Self Love as Spiritual Practice: Nine Keys for Loving Yourself

By Ani Colt and Godd

Self Love as Spiritual Practice is an opening to more love, compassion, passion, purpose and expanded consciousness. Self love, as presented in this lovely and wise book, is a means to a stronger connection with Spirit, what Ani calls GODD. This is the all-loving GODD. The Keys start with knowing GODD as a friend, move to the process of intention, loving your whole self, accepting your feelings, healing, growing and having better relationships. These help us be poised to better participate in the great shift, the need to bring heaven down here to heal our planet. Self Love as Spiritual Practice provides an interactive process to help you on your personal path. Ani's own story inspires and brings life to this book. After meeting a spirit guide by a remote stream in California, she totally changed her life. The book carries love you can feel.

Through Self Love as Spiritual Practice --Ani Colt reveals how the messages she received from Spirit can empower your life, evolve your consciousness and bring self love to a high level. What greater gift at a time when self love is so desperately needed! Daphne Rose Kingma, author of The Ten Things To Do When Your Life Falls Apart

Self Love as Spiritual Practice is a profound call to the most important practice of all practices·spiritual self love. Give yourself the gift of this book. Suzann Panek Robins, author of Exploring Intimacy: Cultivating Healthy Relationships through Insight and Intuition

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jul 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456885014

Book preview

Copyright © 2011 by Ani Colt, Co-Created with GODD.

Cover and interior design by Ani Colt

Graphics by Bruce Paul Fink in collaboration with Ani Colt

www.AniColt.com

www.BPFink.com

Library of Congress Control Number:       2011904002

ISBN:         Hardcover                               978-1-4568-8500-7

                   Softcover                                 978-1-4568-8499-4

                   Ebook                                      978-1-4568-8501-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This book was printed in the United States of America.

To order additional copies of this book, contact:

Xlibris Corporation

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

[e-mail]

88368

Contents

Part I Introductions

Preface: A Message from GODD

Acknowledgments

Prologue

The Language of This Book

How to Use This Book

Part II The Desire for Love

Why Love Yourself?

Why Don’t You Love Yourself?

Part III Nine  Keys  for  Loving  Yourself

Preview of the  Nine Keys for Loving Yourself

Thoughts on Thought and Energy

First Key: Know the All-Loving Godd

Second Key: Intend to Love Yourself

Third Key: Love Your Whole Self

Fourth Key: Accept Yourself and Your Feelings

Fifth Key: Use Self Love to Heal and Grow

Sixth Key: Practice Self Love in the Now

Seventh Key: Receive Your Self

Eighth Key: Practice Self Love in Relationships

Ninth Key: Feel and Heal the Planet

Part IV Afterword

Having Friendly Conversations with Godd

Ani’s Epilogue  A Divine Journey

Godd’s Epilogue

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To love thyself is

To love Me embodied in

The human life form

My creation, My desire

To share Spirit in you

To know knowing in you

To love with you.

Love thyself and you love Me.

We are One, you know.

—GODD

Part I

Introductions

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…you all can benefit from learning

to truly and wholly love yourselves.

This is the starting place.

All will follow from this in your path

back to remembering who You are,

We are, All is, and Oneness.

—From GODD’s Preface

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Preface: A Message from GODD

This book is an example of conscious co-creation, Ani’s experience of co-creating with Me and Mine with her. Ani started listening more acutely when she heard the message Listen as she sat in a vesper service one Sunday afternoon in Dobbs Ferry, New York. Listening to her own mind and her own negative thoughts paved the way for her to let at least some of them go. Oh, Ani has worked hard to change her mind.

After a time, she began to hear Our voices. I say Our because—as she says in her introduction—sometimes the voice is in My name; others are in those of spirit entities who share My domain, so to speak.

An important message Ani heard, and has worked on, is the message that she must love herself first and all else will follow from this self love. Truly, I have had to help her in this process. And so amongst the messages I have given her, many are about how to love yourself and what this means in the world of her godliness and what it means to Me.

During this process, Ani became inspired to change the spelling of God to Godd. Having many names, this tickled Me because of the suggestion of god/goddess. Surely, it is time for you on the planet to recognize Me as more than a male, dominating god.

So I give you all these messages and the lessons Ani has developed from them. Love yourself, and you truly do love Me. Love yourself, and you will find that many other wonders open to you, including knowing yourself as Love and knowing Me as Love and knowing all is Love in our oneness of being. In our magnificence of manifestation, in your illusion of the material world, and in the world of the spaces between the material, it is all Love.

Please know as you use these messages, as you meditate on their personal meaning for your needs, you are indeed finding your path back to all you are in the all of our oneness. You come to Know Yourself as Love. To Know Yourself as Love (what we see as a future title and the deep purpose of this work) is also to know yourself as GODD and to know yourself as One. GODD, One, and Love are interchangeable in a sense. However, in a way for oh-so-many of you, knowing yourself as Love means learning self love first. Indeed, learning to love yourself is a truly spiritual journey.

As you work with this material, know that I am with you always, all ways; and I am here with you to ease your way. All is well in that you all can benefit from learning to truly and wholly (holy) love yourselves. This is the starting place. All will follow from this in your path back to remembering who You are, We are, All is, and Oneness.

