Uncovering the Unknown A Deep Dive into the Transformative Journey of Self Love By Wani Iris Manly

Hello. Hello. Close your eyes, please. I want everybody to close your eyes and to take a deep breath. Take a deep breath, settle in, and I want you to say to yourself, "I love you. I love you. I love you." Repeat these words 2 to 3 more times and notice how you feel. Notice how this feels in your body. And now open your eyes. What we don't know yet is how to love ourselves. And this is to no fault of our own. We've been programmed to believe that love is something outside of us, and that we are here to get love from other people. First, from our parents, then from other family members and caregivers, then from our siblings, our teachers, our friends, and then our marriages and relationships. Not knowing that this love paradigm actually sets us up for many problems later on in life. It creates lack of self-esteem, or low self-esteem. It creates low self-worth. It creates problems in relationships. It creates mental anguish, mental illness, divorces, and sometimes suicide. From the moment we're actually born, not only are we conditioned to believe that love is actually outside of us, but that we're actually here to give love in order for us to actually receive love, making the whole concept of love to be performative, to be conditional. And this leaves us feeling inadequate, it makes us feel insufficient, we're feeling not enough, and we're walking around feeling unworthy. And then, when we get to a point in our lives where life actually humbles us, and we find ourselves, like, on this personal path of personal development, the spiritual path, and we discover that we don't actually love ourselves, and actually, like, the lack of self-love within us is actually one of the major reasons for so many problems in our life, we're completely at a loss. We're then having to point to actually go on a self-awareness journey to figure out how do we actually love ourselves, and we have no idea where to even begin. We are completely at a loss. Yet this fundamental and human need, the desire for love, is essentially what is driving every single action within our life. The first time I was actually made aware that I didn't love myself, it was actually in Miami. I was in an elevator with a good friend of mine named Linda, and there was a guy also in the elevator with us. He began to flirt with me, and according to my friend Linda, I was actually clueless. And she told me I didn't even notice. And when he exited the elevator, she looked at me and she said, "Wani, why don't you love yourself?" And I was very caught by surprise, and I said to her, I was like, "What do you mean I don't love myself? Of course I love myself. When people tell me that I'm beautiful, I see it. Of course I love myself. I know what they see." Linda, however, didn't believe me, but she let it go. She could see that at that time in my life, that I wasn't quite yet ready for that moment of truth. However, She planted the seed, just as I actually am here on the stage for you right now, planting the seed for you. Let me see a show of hands. When you were growing up in your household, how many of you heard from your parents regularly to love yourself? Wow. Let me see the opposite. How many of you, when you were growing up, actually heard, "It's love your brothers and your sisters, love your neighbor, it's better to love other people to get love"? Let me see a show of hands. I'm not surprised. Everywhere I've asked this question, it's literally the exact same— it's the same condition I always get, where it's like it's the other way around. And you know why? The reason is because we've all been plugged into this whole indoctrination of actually love is outside of us, and we actually are here to get love from other people. So when we come across these rare individuals on the planet who actually love themselves, we don't even like them, you know? We actually cannot stand them. We— right? We hate them, right? I mean, if we're really truly honest with ourselves, we call them names, we say they're self-centered, that they're selfish, they're conceited, that they're arrogant, and dare I even say it, we call them narcissists. Who's heard that before, right? Not knowing that these individuals actually had it right all along, and we're the ones that's actually been duped. However, at a time right now where we've had like a global pandemic that has actually placed our mental illness, our mental anguish at actually center stage, and we're in a crisis situation, we now are all realizing we all have to go on this whole inner work journey of actually loving ourselves, right? Loving ourselves is no longer a nice to have, it's no longer negotiable, it's actually become a must have because right now our very survival Survival depends on it. The first time I heard the command to love myself was well into adulthood, and again, it was in Miami. I was sitting in a spiritual retreat with a very good-looking British handsome teacher from England. He was raised to be England's next prime minister, but he was my spiritual teacher. He actually went to the same prestigious Eton College as Prince Harry and Prince William. Prince William, the future King of England. And he said, "Love yourself," and I actually sat there