True to Yourself

029: The Purest Love: Daily Mantra for Self-Love & Forgiveness with Ananta Ripa Ajmera

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Discover the purest love—self-love—and learn how to love yourself through ancient wisdom and daily practice. In this episode, host Ananta shares powerful affirmations for self-love, including the mantra "I love myself unconditionally," and teaches a simple hands-on-heart practice for forgiveness of yourself.

Topics include:

  • Self-love affirmations and mantras for daily practice
  • Learning how to love yourself after betrayal and trauma
  • Forgiveness and letting go of painful experiences
  • Self-love journal prompts for inner healing
  • Quotes about how to love yourself from the Bhagavad Gita
  • The purest love: discovering the true Self within
  • Pray for forgiveness meditative practice

Whether you're healing from codependency, seeking forgiveness of yourself, or looking for a book on how to love yourself (check out The Way of the Goddess: https://theancientway.co/wayofthegoddess), this episode offers practical wisdom for becoming your own best friend.


Resources:

Begin with Wisdom: The Way of the Goddess Book
“I very highly recommend it... I think anyone can benefit from its wisdom." Dr. Deepak Chopra: a.co/crHf7Wm

Get Grounded: Free Living Liberated Newsletter
Rituals and inspiration to stay steady and radiant in your purpose: theancientway.kit.com

Know Yourself: Free Chakra Healing Guide
Discover where your energy flows and where it’s blocked with actionable insight: chakrahealingguide.com

Heal Your Gut: Free Digestion Healing Guide
theancientway.kit.com/digestive-healing

Give from a Full Cup: Circle of Life Community
Grow alongside fellow givers: theancientway.co/community

Journey Deeper: Book a Free Discovery Call
calendly.com/anantaripa/discovery-call

Disclaimer: Resources are for educational and spiritual growth purposes only and are not a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Please consult your healthcare provider for medical conce...

SPEAKER_00:

