Every thought we think is creating our future.
LOUISE HAY
Louise and I are sitting down to dinner. We’ve spent the whole day talking, walking, gardening, and doing lots of cooking. We had no plans; we just went with the flow. It’s one of those days that can’t be measured by time. It happened fast and slow. We’re sitting at the edge of the universe—the big round dining table that Louise painted full of stars and swirling galaxies. The sun is setting over the sea. A hummingbird is drinking from a fountain in Louise’s garden.
“What do you think about the friendly-universe idea?” I ask Louise. She pauses for a moment as she lets the question sink in. “I think it’s a good idea,” she says with a smile.
The story goes that Albert Einstein once said that the most basic question we all must answer is, “Is the universe a friendly place?” Einstein was a theoretical physicist. He said he wanted to know the thoughts of God. He recognized an “intelligence manifested in Nature” and a “marvelous structure behind reality.” He saw the universe as a “unified whole” and the world as an expression of a “lawful harmony” that supports everyone and everything equally. “God is subtle, but he is not malicious,” Einstein wrote.
“Is the universe friendly?” I ask Louise.
“There’s only one way to find out,” she says.
“What way is that?”
“Say yes,” she says with a smile.
“What do you mean?”
“If you answer no, you’ll never find out if the universe is friendly,” she says.
“Because if you say no you won’t see it.”
“Exactly. But if you say yes then you might.”
“It’s all in the answer.”
“The answer is in us,” says Louise.
Louise’s answer reminds me of Pascal’s Wager. Blaise Pascal was a 17th-century French physicist and philosopher. Meditating on the question of whether God exists, he recognized that reason was of no use here: we can’t see non-physical reality—atoms or our own soul. “God is, or He is not,” said Pascal. What we must do, he concluded, is wager. In other words, we must decide to say yes or no to the existence of God. He recommended that we wager without hesitation that God exists. “If you gain, you gain all. If you lose, you lose nothing,” he said.
Once a week, I host a radio program for Hay House Radio called Shift Happens! On a recent show, a woman called in wanting help with finding a romantic partner. She had divorced her husband six-and-a-half years ago and had been on her own ever since. “Does love even exist?” she asked me. I told her, “If you wait for love, you’ll never find out.” If all we do is wait, we end up like Vladimir and Estragon, the two characters in Samuel Beckett’s absurdist play Waiting for Godot, who don’t even know what they’re waiting for. Only by loving will we know if love exists or not.
“Life is always trying to love us, but we need to be open if we are to see it,” Louise tells me.
“How do we stay open?” I ask.
“By being willing to love yourself,” she says.
“Loving yourself is the key to letting life love you,” I tell her.
“When you project your lack of self-love onto others you accuse them of not loving you enough, and all you see is an unfriendly universe,” Louise explains.
“‘Projection makes perception,’” I say, sharing a line from A Course in Miracles.
“Fear shows us one world; and love shows us another world,” says Louise. “We decide which world is real. And we decide which world we want to live in.”
Albert Einstein also said, “Whether you can observe a thing or not depends on the theory which you use. It is the theory which decides what can be observed.” What we see depends on how we look. Einstein encouraged us to burst open our mind so as to escape the prison of our own ideas. He used his intellect, but he warned us not to make the intellect into a god because of its limitations. “I believe in intuitions and inspirations,” he said. He also famously said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination embraces the entire world.”
Philosophers and schools of philosophy throughout history have explored theories and ideas related to the friendly-universe theory. For instance, Plato referred to an Essential Universe and a Perceived Universe. He said that the Essential Universe is perfect, good, and whole (just like your Unconditioned Self). He recognized, however, that the ego (the sense of a separate self) can’t see the whole picture, and so it lives in a Perceived Universe, and it’s here that we often lose sight of what he called the “absolute beauty” and “friendly harmony” of creation.
