This is the second time I've tried to write a post saying what I've been wanting to say, and it's the second time I've erased everything I'd already written because I couldn't figure out the words. But the difference is, this time I'm starting over and just saying it.

We fear because we place conditions on love. The literal energy of life is love. It's what keeps us alive. We are skin and bone and brain and nerves, but what powers us? What gives self-motivation to a lump of clay? That's all we are, a pile (albeit a complex pile) of physical matter. Once the life force leaves, the clay falls back to the earth.

If, in life, we close ourselves off to this love, to this light, we experience only darkness and fear. One cannot live a life of brightness and love if he continuously shuts himself off to the precise energy that provides these things. When we do, we experience fear. Because life without love is fear. Fear is the direct opposite of love.

We are born clean, ignorant, pure, with no preconceived notions of what life "should" or "has to" be. We grow up and place restrictions on ourselves, because of how we're raised or how we perceive our bodies or our personalities. Because we restrict the amount of love, real love and not self-adoration or excessive pride, that we give ourselves, we develop a deep rooted core of fear, also called the ego. In order to feel good about yourself, you have to have your hair done right, you have to be the right weight, have the right job, listen to the right music. But is this really you? What do you like? What do you truly feel is best for you?

Accept yourself as you are, completely as you are, and you allow yourself to remove the restrictions that cause you to close yourself to your own love. Because you know that there is no "right" or "good" way to be, and that the healthiest thing is simply to be, you stop judging yourself, and start accepting yourself, thus loving yourself.

Bask in your own presence. Be aware, without judgment, of everything around you and within you.