Namaste, and welcome back to the True to Yourself podcast. I'm your host, Anan Taripa Pajamira. And today I'm going to talk to you about the purest love there is, and that is the love of the self. When we talk about self-love, it is such an important topic, and yet it's hard to know where to start. We think that love is something that we give to others and that we receive from others. This is really true. But actually, we often don't get to know that love is something that lives within us, that lives within our own heart chakra, and is always there for us to be able to access, to heal any part of ourselves that is in need of the love that comes from the self with a capital S. And this self that is within me is within you and is within all living beings, all plants, all animals, all of nature is vibrating with this frequency of the one self that is common to us all and that unites us all at a very, very deep level. And the interesting thing that we get to learn on the spiritual journey is that the way to know this true self with the capital S, this big self that is the common thread throughout the universe and throughout existence is by actually getting to know our own self. In the ancient wisdom of Ayurveda, one of the core principles is that we are a microcosm and the universe is the macrocosm. Anything, therefore, that you want to understand about the world outside the macrocosm, you will best understand by examining your own self, the microcosm. And similarly, anything that you wish to understand about yourself, you can look to nature to help you to unlock within yourself. And that's why Ayurveda as a science is so helpful to us in understanding our connection with the world around us through the presence of these five great elements. We're connected to nature through our common space, air, fire, water, and earth elements. We all have all of these elements, but they're all in different degrees and different proportions, and they combine in different ways to form what are known in Ayurveda as doshas. And when you know your kind of unique composition of these five great elements, you're able to really harmonize yourself with the world around you and also to understand more, even at an emotional level. The emotions vibrate at a frequency connected with these five great elements as well. When we talk about emotions like anger and frustration, they are really connected with too much of the fire element. When we talk about emotions like grief and really deep sadness, and also the emotion even of compassion and love, we are talking about the water element. And when we connect with the emotion of fear and anxiety, it's a lot of movement of the air element within the mind. And you know, when you look at nature, you see the air going through tornadoes and through hurricanes, and our minds literally through fear can create that kind of experience for our bodies, right? And our fear can translate into all kinds of problems at a physical level. Similarly, our anger can be seen in the outer world as the presence of a volcano erupting, right? And we can be like that volcano erupting like crazy, or this ball of sun shine, where when it's just the right amount, it's brilliant and you really are happy to have it. But when there's too much of fire, too much of sun, and it's just, you know, burning us, then we know that it's too much of the fire element, right? So that excess of fire is anger, and that creates a lot of havoc in our minds and bodies as well. I actually have gone through this amazing journey with the emotion of anger that I feel compelled to share with you a little bit about today myself. I had learned about ancient Vedic spirituality from a variety of teachers and lineages, and I feel very grateful for all the teachers I've had, genuinely. I feel that each and every teacher has really served me so well on my journey and approaching each one with the intention to really separate what I was being taught from the messenger of the teachings was part of what allowed me to go through some really devastating heartache and betrayal with the teachers I studied with. I had really, you know, idolized the teachers I had learned from, and I outsourced a lot of the love that lives in my own heart to such beings who I felt were bringing me closer to understand what is the nature of love, what is the nature of the self with a capital S in the universe that we are living in, and how do I connect with it? And I don't regret any part of that journey. I feel I had to go on that journey, and I had to then wake up through that journey to realize that the ultimate teacher is actually within ourselves. The real guru lives within you, within me. And I feel that it's the same with love, right? Like we go through our whole lives outsourcing love. We feel we need to get it from outside, we need to give it outside, but we forget that there's a self-regenerating fuel of love that's already there for us, right within the convenience of our own heart chakra. And once we know that this is actually where we need to be looking, it makes the journey a lot more efficient and effective to actually unlock what it is we're really looking for. I remember listening recently actually to an amazing podcast that Elizabeth Gilbert, the famous author of Eat Ray Love, had given with Oprah Winfrey about her journey of writing this extraordinary book about traveling to Italy and eating her way to find love, going to India and praying her way to find love, and then ultimately going to Indonesia and finding love in another human being. And then about how the aftermath, after becoming very famous and receiving love, right, and admiration from all sorts of humans from all over the world, and lots of money and accolades, and a film even made about her with Julia Roberts, and just the whole nine yards that you know any author probably would dream about, she ended up after that journey quite devastated on the inside. Here, all of the outer success had come to her doorstep, maybe rather unexpectedly. And rather than feel such joy and happiness and fulfillment at what was coming from the outside, she found herself actually leaving the relationship with the person she wrote about in the book and going to pursue a relationship with a drug addict. And it about how you know it was it was such a journey for her, even to then go and get some