Thomas Jefferson was a farmer, a lawyer, and a politician. In his youth, he studied mathematics, metaphysics, and philosophy. As well as being president of the United States, he was also president of the American Philosophical Society. He saw in creation a “benevolent arrangement of things” that influenced much of his thinking. He described God as a “benevolent governor” of the world. He referred to Jesus’s work as “the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man,” that, if followed, would help everyone, without exception, to experience full and free liberty.
A benevolent universe is also at the heart of Buddhist philosophy. The Buddha taught about a universal friendliness and loving-kindness that is the essential consciousness of creation. “Life is a good teacher and a good friend,” says Pema Chödrön. This natural benevolence is expressed through each of us when we are aligned with our Unconditioned Self. We lose sight of this benevolence, however, when we stop practicing loving-kindness. And then we suffer.
The recognition of suffering is also at the heart of Buddhism. “Life is full of suffering,” says the first of the Four Noble Truths. Nowhere does the Buddha say that life wants us to suffer. The Buddha pointed to the cause of suffering coming not from life but from us. He taught us that we suffer because of what we do to ourselves and what we do to each other. Through loving-kindness and compassion we experience healing and are reunited with the natural harmony of the universe.
“If the universe is friendly, why do we suffer?” I ask Louise.
“Well, I don’t believe the universe wants us to suffer,” she says.
“And yet there is suffering.”
“We heal suffering by identifying the cause of suffering,” she says.
“So, what causes us to suffer?” I ask.
“Well, if we are honest with ourselves, we have to accept that we cause a lot of suffering ourselves,” she says.
“Life isn’t judging us,” I say, referring to our earlier conversation.
“Exactly,” says Louise. “Life doesn’t judge us, but we judge ourselves. Life doesn’t criticize us, but we criticize ourselves. Life doesn’t abandon us, but we often abandon ourselves. “
“How else do we cause our own suffering?” I ask.
“When we stop loving ourselves, we cause ourselves endless suffering,” she says.
We cause ourselves to suffer in 10,000 ways, mostly from a lack of self-love. When we stop loving ourselves, we stop being kind to ourselves. The loss of compassion silences the wisdom of the heart. No kindness, no wisdom. We follow the way of fear. We look for love in all the wrong places. We search for happiness outside ourselves. We chase after success but never feel like we have it. We make a million dollars, but we still feel poor. A million dollars is not enough because it’s not two million dollars and because money can’t buy what we’re really looking for.
“We also cause each other to suffer,” says Louise. It’s true, isn’t it? When people stop loving themselves, they stop loving others, too. That’s the way it works. Hurt people hurt people, as the old saying goes. When we forget about what’s real—the unified whole, our basic truth, the benevolent way of things—we fall from grace and get lost in 10,000 useless dramas. We project our pain, we blame each other, we defend and attack, and we try to win every argument by force. “Only love ends all arguments,” says Rumi.
There is another kind of suffering, too. It’s the suffering we all experience because of the impermanent nature of life. We mourn the death of loved ones, we lament the end of a relationship, we grieve the loss of a job, and we bear 10,000 other losses. We experience physical pain, illness, old age, and the fear of our own death. The Buddha referred to this suffering as dukkha. It comes from grasping at what we want, pushing away what we don’t want, wishing everything, including ourselves, would last forever, and forgetting our true nature. This attachment is utterly human, and it deserves our compassion and our love. Love is the cessation of suffering.
“There is another way to look at the friendly-universe theory,” Louise says.
“What way is that?” I ask.
“Instead of asking yourself, How friendly is the universe? you could ask yourself, How friendly am I?” she says with a smile.
“I like that,” I say as I let it sink in.
“We are not separate from the universe,” she says.
“The universe isn’t out there,” I say, pointing to Louise’s dinner table.
“The universe is us,” she says.
“And how we are being is how we experience the universe,” I add.
“The more we love ourselves, the more we can love each other,” says Louise.
“This is how we know that life loves us,” I suggest.
“And how we know that the universe really is friendly,” Louise says.
Trusting in Love
On the day I started to write this book something extraordinary happened that I can’t properly explain. It was such a surprise, and so delightful, that it gave me all the faith I needed for the journey before me.
