This is your invitation from The Love Wave to live, to Love life and Love yourself.
We invite you to read The Invitation below ‘out loud’ and just notice how it feels to you. It is one of the ‘tools’ I use to remind myself of “me” and my commitment to “me”. The Invitation by Oriah is reproduced below and we would like to express our gratitude to Oriah for her permission to use it here.
Please also accept this invitation to Join The Love Wave
The Invitation
It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart’s longing.
It doesn’t interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love for your dream for the adventure of being alive.
It doesn’t interest me what planets are squaring your moon… I want to know if you have touched the centre of your own sorrow if you have been opened by life’s betrayals or have become shrivelled and closed from fear of further pain.
I want to know if you can sit with pain mine or your own without moving to hide it or fade it or fix it.
I want to know if you can be with joy mine or your own if you can dance with wildness and let the ecstasy fill you to the tips of your fingers and toes without cautioning us to be careful to be realistic to remember the limitations of being human.
It doesn’t interest me if the story you are telling me is true. I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself. If you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul. If you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.
I want to know if you can see Beauty even when it is not pretty every day. And if you can source your own life from its presence.
I want to know if you can live with failure yours and mine and still stand at the edge of the lake and shout to the silver of the full moon, “Yes.”
It doesn’t interest me to know where you live or how much money you have. I want to know if you can get up after the night of grief and despair weary and bruised to the bone and do what needs to be done to feed the children.
It doesn’t interest me who you know or how you came to be here. I want to know if you will stand in the centre of the fire with me and not shrink back.
It doesn’t interest me where or what or with whom you have studied. I want to know what sustains you from the inside when all else falls away.
I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and if you truly like the company you keep in the empty moments.
By Oriah from her book THE INVITATION (c) 1999. Published by HarperONE, San Francisco. All rights reserved. Presented with permission of the author www.oriah.org
Accepting the invitation to life, by living in truth with Oneself. What this means for me is loving myself as much as I Love anyone else, and as unconditionally as I Love them.
The concept of Unconditional Love for others led me to more fully acknowledge and Love myself. This was and sometimes still is a hard part of my journey. And to Love and acknowledge myself to some extent was needed before I could truly Love others without losing myself. This gives me great strength, it allows compassion and healing to flow – without the ‘need’ for me to rush in and rescue anyone or to be rescued myself. In the words of The Invitation, I can sit with pain, mine or others, without moving to hide it, or fade it, or fix it – and in this way allow healing to happen. I use The Invitation above as a reminder and also as a tool. As I read it aloud (and for me aloud actually voicing it even in private, allows me to feel and connect to the words) I feel emotions that show me where I am or am not connecting.