heroin or or whatever you know drug this person was addicted to for that person, and being told that the person giving it to her was such a big fan of epre love and not having a script for what to say when that happens and you're going to get drugs for your partner because she was so addicted to love. She had a love addiction, which is also known as codependency. And I feel that we all have this, you know, to a greater or lesser extent. A lot of us look to food, look to spirituality, look to romantic relationships or any kind of relationships, look to social media, look to other people's acknowledgement and praise to try to get that love that we're always looking for. But what's so important, I feel, on this journey is to be anchored in the knowledge of where love really lives. And I feel that having an opportunity in life to develop a relationship with your own higher self is the greatest opportunity that we can have as human beings to really start to connect with the true source of love, to stop going to other people like you know, we're hungry and they have the food that we need and realize, oh, the food that we want is actually right here. It's within ourselves, and we don't have to even order it, we don't have to wait for it. We just have to close our eyes and connect with ourselves and look within for it. And yet it's the hardest journey, right? It's the most convenient one because our heart is right within us, and yet we might travel miles and miles to study with different teachers, and certainly I've done that myself. So I speak about this from very painful and profound personal experience. But I feel that what you know changed everything for me is really being so diligent about separating the teachers from the teachings and really embodying the teachings. I was a very, very disciplined student. Every single thing I learned, I really practiced it. I basically lived a monastic lifestyle for many years. And I loved it because it was an opportunity to really experience the liberation that comes from discipline and that comes from actually connecting with the source of love and connecting with the divine within our own self. And through, you know, spending time really studying the spiritual texts, really listening to the teachings, deeply transcribing them, internalizing them, writing about them, reflecting about on them, and also sharing them eventually with people over time. It was such a transformational experience for me that I loved. I loved doing all the practices, waking up really early in the morning, chanting lots of mantras on a jappa mala, which is like a garland of rosary beads. I would do this water cleansing ritual. I actually still do a lot of these things. And it is something that I just you know got into such a rhythm with and doing a lot of selfless service and you know, the whole process of sitting with the truth, receiving the truth, listening to the teachings of the truth, I never would miss a lecture. And I would spend a lot of time internalizing it, practicing what I learned, and then you know, sharing about it through editing books, through doing different kinds of service projects for the school. And then, you know, abruptly, as I was completing the editing of a very, very powerful book, actually about discovering the sovereignty within yourself, I really got tested if I understood what it is I was learning about in this laboratory of spiritual teachings. And over time I really realized that the most important teachings that we know are signs of true spirituality awakening are when we can really practice detachment and discernment. Discernment of what is true versus what is false, discernment of what is going to be beneficial for us and also other people and what is not, right? And the detachment is the ability to let go of that which no longer serves us. And as I really, really surrendered to practicing these two primary disciplines, I got into a really tough few months, like a six-month journey of just one betrayal after another in this organization. And I didn't even have time to do all the elaborate practices that I loved to do and that I had done so diligently for so many years because I was being inundated with so many outer things I needed to do to basically help these teachers manage their lives. You know, they're they're really dependent upon me. And because I was somewhat addicted to love that came from from outside and from them, I was very much, you know, all about doing whatever it is I was asked to do, as per the ancient tradition of study with traditional teachers. And so I was very, very busy. I didn't have as much time to do the practices that I had come to really love and appreciate. But I developed a new practice during that tunnel of going through all this heartache and betrayal that really got me through. And that was just a really simple practice of placing my hands on my heart multiple times in a day. And I invite you to join me in doing this. Just place your hands on your heart, and we're going to silently repeat a self-love affirmation. It's very, very simple. I love myself unconditionally. I love myself unconditionally. I love myself unconditionally. And as I will do this, I would just observe whatever emotions were coming up. And it's like giving a hug to yourself, right? Like you feel your own heart. And I would feel sadness, I would feel some anger, I would feel, you know, just so many things. But it was my way to really connect with me through this process. And it was my way to really get to know my own heart, to get to know my own emotions, to know my own pain, to know my strength also. And also to practice forgiveness, right? Forgiveness is a quality of the heart. And it's something we can only give to another when we're able to extend it to ourselves first and foremost. And I had to really forgive myself for allowing myself to go through so much of punishment and abuse of different kinds and just, you know, being gaslighted, being manipulated. And and I, in doing that, actually came to a really important discovery that I had just basically recreated my own childhood trauma subconsciously to have an opportunity to rewrite the end of that script. And because I had gone through this journey of so much study and an intention to really live the teachings, not just digest them and absorb them and you know, approach them like a