the lens of judgement I have set upon myself like that horrible eye floating over the pyramid on a dollar bill. Self-judgement is not coming from a divine frequency.

I wrote about an intense mushroom experience I had last January that left me marching around a retreat center for days like a Warrior of the Light proclaiming my new realization silently to myself as I strutted around: “It’s either love or it isn’t.” Anything else was simply demonic energy and I was having no part of that. No more delusion for me.

I emerged from that experience with a new barometer and another compass with which to assess things.

Is this love, or isn’t it?

If I blame myself for something, what is the frequency?

It’s not too hard for you to see, I imagine, that it doesn’t feel like love.

So I might as well stop doing it.

This, seems to be a multi-year process for me that has recently been sped up by an Osteopath, a health practitioner, and this morning, a software developer who uses playing cards like a Tarot deck and in a brief over-tea chat, helped me unwind something this morning related to all of this, energetically.

Another story:

I was tired one night after returning from my trip and I texted my son. “I need a movie. Do you have anything funny?”

Now, for many reasons, I have mostly boycotted both movies and TV as I feel most things have been designed to manipulate me (don’t take that personally if it doesn’t resonate for you…it just relates to why I had no idea what was out there that might be both entertaining and funny.)

My son, a conservative young man now, told me he had a new membership to a website with just such a movie. He wasn’t sure I would like it, but thought perhaps, I might find it funny. It was called: “Am I A Racist?” and was created by the same man who made, “What Is A Woman?”. Since I had found his previous movie entertaining, I settled down to watch.

I am happy to say that said movie did get me laughing, which is a good sign. But the end, left me wondering. In one of the last scenes, there is a classroom full of caring souls who want to eradicate any racist tendencies in themselves. I could see that their desire came from love. But under it was certainly self-hatred. And when I looked at them and their worry, I felt a lot of compassion. I had interviewed a racist once as a child. He was a KKK Grand Master who lived in our little town. My mother thought he would be a good topic for a paper I had to write in elementary school.

He would not have shown up in the room with the people in the movie. I don’t think he carried any guilt about his perspective on things.

I believe the producer was trying to point out the absurdity of the self hatred people were inflicting on themselves when he stood at the front of the room and began to pass out whips to them, supposedly for self-flagellation. You know. To beat out those racist tendencies.

Now, zoom out with me here a bit please as it is easy to get controversial with all of these things and what I want you to see, and what I think God was pointing out to me, is that I had a tendency to do this to myself. I am not talking about racism anymore. I am talking about self-criticism and self-hatred again.

You might be saying, “Well, Terra. What could you have done to hate yourself so much for anyway?”

And I have no idea.

Sure, I could list some things.

I have family members who struggle sometimes. I can always blame myself for my mothering… I have childhood memories when I was unkind to someone that have plagued me relentlessly. Then there are past life stories various people have told me as they refer to times I felt I made “mistakes” or was “misled” by demonic energy only to be tortured and offered up on an alter in magical satanic ceremonies. I have no idea if that happened the way they told me. But it does fit in nicely as a good reason an internal habit of self-criticism might have been adopted by me.

But, be any of that as it may, the main thing, is that flagellation is just not a thing I resonate with in myself or in regards to others. So I might want to stop doing it.

Again, as I said, God is currently teaching me this and I am writing from the leading edge of a process I am in, rather than on the other side of things.

But I hope you can see the humor as well as the love in where all this is going.

Now, let’s follow that movie scene that kept floating into my thoughts with this next little anecdote.

Yesterday, I headed to an art gallery to get the beautiful painting framed which my friend, Mira, made for me.

Mafer, my other friend whose birthday it was, encouraged me to go to her father’s gallery where I was treated with a tremendous amount of care and kindness. Her cousin assisted me in choosing a frame, gave me a discount, and agreed to deliver it along with someone who would bring a hammer and nail to hang it for me.

This morning, I received a text from my landlord/friend here that would have shocked him if he knew how it was received. I had texted to check if a nail in the wall was ok and he responded with the energy which I am trying so hard to give myself…pure care…and joy in making me happy:

“Absolutely. The painting will look great in your room.”