I had planned to start writing on January 21, but I actually started on January 20, the day before I thought I was ready! I woke up that morning thinking I was going to do some more preparation before the Big Day when I was due to sit in front of a blank page. Page number one. The Alpha page. The OMG page. The page you have to write before you can get to page number two. During my morning meditation, however, I received an internal memo that said, cryptically, “You were born ready. Begin today.”
Over breakfast, I told Hollie and Bo and Christopher that I was going to start writing Life Loves You that day. “I got a feeling that it would be good to start before I was ready,” I told Hollie. Hollie smiled. Christopher chewed on a pancake. Bo got up from the table and ran upstairs. Two minutes later, she came back with a rose quartz crystal angel in her hands. “Here you are, Daddy,” she said. “Put her on your desk and she will help you write.” Christopher jumped out of his seat. He came back with his favorite tractor. “Here, Daddy,” he said. “This tractor will be a big help.”
Later that morning, I sat at my desk looking at the blank page. Page number one. The pink angel was standing next to the computer screen. The tractor was downstairs. Christopher had changed his mind about that. “You can have my tractor, Daddy, but only if I can keep it,” he told me. Now the spirit of the tractor was with me, parked right next to the angel. Also on my desk was a jasmine-scented candle, a cup of Kona coffee, and a card with one of my favorite messages from A Course in Miracles:
It cannot be that it is hard to do
the task that Christ appointed you to do,
since it is He Who does it.
As I stared at the blank page, an image came to mind of a painting of Jesus Christ standing at a door holding a lantern in his left hand. I’d seen this painting before, but I wasn’t sure where. This image of Christ was all I could think about. I convinced myself that a mystical vision was a valid reason to delay writing and do a search on Google. I typed “Paintings of Jesus Christ,” clicked on the Images tab, and there, at the top of the page, was the painting I was looking for: The Light of the World, by William Holman Hunt.
When I saw the painting, I remembered that I’d had a dream about it the night before. I don’t remember many of my dreams, and I can’t tell you much about this one. I simply remember that I dreamed about that painting. Maybe that was why it appeared on my blank page. Anyway, I took it as a sign that “unseen hands,” as Joseph Campbell described, were helping me on my way. I bookmarked some articles about the painting to read later. I also downloaded an image of the painting to use on my computer as a screen saver. At the moment, however, I needed to get back to the blank page. Page number one.
Meanwhile, Hollie was downstairs in the kitchen. Something was on her mind, too. She was looking for a gift of some kind to help me with my writing. The way Hollie describes it, her body marched her upstairs and into her office. She scanned the room. Her eyes fell upon a picture that was resting on a bookshelf. She hadn’t noticed the picture before. She didn’t know anything about it. She assumed it belonged to me. She put the picture in a silver oval frame and then came upstairs to see me. “Close your eyes and put out your hands,” Hollie said. “I have something for you.”
When I opened my eyes, I was looking at a framed picture of The Light of the World, by William Holman Hunt. How did this happen? I was astonished. Hollie was “weirded out,” as she put it. Hollie often brings me gifts when I write—smoothies, green juices, and home-baked muffins, but not this. “Hi, honey, here’s a religious icon” isn’t normal for us. Neither of us had any prior knowledge of this painting. Now it’s the first thing I see when I turn on my computer. And the framed picture sits next to the pink angel and the spirit of the tractor.
When I told Louise this story, she smiled. It was one of her knowing smiles. “I experienced so many little miracles and coincidences when I wrote You Can Heal Your Life,” she told me. “I had the strongest feeling that I shouldn’t go to a mainstream publisher, even though I’d had some offers. I felt like I was the custodian of important information that mustn’t be edited or watered down. I had no idea how to self-publish, but I trusted the process, and doors opened for me every step of the way.”
Shortly after speaking to Louise, I stumbled across this affirmation by Florence Scovel Shinn: All doors now open for happy surprises, and the Divine Plan of my life is speeded up under grace.