hungry animal, but to actually live them, to actually embody them. I through God's grace, right? There's a combination of our own self-effort and God's grace that I feel goes into everything, I really experienced an awakening to my own sovereign power to say no and to forgive with grace and also to set some really, really healthy boundaries for the first time, perhaps in my life in this particular classroom. And it was the beginning of learning on a whole new level what it meant to really be a spiritual warrior and what it meant also to really practice loving myself and to learn how to be a friend to myself, how to really become my own best friend. And that journey was hard, you know. That journey involved a lot of tears, a lot of internal searching, soul searching, really, really, you know, being with myself. I moved across the country, I started new work, and I started to then share what I had learned. And it was such an amazing experience because then I recognized, oh, maybe I'm doing some of the same pattern of people pleasing and you know, somewhere valuing the opinions and the contributions of other people who I'm serving more than uh being connected to myself. And so even after creating so much outside, I decided to go within and to really connect ever more with my own self and to, you know, sort of redo some of the practices that I had learned. I wrote this book, The Way of the Goddess, which is a journey through the nine chakras, and it's a journey that I developed based on what I had learned from my years of spiritual studies, and and it became my own roadmap for my own self. I feel that this has been and continues to be my own map for learning how to love myself and how to really become my own best friend. And I knew that even as I'm writing this for other people, technically, this is first and foremost my own personal transformation project. No matter what happens as a result of it, I am very committed to living this knowledge and to embodying this path, this way of the goddess. And boy, did I go through trials and tribulations as I set that intention. These teachers even had tried to stop the publication of my book. And I didn't let any of this affect me. It didn't affect me the way that it did before, simply because I had set that intention and I kept going back to it that this is not about proving myself, this is not about having a next eat pray love big, you know, success in the world. The success of this book is actually my linear, my being the book. I really feel that as authors, as teachers, as therapists and coaches, as parents, as leaders, as anyone who has the ability to influence and impact other people, whatever it is we are telling others and sharing with others and teaching and preaching is somewhere our own higher self actually giving us what it is we need for our own evolution and our own growth. And when we have the humility to really recognize that, to really embrace that, and to also carve out some time and space to digest what the heck that means and what it is I'm saying to others that I actually need to do more of myself and I need to, you know, constantly look at within myself. It ignites such an amazing journey of learning, of growth, of discovery, and of really, really true, profound healing. Part of the role of healers is to heal thyself, right? It's not about just simply helping others. I personally started learning Ayurveda, the world's oldest healing system and the sister science of yoga with the intention of helping others. I had no intention of actually doing it myself. I thought, oh, I'm fine. It's all about what I give, right? It's about how much we help others that we get valued and that we get rewarded, right, with the worldly things that come with being of service, right? Even having people say thank you. As simple as that, you know, and then as I got into writing books, I didn't even seek that out, but it came to me. And it could have totally become about what kind of attention I've got as a result of it. And I'm very grateful that my books have done really well in the world as far as, you know, whatever that means, as far as other people's benefiting from them and having genuine experiences of transformation with them. But as I observed in my teacher, they were teaching one thing and practicing another and totally miserable as a result. And I realized that, gosh, what they're teaching would help them so much. It's exactly what they need to learn. And as I'm saying that about them, I'm realizing that's what I'm doing as I write. That's actually the main thing is that I live this journey. And I am so happy that I set that as my intention because it's made me just ever open and eager to learn every single day. My dad always says that life is a learning curve every day. You learn something new. And I literally have learned something new every day of these past years of just, you know, learning what it means to even share this knowledge with you, how to do a podcast, how to, you know, be out in the world on social media, how to write books, how to get them published, how to, you know, actually follow through on my own promises to myself and to other people. And just having this focus on integrity, right? And on really like embodying what it is I'm sharing with other people. It's led me so, so deep into discovering so many different healing modalities as well. Most recently, I had been going locally for acupuncture sessions to help with some neck-related trauma that I've had due to a car accident I was in almost three years ago. And the acupuncture was amazing. The center has all kinds of different healers and all different kinds of sessions that you can benefit from. So they had homeopathic consult available where you could go for 15 minutes and have a free reading of your organs and see what may be needing some harmony and you know help, right? So I'm like, oh, this is cool. This is like my chakra healing guide that I help other people, you know, discover which of their chakras are needing some attention or maybe out of balance and how they can align it. And you can, you know, check that out in the show notes. I have a link to the chakrahealing guide.com. But this is like my chakra healing guide, you know, to go and have this doctor actually check out all of my organs and the energies connected to them. And it was so amazing what he