Twenty-Fifteen.

2015 has been a year of change. It has blessed and broken me, it has stumbled and uplifted me, it has transformed and humbled me.

Looking back at this year rather amazes me. I can honestly say that I will be entering 2016 feeling more 'myself' than ever before. Feeling more hopeful, excited, inspired and fulfilled than I have ever known.

...But at the same time, I cannot neglect to think back on the things that brought me to this place. The extent to which I lost myself, neglected and hurt myself to the point where I became destructive even to those I loved.

This beautiful article got me re-assessing this past year. I highly recommend you read it HERE. No. 3 had a particularly strong meaning for me:"Say goodbye to all the moments you were not so proud of; forget them and remember that you are a human being who is still learning how to live."

Many, I am sure, will tonight be looking back at a year with a few less than desireable memories. Regretful moments where we let ourselves and others down. I would imagine too, that many will see the start of this new year as a chance of escape from the past we're not so proud of, an opportunity to abandon the old you for someone different, someone better.

But there is no such thing as abandoning one's past, your past is the very thing that defines you. The only thing you can change is the way in which you perceive your past. We can change how we understand and accept our old selves. Through this we put reason and meaning to even our worst moments and give ourselves new hope.

Without understanding our own wrong-doings, how can we hope to prevent repeating them? As a human, you are capable of the greatest love but also, i'm afraid, of the utter most wrong. There will be times in your life where you will slip toward such darkness.

I know the most monstrous in me.
I've danced with my darkest shades, painted the very worst image of myself, the kind I never thought possible. I know how terrifying it is to know this inhabits you. I also know how much more terrifying it is to question it. To pull that thread and unravel yourself, to leave yourself exposed and vulnerable.

Who truly wants to know themselves as their own worst nightmare? To know the capacity that they have for inflicting such hurt? For what I did, I never thought it possible to experience full forgiveness within.

However hurtful, spiteful, inconsiderate, or out-right evil this wrong that you committed, it is only through your own forgiveness that you can change. If you feel that you cannot, then you are not understanding yourself and not accepting yourself.
 
To hurt oneself, and often, consequently hurt others, is but a clear sign of a person not knowing themself fully. No person who knows complete peace, contentment or acceptence inflicts hurt, for our actions in life are a reflection of our inner most being. Through experience do we learn what we do and do not want to see in our lives. It is by greater understanding and knowing and accepting and forgiving of our past that we can grow from it.

So strong was my desire to never know that piece of me again, that I soon realised I needed to know what it was, what caused it, in order to prevent it.

From this moment of realisation did my desire in life dramatically change, my perspective alter entirely. I now know myself to be that which I love and that which I hate, to be that which enhances others and that which cripples them, to be that which is growing and that which is lost.

With such new understanding of the reflections of myself that I am capable of showing, I can choose that which serves me best. It is such an encouragement to us all at this turning point of another year, that no bad thing has the power to hold you back. Your growth is in your own hands.

So I welcome this new year with such strength in assurance that it is indeed possible to inhabit the very best vision of myself I can imagine. Through forgiveness I can really be free... And I must say, I've never been more excited.

- Love from Bambi x

P.S. Please do read the ARTICLE, it's worth every minute of your time.

Gratitude.

A thankful heart this Christmas, please.

If I could have but this and this alone, nothing else, I would truly be the richest of people. From a thankful heart such abundance flows. For a thankful heart is the single most Self benefiting and building thing one can possess.

A thankful heart is grateful no matter what. Gratitude is an act before it is even a feeling and the choice to be thankful is made within your heart.

Gratitude is thus in each and every person's grasp... it is resulting not of our circumstance or situation but from our choosing.

It is the sad case that people have become blind to their own access to such gratitude. We've become shaped by the world's decision, by such societal deviations from truth's purity, that we have let ourselves be told what is deserving of gratitude. What we should value in life, what makes a person rich, what we should strive to achieve, own, be. We are constantly fed standards that we begin to apply in our lives.

But you are as rich and as valuable and as blessed as you choose to be.
You choose to be thankful in life, or you choose not to be.

If you just take your focus away from what you're told makes you fortunate or rich in life, be this how many friends you have, how many things you possess, your physical appearance, how many opportunies are open to you... you would find that you are rich in yourself. You are worth being grateful for. 

You are worth it because you have the innate ability to enjoy and experience great pleasure.

Start by being thankful for the littlest things. A colour that you love. A smell that attracts you. Warmth and the feeling of it on your skin. A sound that is beautiful to your ears. A melody that draws you in and comforts you. Be thankful in the knowing that there is no knowledge in this world you are incapable of understanding, in the knowing that every day is a new opportunity to be the best version of yourself that you can imagine.