The Light of the World by William Holman Hunt is inspired by two verses in the Bible. At the foot of the painting is an inscription from Revelation 3:20. It reads: “Behold, I stand at the door and knock. If any man hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in to him and eat with him and he with me.” The title of the painting is from John 8:12, in which Jesus says, “I am the light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life.” Both verses call upon the ego to be open and receptive to holy guidance and a higher plan.
Hunt’s painting is full of symbolism and allegory. Christ represents our Unconditioned Self. The door represents our ego mind. Christ’s face is a picture of infinite patience. Weeds grow at the foot of the door, which tells us that the door has been shut for some time. Hunt described the symbolism: “The closed door was the obstinately shut mind, the weeds the cumber of daily neglect …” Most significant, the door has no handle, no lock, and no bolt. It can be opened at any moment. It opens from the inside. Our soul waits for us. Our ego must be willing to let the light in. Our ego has to open the door.
“Once I took my first step on the spiritual path, I felt like I walked through a door into a new world,” Louise tells me as we sit looking at Hunt’s painting. “Life took me by the hand and led me on my way. Life said, ‘Do this,’ and I did. Life said, ‘Do that,’ and I did. When people want to know how I created Hay House, I always tell them, ‘I opened my mind. I listened to my inner voice. I followed the signs. I trusted the flow and learned to move with it.’”
“I have faith in the universe,” said Albert Einstein to William Hermanns in a conversation recorded in Einstein and the Poet. This book is one of my favorites about Einstein. It features four conversations between Einstein and Hermanns, a German poet, playwright, and sociologist, over the space of thirty years. Einstein tells Hermanns, “Through my pursuit in science I have known cosmic religious feelings.” Einstein insists he is a scientist, but he also sounds like a poet. He makes reference to an inner voice. And he tells Hermanns, “If I hadn’t an absolute faith in the harmony of creation, I wouldn’t have tried for 30 years to express it in a mathematical formula.”
“When you know that life loves you, and that you live in a friendly universe, it helps you in both the good times and the bad times,” says Louise. Sometimes life doesn’t go according to plan. Not to our plan, at least. We all know what that’s like. We feel like life loves us when we get what we want, but what about when we don’t? What about when we don’t get that job we wanted? Or when that special person doesn’t return our call? Or when something that felt so right goes wrong? This is when we have to trust that life loves us always—and that even when things appear not to be going our way, they still are going our way.
“If you knew Who walks beside you on the way that you have chosen, fear would be impossible,” states A Course in Miracles. When we’re afraid, we feel alone. When one door closes all the other doors close, too, is how it feels to our ego. “When you trust in love, it’s impossible to feel totally alone,” says Louise. “Love introduces you to the totality of possibilities. It opens you up to a power that is greater and wiser than your ego. Love knows what’s best for you. It leads you to your highest good. Love will show you the way.”
Whenever you feel stuck, lonely, or afraid, Louise and I recommend you ask yourself this question: What good things could happen if I let life love me even more? Another way of doing this is to complete this sentence ten times: One way I could let life love me even more right now is … Open the door and let your soul lead the way. Open your mind and let the light in. Open your heart and trust in love to take you where you need to go. To support you in this inquiry here is one of my favorite passages by Louise from her book Heart Thoughts:
Trust that your inner guide is
leading you and guiding you in ways
that are best for you, and that your
spiritual growth is continuously
expanding.
No matter which door opens or
which door closes, you
are always safe.
You are eternal.
You will go on forever
from experience to experience.
See yourself opening doors to
joy, peace, healing, prosperity,
and love.
Doors to understanding,
compassion, and forgiveness.
Doors to freedom. Doors to
self-worth and self-esteem.
Doors to self-love.
It is all here before you.
Which door will you open first?
Remember, you are safe;
it is only change.
