Such a sweet planet we live on, when we walk it with heart...

Exchange your righteiusness for humannness,
your judgements for compassion,
your hopelessness for faith,
you armor for love.

Such a sweet planet we live on when we walk it with heart. - Jeff Brown, Love it Forward

A little self-love goes a loooooong way...

No matter what you think about yourself but you are always complete, pure & beautiful from within. - Adeep

May we stop seeing ourselves through the eyes of people who never saw us. - Shane Steele

We are much too hard on ourselves. Really we are. We beat ourselves up, we " shuld" on ourselves, we compare ourselves to others, we postpone self- love until we reach a stage of perfection that is impossibly unrealistic. We are so hard on ourselves, but how are we to know better? It's not like there is a book that lays it all down. It's not like we downloaded perfection. We are still writing that book, writing it with the blood of lessons learned, writing it with ink that is forged in the fires of transformation. We are learning as we g(r)o(w). So let's give ourselves a break. Often. Kindly. Gently. Really. It's a huge thing to grow beyong the parameters of our familiar ways of being. Berating ourselves won't get us anywhere. A little self-love goes a long way.. - Jeff Brown, Love It Forward

Tired indeed

We are all tired. Really, we are. It's a hard road, but it's also a beautiful one. perhaps we expect too much from ourselves and from others. perhaps humanity can only make slow progress, like an inchworm. Perhaps we need to celebrate how far we have come. And rest more. And relish the simple pleasures. And look for love everywhere. There is a river near where I live. It meanders slowly, peacefully. It doesn't ask itself why it isn't an ocean, or a raging river, or some other thing. It just surrenders to what it is. Maybe we just need to surrender more to who we are. I think I will lie down tomorrow beside the river. And take rest. And sweet surrender. - Jeff Brown< Love it forward.

Recognizing and claiming our own value...

Everything time we don't stand down the primary abusers in our loves, we lose a little ground, we fade into the night, we die a little inside. Rising above it may be a temporary balm, but, at some point, we have to come back into our bodies and speak it. As important as it is to reach a stage of genuine forgiveness where possible, it is even more important to assert boundaries with those who have violated ours. It may well be why they came into our lives, to force us to recognize and claim our own value. - Jeff Brown, Love it Forward

Success is finding a way to grow in the heart of a hopeless landscape. Now, that’s a great achievement!

I think of my father's passing and I think of how narrowly we define success. The culture sets the bar unnaturally, imagining success in linera, objective, externatlized terms. You are are success if you make a fortune, or become famous, or win awards. No, no success is actually something else, something more subtle and incremental, something internally trye and privately held. I think of my fahter's traumatic life and recognize what a prodound success it was for him to simply stay alive, to shift his lens toward positivity, to smooth the rough edges in life's fires. That alone was extraordinary. Success is finding a way to grow in the heart of a hopeless landscape. To that I bow. - Jeff Brown, Love it Forward

We are such wondrous weavers...

Our survival adaptations are so tough, but our wounds are so delicate. To heal, we have to lift the armor carefully, it saved our lives, after all. It's like moving your best friend off to the side of the path. You don't trample on her, you don't hit him with a sledgehammer. You honor her presence like a warm blanket that has kept you safe and sound during wintry times. And then, when the moment is right, you get inside and stitch you wounds with the thread of love, slowly and surely, not rushing to completion, nurturing as you weave, tender and true. The healing prcess has a heart of its own, moving at its own delicate pace. We are such wondrous weavers.. - Jeff Brown, Love It Forward

Give the love. You never know how far it will travel...

So many live their lives feeling unloved, unseen, unrecognized, unappreciated. So very many. Yoy may not know who they are becasue we are all conditioned to hide our truth below a bushel of shame. But they are everywhere. When you make an effort to share your love, you don't always know where it will land. But be sure that it does. Sometimes it lights a torch for others to follow. Sometimes it gives them reason to believe that there is a better life waiting for them after a lifetime of disappointment. Sometimes it builds spirits and sometimes it actually saves lives. We just have to keep giving the love wherever and whenever we can. You never know how far it will travel. - Jeff Brown, Love it forward

True-path is not always easy, but we always know which way we are headed...