I read the words and started to cry.

I was also sitting on a cushion gazing at the trees, practicing loving myself more, so it kind of makes sense.

Meanwhile, I told Mafer I didn’t feel well enough to come to her party that night. She assured me it would be relaxing. For Mafer, that meant just some good food, good friends and wine. She told me she understood and it was ok I wasn’t coming.

Mafer embodies the energy of all I love about an Italian restaurant. Candlelight, good red wine, intoxicating food, and comfy cushions. Even though I generally don’t drink, I feel like I am immersed in all those things when I am with her.

Mafer agreed to meet me in the city one weekend when she is free. That day will be a celebration of Christmas for me as we explore the lights and festivities in the city.

I have been carting around a bottle of red wine I purchased with the word, LOVE, on the label. Yesterday I knew what to do with it. It is perfect for Mafer and the water in that wine has had lots of time to soak in the frequency written on the label.

I told her and she seemed happy.

Meanwhile, I left the painting at the art gallery and taxied with Sawyer, the young man who recently returned to the Magdalene Mansion for his last few days in this country, to see a church the health coach recommended. She told me it had beautiful stained glass windows.

The downtown square here is incredibly festive. They even have an ice skating rink I hope Mafer and I can test out when she comes if the line is not too long.

Sawyer and I went there in the daytime, and it still felt good to be in the uplifting energy of this place. It was like a little bomb of light had exploded here on that square in front of the Presidential Palace and was slowly moving out through the rest of this tiny, beautiful country.

Sawyer and I found the church and my friend was right. The windows were beautiful. And yet…and yet…the feeling inside was heavy. One wall has a huge Masonic “eye” of God on it that made me wonder about things?

Then there was an exhibit of Jesus that highlighted the pain he experienced during the crucifixion. The church exhibits felt modern, and harsh…black twisted metal, amidst heavy concrete despite the spacious and cavernous interior.

On one wall was a rendering of Jesus I found quite lovely. I believe it was made based on the shroud of Turin and the information gleaned from it. Additionally, there was a lot of information about the shroud and the wounds the figure, assumed by many to be Jesus, had received.

There was also a photo that showed what the figure under the shroud looked like after the flogging. I believe they said one hundred lashes were found on the body. That image troubled me deeply.

I sat in the church on a bench for a moment to see what came to me on a deeper level and I noticed that it did feel heavy, despite the rainbows of light beaming towards me. I remembered my days in Chartres Cathedral and how it felt to be there and I noticed how different this church felt to me. I looked at the “Eye of God” composed of stained glass embedded in an expansive wall and wondered what the energy of the church was telling me.

And again, that image and experience brought home to me what self-hatred, and criticism do energetically to one’s soul. It does not feel like love to me. And if I see the image on the wall of that church of the figure covered in all those wounds, and the people in that movie, who so wanted to be “better” and “kinder” and were willing to whip themselves for what they considered their unconscious racist energy, I feel more determined to love those similar patterns right out of my system and re-grow those threads of light. I find myself saying,

“Hey Darling, you are doing just fine. You are a warrior of the light. Now heal this up in yourself. It’s time. People are deluded into thinking there is something wrong with them. Let’s love them out of this. Let’s love them like Jesus did…all the way to the cross…through that wounding…connected to me, to divine frequencies of pure love and creativity. Let’s do that now Darling. What do you say?”

God can be dang ass kicking sometimes.

“Father forgive them for they know not what they do.”

“Father, please forgive me…

---

Step 1:

You can let this be easy.

Step 2:

Grumpiness along with some humor is part of the process.

Step 3:

If you find yourself using the words SHOULD or NEEDED TO, you are close to the part of you that is waiting for some self-acceptance, grace, and love. Come on now. We can do this thing.

Step 4: said to a sweet part of yourself you only knew how to blame and judge:

“I’m sorry

Please forgive me

Thank you

I love you”

my rosebush snuggled into the crown of thorns next to it and made this pretty flower…it feels protected somehow

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