very perplexed, but I did exactly what I said for you all to do when I first walked onto the stage, which was to sit there and just to say to yourself, "I love myself," right? And I sat there doing this, and I felt absolutely nothing. And I'm sure probably most of you probably felt nothing when I asked you to tell yourself you love yourself either. As I sat there to repeat it to myself in that room in Miami, it felt very fake. It didn't feel true at all, and there was no connection to it whatsoever. In fact, it didn't resonate at all. And I began to say it, and it wasn't— and it still wasn't resonating, and it wasn't until I began to really look into the why. That is, why is it so important for me, for you, for us to really love ourselves? Like, why is it so important? Like, what's the big deal about it anyway? And when I began to actually look into this, what I actually found was quite profound, and it changed everything. Number one, I discovered that loving ourself is super important because the most important relationship you will ever have in your life is the relationship you have with yourself. Even if you're married, if you've got one kid, two kids, 17 kids you have to take care of, you will always be with you until your very last breath. Wherever you go, there you are. And as if to say, like, that wasn't profound enough, I also discovered that the relationship that we actually have with other people is significantly tied to the relationship of how much we actually love ourselves. So which means the people you're attracting into your life, that is actually the relationship you actually are encountering into, is really— it's directly related to the quality of relationship you have with yourself. The second thing that I actually discovered was that it was super important for us to love ourselves because it was actually determining the fact that we were actually attracting our lives. So which means that our point of attraction for everything we're receiving in our life or not receiving in our life is literally a direct reflection of actually how much we love ourselves. And I want to tell you something: loving yourself will yield the most incredible and the most amazing results in your life. And the reason being is because love is the most powerful force and vibration there is. Let me tell you something. If you actually truly loved yourself, if you fully were in love with yourself— we're not talking about vanity here, we're talking about cherishing yourself, respecting yourself, walking around this planet saying, "I matter to myself"— you will actually attract the most incredible people in your life who will love you even more and be even more in love with you, who will adore you and who would do everything you've ever asked them to do. To do. What's more, you will actually find yourself really achieving and creating and attracting everything in life so easily, so much so that if you are a man, people will actually accuse you of actually being part of the Lucky Sperm Club, or if you're a woman, tell you or accuse you of actually having the Lucky Girl Syndrome, not realizing that in this life, we don't get what we want. We actually get who we are. And what they're observing within you is the connection with the universe and how much you're loving yourself, and actually, it's the universal law that's actually being played out of the law of attraction. Number 3: Loving ourselves is very critical to the state of the planet and to world peace. Sadly, we're living in a state of the world right now which is a direct reflection of how much or how little we don't love ourselves, let alone other people. Look around in any country in the world right now. Look and see what's actually is really going on at any level, in any frame. What we're seeing is like how little we love ourselves, number one, or how much we don't love each other, little don't love each other. You see, you can't give to someone else what you yourself don't already have within you, and you most certainly cannot love thy neighbor as thyself, which by the way, It is a complete verse in teaching of that. So once you actually see how critical loving yourself really actually is, how really it's really determining everything in your life, and how it's really critical for you to be loving yourself, your attention then now turns to the how. That is, how do I love myself? And my friends, the answer is, is quite simple. It starts with you telling yourself on a daily basis, again and again, you love yourself. Affirming and reaffirming again and again that you love yourself with great intention, with great devotion, with the intention of actually embodying this. Letting the words "I love you" be the most familiar words your mind hears on a daily basis, overriding all of your "I can't," "I'm not good enough," "I'm not smart enough," "I'm not pretty enough," or whatever limiting beliefs that your mind keeps telling you on a daily basis that you actually are believing and is acting negatively impacting your life. I know it sounds super simple because, you know, as human beings, we like to be very complex and complicated, and we're always looking for the most difficult and the most sophisticated answer or solution whenever it comes to a problem, specifically here in France. I mean, I'm an