The price we pay for walking a false-path is tangible. When we hide our true purpose under a mountain of fear, we suffer for it in the form of truth-aches, depression and hopelessness, addictive and self distractive behavior. The price is high. The price we pay for walking our true-path is also tangible: authenticity as a buffer against the madness of the world. When we excavate our soul-scriptures from their hiding places, we begin to walk in our own shoes. The path is not always easy, but we always know which way we are headed. - Jeff Brown, Love it Forward

I wish for you everything that makes you whole...

I strongly dislike when people try to hold people back from actualizing their wholeness. That's where we have been, but it isn't where we are going. We must stand firmly against lite- dimmers and invite in only those who rejoice in our successes. That's the real soulpod - those who stand around us cheering us on every time we take a step toward embodying our inherent magnificence. Those who can delight in our achievements. Those who can love us without agenda. Those who recofnize that humanity cannot move forwrd until we are all thrilled by each other's successess.

I wish for you everything that makes you whole. - Jeff Brown, Love it forward

Our heroes are staring at us in the mirror..

I cannot help but marvel at the human capacity to overcome tremendous suffereing and find a way to go on. It would be one thing if we released all our holding right after the trauma, but that we continue to carry them and still find the faith to believe in a better tomorrow is simply heroic. I think of the shawdow material that takes up space inside many of us, repressed emotions, unsaid words, armored musculature, collective trauma, and then marvel at our capacity to weave optimism, faith and determination into the heart of it. Mindfields and goldmines sitting side by side in the inner valley. Let's stop looking for our heroes " out here." They are staring at us in the mirror. - Jeff Brown, Love it forward

We are all tired. Really, we are. It's a hard road, but it's also a beautiful one. Perhaps we expect too much from ourselves and from others. Perhaps humanity can only make slow progress, like an inchworm. Perhaps we need to celebrate how far we have come. And rest more. And relish the simple pleasures. And look for love everywhere. There is a river neart where I love. It meanders slowly, peacefully. It doesn't ask itself why it isn't an ocean, or a raging river, or some other thing. It just surrenders to what it is. Maybe we just need to surrender more to who we are. I think I will lie down tomorrow beside the river. And take a rest. And sweet surrender. - Jeff Brown, Love it Forward

Vigilance and vulnerability make strange bedfellows...

This is the thing that many wpmen seldom understand about armored men. They often focus on the fact that the men aren't connecting with them. This is true, and they have every right to feel frustrated by this, but they also need to see the bigger picture. The reality is that many of those men aren't conencting with themselves either. From the beginning, men have been cast in the role of warrior-protector and their emotional ermor is fundamental to this task. They are so saturated in their warrior conditioning, so blocked by their emotional holdings, that many of them cannot open their hearts to love's mysterioes. It's not that they are consciously withholding intimacy- they simply have no idea how to open to it, and they see perpetual surrender as an unconscious threat to their duty as protector. Vigilance and surrender make strange bedfellows. - Jeff Brown, Love it Forward

It’s never rude to interrupt your false self. I just asked mine to give it a rest. I think he was relieved. So much hard work for so little reward. Sleep my masked friend, sleep. - Jeff Brown, Love it Forward

I strongly dislike when people try to hold people back from actualizing their wholeness. That's where we have been, but it isn't where we are going. We must stand firmly against lite-dimmers and invite in only those who rejoice in our successess. That's the real soulpod- those who stand around us cheering us on every time we take a step toward embodying our inherent magnigicence. Those who can delight in our achievements. Those who can love us without agenda. Those who recognize that humanity cannot move forward until we are all thrilled by each other's successes. I wish for you everything that makes you whole. - Jeff Brown, Love it Forward

Our survivl adaptations are so tough, but our wounds are so delicate. To heal, we have to lift the armor carefully, it saved our lives, after all. It's like moving your best friend off to the side of the path. You don't trample on her, you don't hit him with a sledgehammer. You honor her presence like a warm blanket that has kept you safe and soudn during wintry times. And then, when the moment is right, you get inside and stitch your wounds with the thread of love, slowly and surely, not rushing to completion, nurturing as you weave, tender and true. The healing process has a heart of its own, moving at its own delicate pace. We are such wondrous weavers.. - Jeff Brown, Love it Forward