A simple act, each and every day, of being thankful for such things, the things that please you which you did not make or achieve or determine and nor did anyone else. This kind of gratitude for the things unexplainable that you enjoy, the things so personal to your inner being, is the very root of gratitude in all aspects of life.

No one need tell you, nor could they, what enjoyment you should experience from the feeling of the sun warming your face or why you love to stretch your arm out the window to feel the pouring rain.
You just enjoy. So you see, you are a naturally thankful creature. We all are.

Choosing to be thankful is choosing to be you in your most natural Self.
It is but the letting go of the norms and constructed values of an unhappy, ungrateful and out-of-touch society that will reveal this Self buried within you.

So know that this Christmas time, the very best gift you could possibly receive comes from yourself. Give gratitude this Christmas time and know the endless blessing and joy that forever follows.

-Love from Bambi x


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Love.

We have manipulated love so much.

We have turned it into some kind of ownership, where we believe that when we love and are loved in return, we must give a name to this. We feel something and we want something to show for it, to create something that our mind's can comprehend.

You cannot grasp love.
Love is a feeling too grand to be interpreted, summarised or encapsulated. Any attempt to do so is to immediately limit it.

Yet we so readily turn the love we feel into a partnership that we are committed to and expect commitment from. Consistent, long-term, even indefinite commitment.

But love is free.

We even tell ourselves that it is free - we know it is - that we would never dream of being caged or of caging another... but the very idea of perceiving love as a form of greater or lesser ownership of another, and expecting their commitment in return, is not allowing love its full freedom.


We are trying to define love. To explain it. Love exceeds our small concept of relationship.


People find themselves struggling and striving for their love. Sacrificing themselves for their love. It appears as though we place such importance in our relationship with this significant other, that we pay our relationship with our own life less attention and care.

You ought to follow your desires in life. To go where you want, to take the opportunities so appealing to you, the experiences that you crave. Your first love in life is to yourself and it is therefore betraying love to sacrifice your desires for the sake of another.

Perhaps we have forgotten the very reason we are with someone?
We personify our love. We believe our love is the person that is stirring it within us... but they are not love. They are the channel that love, the pure feeling itself, is using to pass through to you. So even when that person ceases to be that channel, you have not lost love. Love chooses many channels and you are one too.

There is a chance that love may channel through one person all of your life. The likelihood however, because of Love's free nature, is it will change its path.

People are so different. This is a good thing. We have such vastly differing wants and desires, hopes and dreams. There are times where we share the same wants and dreams as others. It is at these times when love can flow naturally between the two. In this instance, people may choose to be in a relationship together, to give their love a name so that they, and perhaps more importantly, others, can comprehend what they are experiencing. And as long as both people harbour the same pursuits, or at least their differing pursuits are fitting of each others, their love is still flowing freely.

But people's wants and aspirations do change.
When thoughts of sacrificing genuine, good and natural desires appear, this is not how love was intended. Now, for love to flow, it must be stimulated, worked at, forced even. This relationship becomes one of commitment and no longer of simply being.

It is as if we believe our relationship IS love. When in reality, we have become more concerned with our relationship and we no longer listen to love.

Many sacrifices are made in the name of love. Yet love does not ask for sacrifice. People ask for sacrifices to be made.

Love is not a contract but a feeling to be shared freely between two people both knowing that love can never be tied down.

Yet people put aside their desire for new experience in order to maintain their love, even though love will flow with us along new life paths, we are so fixed on our love in another.
We are scared to lose our love, but there is no loss in love. There is only changing flows and transitions.

Love is a feeling, not a person.

You open your heart to let love flow through, this should not be mistaken for giving your heart away.
When people feel they've lost their heart, or left it behind with some special someone, they've simply lost touch with themselves and feel so lacking and numb that they are unaware of their own heart. It is there still. Your heart is forever loyal to you, so be loyal to it in return.

Learn to listen to love once again. Learn to be close to love itself, and then, no matter how often the channels love chooses may change, you will feel love close to you always.

So love openly, wildly, wholeheartedly, but most importantly, love freely.

Know that your love may wander, that the channel for your love can change. Know that this is Love's nature and no bad thing. Love goes beyond relationship and beyond a person, for these are but the tools and channels that love possesses.




 
Let your love for yourself be the love you nurture most. Be true to what your love in life is telling you to follow and chase. Out of all the hearts in this world, yours is the only one you will truly keep forever so invest in it fiercely. Let your love be free and let it be yours so you will one day look back at your life knowing you were loyal and faithful to your one true first love, yourself.

Allow love its freedom and it will breeze through your heart like an open window. And it is true, for some, love may last only a short sweet while, and for others their love will be so entwined it can last a lifetime. But all love shared, no matter how long for, is the very same love.


- Love from Bambi x


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Photo credit: Diana Llorens Vicente