Teach Only Love
One afternoon, Louise and I took a walk in Balboa Park. We stopped off at Daniel’s Coffee Cart to pick up my cappuccino. From there, we headed to the Japanese Friendship Garden. As we walked, I ask Louise about the Hayride Reunion that had just taken place. It celebrated the 30th anniversary of Louise’s support group for AIDS that became known as the Hayride. The Reunion was held at the Wilshire Ebell Theatre in Los Angeles. The theater was full of friends old and new who came from all over the world to be there.
Suddenly we heard someone shout, “Ms. Hay! Ms. Hay!” We looked up and saw two men, arm in arm, waving at us. They were by the entrance to the Japanese Friendship Garden. As they approached, one of the men said, “Ms. Hay, I’m a Hayrider!” Louise and the man both burst into tears. They hugged each other for a long time. I took lots of pictures. Louise looked so happy. This man had attended Hayride meetings back in 1988 when he was preparing to die. “You healed my life,” he said. “No. You healed your life,” Louise told him.
Louise hosted a Hayride every Wednesday night for six-and-a-half years in the 1980s. “A private client asked me if I’d hold a meeting for men with AIDS. I said yes. That’s how it began,” Louise told me. Six men showed up for the first meeting, which Louise held in her living room. “I told the men that we were going to do what I always do, which is to focus on self-love, forgiveness, and letting go of fear. I also told them that we were not going to sit there and play Ain’t it awful, because that won’t help anybody.” At the end of the first meeting, Louise and her six men held each other in a loving embrace. They left Louise’s home that night with a feeling of peace in their hearts.
“The week after, we had 12 men sitting in my living room. The following week, we had 20 men. And it just kept growing,” Louise says, still astonished by what happened. “Eventually, we had nearly 90 men squeezed into my living room. I’m not sure what the neighbors thought! Each week we talked, we cried, we sang songs together, we did mirror work and also all sorts of healing meditations for ourselves, each other, and the planet. We ended every evening with hugs, which was good for love, and also very good for pick-ups,” says Louise with a big smile.
The meetings moved out of Louise’s home into a gymnasium in West Hollywood. “We went from 90 people to 150 people that first night,” she recalls. They soon had to move again. This time the City of West Hollywood gave Louise a space that could hold hundreds of people. “Eventually, we had nearly 800 people at our Wednesday night meetings. Now it wasn’t just men with AIDS who came. It was men and women. And family members, too. Whenever someone’s mother attended her first meeting, she’d receive a standing ovation from us all.”
One of Louise’s closest friends is Daniel Peralta. They first met in January 1986, when Daniel attended the premiere of a film about the Hayride called Doors Opening: A Positive Approach to AIDS. “Louise Hay introduced me to unconditional love,” Daniel told me. In an article about the Hayride, Daniel wrote about Louise’s infinite kindness and her generosity of spirit:
Louise L. Hay was ushering in a new possibility, a new way of being. She introduced us to loving ourselves and outlined practical steps to engage that process. She gently invited us to be with ourselves in a new and different way, and practice self-acceptance and self-care. Not only was it appealing, it was healing. I clearly remember how Louise had this incredible ability to quickly create a sense of community and bring people together, one heart at a time.
Louise cries freely when she talks about the Hayrides. “These young people were terrified and lonely. They’d been rejected by their family and by society,” Louise tells me. “What they needed was a friend—someone who wasn’t afraid, who wouldn’t judge them, and who loved them for who they are. I simply answered the call.” When I ask Louise about her tears, she says, “We got through a lot of Kleenex at the Hayride. I made so many friends. I lost a lot of friends, too. We attended far too many funerals. But we also made sure no one died without knowing they were loved. And, of course, many people lived on and created a future they never expected to have.”
In the opening sequence of Doors Opening, Louise says, “I don’t heal anybody. I just provide a space where we can uncover how absolutely wonderful we are, and many people find that they’re able to heal themselves.” Louise is consistent in her message. I’ve witnessed hundreds of people tell Louise personally, “Thank you for healing my life.” I smile every time it happens because I know how Louise will respond. “You healed your life,” she tells them.
“Louise, people have called you a lot of things,” I say.
“I know,” she says, laughing.
“You tell everyone, I am not a healer.”
