Cultivating Your Best Friend

When you are interested in someone, you give them time. When you would like to broaden the friendship, you not only give time to this person, but you also go more deeply into the relationship. When you want to get to know someone better, you show interest, you spend some effort trying to understand them, and what makes them tick.

None of this is new, and most of us do these things with varying degrees of success with those with whom we want to cultivate friendship, but we fail miserably when it comes to giving ourselves some time, in showing ourselves some interest, in broadening and deepening the relationship with ourselves, and in spending some effort in trying to understand ourselves and what makes us tick.

The reasons for this are cultural in part, as our society has bothered only a little, if at all, in convincing us of the value of the inward gaze, and bothered a great deal more in convincing us of the value of outward acquisition, success, beauty, youth, or fame. There are other reasons, however, due to which we avoid this process, that are often related to fear. Some people are afraid to be alone with themselves, they are afraid of what they may find if they go too deeply, believing (erroneously or not) that what they find will be awful. I have had clients who have told me - at the beginning of such an inner quest - that they were horrified at the things that were appearing, but what each of us has to understand is that as long as we prefer to accept a version of ourselves that has been clothed with blindness, in the emperor's clothes, so to speak, a version that may appear to be golden, but is ultimately seen to be tarnished - perhaps even very tarnished - when we start this inner process, as long as we do not understand that without looking at that tarnished one that we are, we will never have the opportunity to start the process of polishing, honing, and refining all of that in order to find the true gold beneath.

So investing in yourself by spending time with yourself, by being interested in yourself, by beginning to realize that you are not only worth this process, but that it is one of the primordial reasons you are here, by getting to know yourself, and by beginning to love yourself, no matter what you are seeing (perhaps for the first time) in this process, you will also begin to grasp the vision of who you truly are: a magnificent being filled with light.

As I have written elsewhere: imagine spending all your time with a friend who appreciates, likes, loves, and admires you. Imagine that this friend is YOU!

Also visit my new website: www.gabriellakortsch.com

Books by Dr. Gabriella Kortsch:
 
Rewiring the Soul

Click here to download the first chapter.

To see the Table of Contents click here

Reviews From the Back Cover:

"The masterwork of a profoundly gifted healer of the soul. Dazzling, challenging, wondrously useful." Peggy Rubin, Director, Center for Sacred Theatre, Ashland, Oregon; author: To Be and How To Be, Transforming Your Life Through Sacred Theatre

"Rewiring the Soul is one the best introductions to the spiritual life I've ever read. Not esoteric but real-world & practical. The implications are profound." Peter Shepherd; Founder Trans4mind.com; author: Daring To Be Yourself 

"The human being's directory to the soul. A breakthrough for those seeking practical assistance, those of a more mystical bent & every soul awaiting discovery." Toni Petrinovich, Ph.D.; author: The Call: Awakening the Angelic Human

The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

To download the first chapter, click here
To see the Table of Contents click here

Praise for The Tao of Spiritual Partnership

“All humans seek the illusive touch of another's Soul, which opens us to the sense of belonging to something bigger than the self. Dr. Kortsch has given us the true "tao" of relationship in this brilliant exploration of emotional tapestry. We will be grateful for this illumination of spiritual partnership for generations to come."
Chris Griscom: Spiritual Leader, Author (among others) of: Ecstasy is a New Frequency

“Eloquent and comprehensive, showing how your primary love relationship may be a sacred vessel that transports you and your partner to a place of mutual healing and expansion.” 
Robert Schwartz: Author of Your Soul’s Gift: The Healing Power of the Life You Planned Before You Were Born 


The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self 

My new book: The Power of Your Heart: Loving the Self, is just out. Click here to download an excerpt. 
Here is a brief excerpt from the Introduction:

It is your right to live a life of love. It is your right to understand that loving yourself first is not a selfish way of behavior, but one that allows you to live that life of love. However, it's highly probable that you never got the instruction manual explaining exactly how to accomplish this. Possibly your family - and it may have been a loving family - considered loving the self an act of selfishness. Or perhaps the members of your family simply didn't practice loving the self, and of course, what you didn't see - what was not shown to you - while you were growing up, meant that you just didn't learn how to apply it to yourself. The closer you are able to move towards loving yourself, the closer you will be to living a life of love - quite independently of whether you are in a love relationship or not. A life of love can be lived with or without a partnership, because a life of love implies that you know that it all begins with you by loving the self. The more clearly you understand how to love yourself, the more clearly you will see that it is very hard - if not impossible - to love others in ways that are unrelated to fulfilling any of your needs. Loving yourself first is - for so many of us - one of the hardest things we will ever learn how to do. But know this: the benefits affect you in every particle of your being - body, mind, and soul - and are greater than you will ever be able to imagine.

Note: If you are wondering why this blog is now only appearing on alternate days (excluding Sat/Sun), it is because I also post on my other blog on the others days. That other blog is The Tao of Spiritual Partnership, so named for another one of my books. Click here to visit the blog and/or to sign up for the feed.