{"id":43,"date":"2025-10-11T20:21:29","date_gmt":"2025-10-11T20:21:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/?p=43"},"modified":"2025-10-11T20:21:29","modified_gmt":"2025-10-11T20:21:29","slug":"tools-in-self-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/?p=43","title":{"rendered":"Tools in Self Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Mantras\/Affirmations\/Meditation<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In your quest into the \u201cunderworld\u201d or \u201cdark night of the soul,\u201d here are some additional tools to utilize in concert with gratitude and compassion of the self.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tool 1:&nbsp;<strong>Mantras<\/strong>\/<strong>Affirmations<\/strong>&nbsp;are sayings, prayers, poems that help you reframe your thoughts, your behaviors, your day, your life.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The way this took shape in my life began with me leaving my husband December 30, 2024. My YouTube algorithm began to populate Buddhist principles, affirmations and practices on my feed in early January. I had known that my life had come full circle again and I was entering a stage that I was familiar with as \u201clove\u201d ends (this was my previous way of thinking, paradigm. I will eventually write more in depth on my thoughts on love.) I started with these Buddhist morning affirmations (see my previous post or my YouTube video) to untangle myself from the suffering of love lost again.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The more I practiced the affirmations I chose to use, it became a daily practice, and then it grew into daily prayer. Now, I pray daily and multiple times a day. As my journey into the self evolved, my prayers became less structured and more of a conversation with God or, more truly, with myself (semantics \ud83d\ude02). This is how my experience evolved, yours may look different and there\u2019s no one path to becoming whole.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Tool 2:&nbsp;<strong>Meditation<\/strong>&nbsp;is a way to move the energy from our mind into our body; \u201cemptying the mind,\u201d into your heart, into your body, and then into the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In my mind, I had always thought of meditation as Yoga or Buddha sitting, breathing and stillness. In my journey after my own spiritual awakening (kundalini? Not really sure.) I started to walk more often. I really tried to adapt exercise into my life back in January, but it wasn\u2019t for the right reasons (intent, energy. I posted some YouTube videos on that). It was on a walk that I realized what meditation truly was and, quite honestly, don\u2019t know that it has been popularly redefined or if I ever really understood what meditation was until that one walk.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Walking has been a big form of meditation for me. It has helped me with many different emotions and thoughts that were giving me a \u201cchaffing at the neck\u201d sort of feeling or energy. And in ways of its own, has shook loose solutions or shown me a different path; a path of least resistance, \u201cbe water!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This will be different for you and for others. Individuality is how we will rise above our trials. I have learned and grown so much from observing how others flow in their lives and through adaptation was able to journey as far as I have.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Safe travels; flow with peace and love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Mantras\/Affirmations\/Meditation In your quest into the \u201cunderworld\u201d or \u201cdark night of the soul,\u201d here are some additional tools to utilize in concert with gratitude and compassion of the self.&nbsp; Tool 1:&nbsp;Mantras\/Affirmations&nbsp;are sayings, prayers, poems that help you reframe your thoughts, your behaviors, your day, your life.&nbsp; The way this took shape in my life began [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[13,12,11,10],"class_list":["post-43","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","tag-affirmation","tag-mantra","tag-meditation","tag-spirituality"],"featured_image_src":null,"featured_image_src_square":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Matthew Brian","author_link":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/?author=1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.Matthew8Brian.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}