“That’s right,” she says firmly.
“So what are you?”
“Oh, I don’t know.”
“You’ve been called a living saint.”
“Well, I can’t help that,” she says, clearly embarrassed.
“Oprah Winfrey called you the Mother of the Law of Attraction.”
“Uh-huh.”
“You’ve been called a guru and a pioneer.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And a rebel.”
“Oh, I like that,” she says, laughing.
“Have you ever painted a self-portrait?” I ask her.
“Never!”
“Come on, Louise: tell me who you are.”
“Well, how would you describe me?”
“I have a couple of ideas.”
“I’ll take them both!”
“I think you’re a lioness,” I tell her.
“Well, I have Leo rising in my chart,” she says.
“I think you’re fierce about the truth.”
“Fierce and direct,” she says.
“You’re also very protective of the people you love.”
“Extremely,” she says.
“I also think you’re a teacher,” I tell her.
“That’s true,” she says.
When I think about Louise and her work, there’s a line from A Course in Miracles that immediately springs to mind: “Teach only love, for that is what you are.” Louise is a teacher, and she teaches about love. She teaches that in every given moment of your life you are choosing between love and fear, love and pain, and love and hate. “I teach one thing—and one thing only—love yourself,” says Louise.
“Until you love yourself, you will never know who you really are and you won’t know what you’re really capable of,” Louise told me on a recent Skype call. She sees love as the miracle ingredient that helps you to grow into the person you truly are. “When you love yourself, you grow up,” she says. “Love helps you to grow beyond your past, beyond pain, beyond fears, beyond your ego, and beyond all your small ideas about yourself. Love is what you’re made of, and love helps you to be who you really are.”
One of the great joys of being Louise’s friend is witnessing her passion and commitment for growth. Louise Hay loves to learn. “If I hadn’t learned to love myself, none of what I’ve done since would have been possible,” she tells me. Louise’s message is, Love yourself now. Don’t wait until you’re ready. “If you won’t love yourself today, you won’t love yourself tomorrow either. But if you start today, you begin to create a better future, and your future self will be so grateful to you,” she says.
Louise is always on the lookout for new growth and new adventures. After her first public art exhibit, she wrote a post on Facebook saying, “Life goes in cycles. There’s a time to do something new, and then there’s a time to move on. It’s never too late to learn something new.” After the Hayride Reunion, she told me, “I feel like one door has closed and another door is opening now. I am open and receptive to new opportunities to grow.” On our most recent Skype call, Louise told me she has signed up for a course on spiritual homeopathy.
While we’ve been writing Life Loves You, Louise has felt as if she’s on the threshold of a whole new chapter in her life. She told me that she has no idea what this new chapter is about yet. She said, “I feel excited and nervous, but I remind myself each day that life loves me, that I’m safe, that life wants the best for me, and that it’s only change.” When I asked Louise how she planned to welcome in her new chapter, she said, “I’m going to rearrange some furniture. I’ll let go of a few things, and I’ll make room for the new.”
Recently, I gave the opening keynote for the IGNITE! conference hosted by Hay House UK in London. The conference featured 12 authors talking about personal growth and global transformation. I asked Louise if she had a message she’d like to share with the audience. She promptly shot me an e-mail full of passion and high teaching. Here’s what she asked me to share:
I ignite my life every time I do something new.
Daring to step into new space is so exciting.
I know that only good lies before me
so I am ready for whatever Life has in store for me.
New adventures keep us young.
And sending loving thoughts in every direction
keeps our lives filled with love.
87 is the new beginning of my life.
A Loving Mirror
When Louise Hay walks onto the stage at an I Can Do It! conference, the audience rises to its feet in spontaneous appreciation. Thousands of people join as one to shower Louise with love and thanks. It happens every time, all over the world, in cities like Vancouver, London, New York, Sydney, and Hamburg, Germany. I’ve stood in those audiences on many occasions, and I’ve been moved to tears pretty much each time. It’s wonderful to think about what can happen in this world when one person makes a stand for love.