American, we like things very simple, but I find here in Paris and France, this is very complicated, right? But I want you to know something: your words have immense power. It has tremendous power. Our words are so significant, so powerful, that it literally has the power to actually change the human psyche and also to transcend human consciousness. So say to yourself you love yourself every single day, again and again, with great devotion and emotion. As you begin to say the words "I love you," and you begin to really embody this, and you really begin to emanate with you, every single cell in your body will actually hear this. Your entire molecular body within you will actually change, and your cells will begin to actually transform and your life will— what you'll find is your life actually drastically reflecting your new higher state of inner being. Now, if you're sitting there and you're very skeptical about all of this, then I would like to introduce you to the work of the late Japanese scientist, Dr. Masaru Emoto, who did an experiment with water proving exactly what I'm actually talking about. What he did was he did an experiment to where he took some water and he placed positive words of affirmations next to the water of love, okay? And he observed and he recorded to see what types of water crystals were going to be formed. And then he also looked very, like I think with classical music as well, with Bach. And then he actually took a different set of water to where he placed negative words, like words of evil and words of hate and dislike, and I think it was like heavy metal music. And he began to actually observe to see the type of water crystals that was actually being formed when positive words of affirmation was spoken near water versus negative words of words of hate were actually spoken. As you can see here, there's quite a very difference in terms of what the water crystals look like in terms of, like, in terms of what's actually spoken. Now, imagine if this can actually happen to water, imagine if you were telling yourself on a daily basis for a period of time how much you love yourself, again, that you love— if this is actually going to happen to water, what this will actually do with you within your own body, who's actually made up of over 70% water, as well as the Earth. Make no mistake, loving yourself and telling yourself on a daily basis how much you love yourself will change everything for you. So again, let the words "I love you" be the most familiar words that your mind hears on a daily basis. Now, I want to caution you with something. As you begin to do this practice, and I'm essentially invoking every single one of you in here today to actually take me up on this, I want you to be very patient with yourself and to be very kind and understanding, okay? Listen, you're not going to love yourself in one night, okay? It's not going to happen like in one swift, okay? Because here's the thing: you've been telling yourself that you hate yourself or don't like yourself, you've been very, very critical of yourself your entire life, right? And so it's going to take some time when this is actually going to be really embodied within you, and you won't actually be doing this anymore. So really be patient with yourself and say it again and again with intention and with devotion. Now, if you're one of those people where the critical voices within you is just too much, and you find it's just too much of a stretch for you to be saying to yourself, "I love you," if you're not feeling from it, then you can start with, "I allow myself to love myself." You can say to yourself, I am willing to love myself. I am willing to love myself more than I ever have in my life. I am willing to love myself more today than I did yesterday. I am willing to love myself whenever. Okay? Say these words to you again and over and over and again and again, and watch what happens within your own life, within your own body, how it's actually going to transform, of what's actually going to happen, not only within your own life, but within the communities, within your families, and imagine we have been to create after that, or from that, I should say. Now, besides the words, I want you to also to make the emotion, the feeling of love that you feel on a daily basis as well too. Let that be the dominant feeling of what you feel on a daily basis. Let me tell you something. The feeling of love, the emotion of love is 100% within you, and it's within your control. It's not outside of you. You don't need somebody else or something else to actually happen, no other external force for you to actually feel love. You can 100% generate love within you, and that's the reason why is because who you are is pure love. Your pure essence is actually love. And when you truly begin to say this to yourself and you begin to really embody this and to really feel it and to really begin to love yourself and to cherish yourself and to know like you have a place on this planet that you're on this planet and you actually matter, you're going to find your life changed tremendously, and you're going to find out what one of the greatest poets of our time, Oscar Wilde, actually said to us and gifted to us. That is, "To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance." Thank you. Merci.