This is a divine process, or a divine journey, as I have said in the poems that follow.

Blessed be your journey with Me. I would have you know Love completely.

GODD Speed.

GODD

Acknowledgments

Over the decades the work of many other spiritual teachers has helped and inspired me. While the list continues to grow, thanks to Shakti Gawain, Emmanuel, Bartholomew, Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Barbara Marciniak, Caroline Myss, Neale Donald Walsch, and David R. Hawkins. In the 1980s Shakti’s Living in the Light put into words the ideas that I always believed. This was a huge help for me. Caroline’s emphasis on understanding energy aligns with what I believe and how GODD speaks in some of these messages. Neale’s Conversations with God trilogy—as well as his later books, including Friendship with God—have helped me gain insights and confidence in tapping into the voice of a higher consciousness while encouraging me to get this work to you.

There are also groups that have meant a lot to me including Shalom Mountain Retreat Center in the Catskills and The Body Scared. Thanks to all I’ve shared time with at the gatherings and retreats with these wonderful organizations. Two personal small groups helped too. Scott Singer, Ki Johnson, Bill Cahill, and Vaughn Keller—my Root Group, thanks to you. Mary Jo Romano, you too. More recently The Geminis. For three years we met in my kitchen in Newton, Massachusetts. Thanks fellow Geminis: Rhea Slichter and Delwood Richardson.

Also, over the decades there are many other friends who have supported my work and growth. Kathy Woodruff, special thanks for your friendship and renewal in the magic of your farm. Rudy Ballentine, Elizabeth Broyles, Sue Stebbins, Daphne Rose Kingma, Henning Gutmann, and others who read earlier versions of the book for me, thank you so. Special thanks to Suzann Robins who encouraged me and edited an early manuscript. I am blessed in our friendship and shared passion for this work. Also thanks to Calvin T. Ranson who has been a great supporter in many ways. Thank you Nancy for asking me if I loved myself.

There are also those who helped with their sensitive and invaluable reading for clarity, as well as for errors. They include Marie Rowe, Paul Lynn, Meg Bishop, Judy Montigny, Sharon Hansen and Betsy Carson. I am grateful. Thanks to my Study Group in Woodstock, Connecticut, who read the book shortly after I joined the group.

My family, I thank my family. When I totally changed my life in 1991, mom—who passed in 2004—did her best to help out and cope with her out of the box daughter. Cope was one of her favorite words. Dad had passed in 1988, yet he has helped support me, too. As you will read, brother Tom stepped up when I had to make a sudden relocation, and he and his wife stored my furniture in their basement for a year. Five years later, Tom and his twin, brother Bob, helped with another move. There were several moves in between. Pretty wild years. My older brother, Bill, and his wife, helped see me through one of many shifts. We four siblings were blessed with good, loving, stable parents. In contrast, Karl and KJ—my son and daughter, have had no choice but to deal with a maverick, loving, moving mom. You are the greatest. I love you all.

Special mention and appreciation to Bruce Paul Fink who worked with me to create the cover, the keys, the look for this book and more. What a process. I love co-creating with you.

Finally, GODD, thank you. I am so blessed with our friendship and the amazing process of co-creating this book with you.

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Prologue

Learning to Love Myself

In 1985, a new friend asked if I loved myself. The year before, Nancy had run for mayor of White Plains, NY. I had run for school board in the small, neighboring town of Dobbs Ferry, New York. Both of us were glad to have had the experience of being up for election even though we lost.

Much to my delight, Nancy proved to be a very spiritually aware person. One of the first times I was at her home, we walked out to her backyard to enjoy the spring’s warmth and sunshine. Nancy turned to me and asked, Do you love yourself? The memory is vivid because I had to answer, No, which shook me. Immediately, I realized I was missing something vital and basic to being the person I wished to be.

Around this time, Whitney Houston’s rendition of The Greatest Love of All was popular. This song reaches to a crescendo with

"I found the greatest love of all

Inside of me

The greatest love of all

Is easy to achieve

Learning to love yourself

It is the greatest love of all."

I loved the song, but my lack of self love was brought home every time I heard it.

I pondered, why? I liked myself and felt good about that. I knew plenty of people who didn’t like themselves. Some of what I liked had to do with the many roles I was playing. I had raised two healthy children as a single mother, both in their late teens at the time. I had recently earned a black belt in karate, something I loved and that was far from anything I ever expected to do. I owned my own home, had my own consulting business, and I was involved in my community. My spiritual life was evolving, although I was not giving as much time to that aspect of my life as I would have liked.

In the years after that backyard question, I felt haunted whenever I heard, Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all.

My Winter Crisis

My life sank into a deep low in early 1991. Late in February, I walked the few blocks to South Presbyterian Church in Dobbs Ferry for the Sunday evening vesper service. I hoped for solace within, with Spirit or in the church community—anything to keep me going. Sitting in the stiff wooden pew, I realized I felt no real desire or purpose to continue my life. Lacking the will to live is scary. Sitting in the near dark, I heard the word Listen. As the vesper service went on around me, I became more and more conscious of the critical thoughts going on in my head. As dusk turned to dark, I heard my inner voice spout negative comments about me and most of the other people who were