This time Louise and I are in Denver for another I Can Do It! We’re in Louise’s hotel room, reviewing the early chapters of this book. “The message I most want our readers to hear is Life loves you as you are, and it wants you to do the same,” Louise tells me. “We’re here on this planet to learn about unconditional love, and it begins with self-acceptance and self-love.” Pointing her finger at me, she says, “In your life you have to start with loving you.” She then points to herself and says, “And in my life I have to start with loving me.” She pauses for a moment and then says, “And that’s how we love the world.”
When you teach about self-love, like Louise and I do, you quickly get used to dealing with any number of objections and concerns. The common ones include “Self-love is selfish”; “Self-love is self-indulgent”; “Self-love is narcissistic.” Is this really true? My feeling is that narcissism is narcissistic, but self-love isn’t narcissism. In other words, most of the objections to self-love come from misperceptions of what love is. “Self-love is not about vanity or arrogance, it’s about self-respect,” says Louise. “It’s a deep appreciation for how you’ve been made and for the life you are here to live.”
In my Loveability program, I tell my students who are afraid that self-love is selfish to take a look at Louise Hay’s life. Louise’s story is a wonderful example of how self-healing and self-love can be a blessing for others. Look what happened after Louise embarked on her healing journey. She wrote the first version of her little blue book, entitled What Hurts, when she was 50 years old. Three years later, she rewrote the book and published it as Heal Your Body. When Louise was 56 years old, she started the Hayride. She set up her charity, the Hay Foundation, when she was 59 years old. She founded Hay House when she was 60 years old. All this, and she was just getting started.
“We are here to be a loving mirror to the world,” Louise tells me. The more we love ourselves, the less we project our pain onto the world. When we stop judging ourselves, we naturally judge others less. When we stop attacking ourselves, we don’t attack others. When we stop rejecting ourselves, we stop accusing others of hurting us. When we start loving ourselves more, we become happier, less defended, and more open. As we love ourselves, we naturally love others more. “Self-love is the greatest gift because what you give yourself is experienced by others,” says Louise.
When I founded The Happiness Project in 1994, I created a mission statement that was just two words: Talk happiness. Back then, there wasn’t much talk about happiness in psychology or in society. The goal of The Happiness Project was to stimulate a conversation about happiness. We talked about happiness in schools, hospitals, churches, businesses, and in halls of government. The more we talked, the more I learned about what happiness is, and the more convinced I became that happiness, like self-love, benefits both self and society. After a few years, I created a new mission statement for The Happiness Project. It reads:
It is because the world is so full of suffering
that your happiness is a gift.
It is because the world is so full of poverty
that your wealth is a gift.
It is because the world is so unfriendly
that your smile is a gift.
It is because the world is so full of war
that your peace of mind is a gift.
It is because the world is in such despair
that your hope and optimism is a gift.
It is because the world is so afraid
that your love is a gift.
Love is always shared. It’s a gift, like true happiness and success. It ends up benefiting you and others. “When I think about love, I like to visualize myself standing in a circle of light,” says Louise. “This circle represents love, and I see myself surrounded by love. Once I feel this love in my heart and in my body, I see the circle expanding to fill the room, and then every square inch of my home, and then the neighborhood, and then the whole city, and then the whole country, and then the whole planet, and eventually, the whole universe. That’s how love is, to me. That’s how love works.”
Listening to Louise talk about her circle of love reminds me of these words by Albert Einstein: “A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. We experience ourselves, our thoughts, and feelings as something separate from the rest. A kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
When Louise Hay founded Hay House in 1987, she told everyone who came to work with her that the purpose of the publishing company was not just to sell books and tapes. “Of course, I wanted us to be financially successful, so that we could pay wages and look after everyone, but I also had a higher vision,” Louise tells me. “What I knew then, and still believe today, is that the real purpose of Hay House is to help create a world where it is safe for us to love each other. With each book we print, we bless the world with love.”
PRACTICE 7: BLESSING THE WORLD
When Louise last appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, she had recently celebrated her 81st birthday, and she told Oprah that she’d just taken up lessons in ballroom dancing. When Oprah asked Louise what advice she had for anyone who thinks it’s too late to change and grow, Louise responded empathically, “Rethink! Just because you’ve believed something for a long time doesn’t mean you have to think it forever. Think thoughts that support you and uplift you. Realize that life loves you. And if you love life, you get this wonderful thing going.”
Getting this “wonderful thing going,” as Louise puts it, isn’t just about letting life love you; it’s also about you loving life. When Louise and I met for the first time to discuss this book, I told her that I wanted to explore the full meaning of her philosophy Life loves you. Here’s what she had to say: “To experience what Life loves you really means, I recommend you say this affirmation to yourself: Life loves me, and I love life. You can change it around if you like: I love life, and life loves me. This is what I say to myself every day, and I intend to say it every day for the rest of my life.” This affirmation is the inspiration for our seventh and final spiritual practice for you.
When you affirm Life loves me, and I love life, you paint in your consciousness an unbroken circle of receiving and giving. Life loves me represents the receiving principle, and I love life represents the giving principle. The full affirmation supports you in receiving and giving love in equal measure. In truth, giving is receiving. The giver and the receiver are the same person. What you give, you receive. And what you receive, you can give. This awareness is what helps you to be a truly loving presence in the world.
Your spiritual practice for this chapter is a meditation called Blessing the World. It is inspired by the Buddhist practice of mettā, which is a Pali word for loving-kindness, universal friendship, benevolence. The meditation has five parts to it. We recommend you take between 5 and 15 minutes to do this practice. As with the other practices in the book, Louise and I encourage you to do this once a day for seven consecutive days. The more you do it, the better it gets.
Blessing Yourself: “There is enough love in you to love the whole planet, and it starts with you,” says Louise. Begin by affirming Life loves me, and I love life. Say it out loud. Say it a few times. Complete the sentence One way life is loving me right now is … Count your blessings. If you find this difficult, affirm that you are willing to receive and that you are open to all offers of help. Affirm Today I move into my greater good. My good is everywhere, and I am safe and secure.
Blessing Loved Ones: Wish everyone you love a beautiful day today. Affirm for them Life loves you. Pray that they may know how blessed they are and that they recognize the basic truth about themselves, which is I am loveable. Be happy for their success, their abundance, their good health, and their good fortune. “Remember, if you want love and acceptance from your family, then you must have love and acceptance for them,” says Louise. Affirm I rejoice in everyone’s happiness, knowing that there is plenty for us all.
Blessing Your Neighborhood: Set up in your mind that you will bless everyone you meet today. Send a blessing to all your neighbors on both sides of the street. Send a blessing to all the parents you normally see at the school gate. Send a blessing to the local shopkeeper, to the mailman, to the bus driver, and to every other familiar face in your community. Send a blessing to the trees on your street. Send a blessing to your entire neighborhood. Affirm Life loves you, and I wish you infinite blessings today.
Bless Your Enemies: Send a blessing to the people you’re tempted to withhold love from. Bless the person you judge the most and affirm Life loves us all. Bless the person you fight with the most and affirm Life loves us all. Bless the person you complain about the most and affirm Life loves us all. Bless the person you envy the most and affirm Life loves us all. Bless the person you compete with the most and affirm Life loves us all. Bless your enemies, so that you have no enemies. Affirm We are all loveable. Life loves us all. In love, everyone wins.
Bless the World: Affirm Life loves me, and I love life. Imagine that you hold the whole planet in your heart. “You are important, and what you do with your mind makes a difference. Send out a blessing to the whole world every day,” says Louise. Love the animals. Love the plants. Love the oceans. Love the stars. Visualize newspaper headlines like “A Cure for Cancer,” or “An End to Poverty,” or “Peace on Earth.” Each time you bless the world with your love, you connect with millions of people doing the same thing. See the world evolving in the direction of love today. Affirm Together we are creating a world in which it is safe to love one another.