discovered in terms of these really, really old programming of scripts that I had had since traumatic childhood experiences. I realized along my healing journey that I definitely recreated parts of my childhood in order to be able to be the sovereign author of the ending of that script. And I was very proud of myself for the way that I resolved the outer conflicts that I had with these teachers who had tried to really, you know, manipulate me to such an extreme degree. But it wasn't over just to have resolved it even in a better way with them. It was actually what I had internalized about that situation that needed to be literally rewritten. I teach a spiritual warrior program, now known as Become the Hero of Your Own Journey, to help people do exactly this, to rewrite the story of their own trauma through the lens of the hero's journey and through applying some of these ancient spiritual teachings to your very painful, you know, personal life situations. It was so amazing and so humbling to have someone offer me the opportunity to do that for myself. And after teaching this program, you know, twice, I sat down and literally was supported to rewrite the script of the trauma that had led me to this dark situation of betrayal and manipulation with outer teachers. And I'm like, wow, you know, I'm so glad that I was open to this and that I was ready for this because I had that intention and I had that understanding that whatever I'm doing for others is also something I need to be receiving from my higher self and from you know whatever sources are aligned with that in the outer world. And it was just so so beautiful and so amazing to be able to literally be guided in how to rewrite the way I internalized traumatic experiences in my own childhood. I have done this in my book, definitely, for a lot of the situations that I have been in, and it's been very, very liberating for me. But it was just amazing to have someone else actually help me with even deeper stories that go even further back than anything I have ever even written about. And oh, I can't tell you how much relief I have felt from that discovery of where this really deep-seated anger came from. I was having so many breakouts in my skin for all these years that of, you know, recovering from the abuse that I went through with these teachers. And yet it wasn't until I connected with this doctor that he could really, really take me right to that source of the trauma and rewrite a script that includes forgiveness of myself and forgiveness of the other, and an intention to really dissolve that karma that created that situation. Because on a spiritual level, nothing happens by accident. There's nothing random and there are no coincidences. We are always creating our life. And when we know this, when we know that every thought, every word, every action that we take is actually creating the seeds of the karma that comes to us in the future, we start to become really, really responsible beings and we become awake to not only our responsibility, but also the power then that we have in our own hands to write the story of our healing and to write the story of our hero's journey. And, you know, this experience of receiving the medicine that I give to others for myself and finally getting clear of all this heat in my skin that was creating all these recurring breakouts that I could not even solve, even though I have all this knowledge of Ayurveda, which helps so many people with skin. And even I have helped a lot of other people with their skin, but somehow mine was just, you know, continuing to be a problem. I got to the bottom of it and I was like, wow, you know, it's amazing how the universe brought this to me. And I also am just so grateful now to have this new community called the Circle of Life, where I am continuing to do this for myself, actually, first and foremost. Creating the Circle of Life community has been my gift to my own self. I have to say this because it is helping healers, therapists, coaches who are giving to give from a full cup and do so with ongoing connection that sustains them. I have met so many incredible healers, teachers, therapists, and coaches through my healing journey. And I've also met some really crazy ones that I, you know, got through a lot quicker than I did my original teachers because of what I had learned from that classroom. And I really, really strengthened my muscle of discernment and detachment. And in that process, I realized, gosh, I have all these great friends. You know, I have all these great people of all ages, of all walks of life, of all backgrounds and all different modalities of work. But what is the common thread between us all is this really, really deep-seated calling to be of service and to transform whatever pain and trauma we've gone through to be of service and to really, really help others in some way, and at the same time to continue to grow and evolve so that when even our work reaches a bigger scale and more people, we won't get so you know, disoriented by it that we will need some kind of outer dependency to cope with it, right? Because that is actually the shadow side, even of fame, even of success. And I feel more than Ever that it's the company that we keep, the satsangha, the connection with truth, that really sustains us on this journey and allows us to grow in deeper ways than we could do by ourselves. Because healing actually doesn't happen in isolation. It happens through connection and it happens through safety and through trust. And as I've rebuilt my ability to trust myself and to trust, you know, in who is trustworthy, right? Who is worthy of my trust. I have been so grateful to discover so many wonderful souls who have pure hearts and missions. And I felt that it's important to bring us all together because we're so often giving the love to others. And yet, you know, here's a space to receive that. Here's a space to come and share your hero's journey to share your story as your medicine and to share, you know, even about the pain that you've gone through with the lines of what it is you learned from it and how you grew as a result of it. Because we draw strength from stories, we draw strength from each other. And what we used to do in the Well, which is an amazing integrative wellness center, coming soon here to Miami, Florida, which is nearby where I live, is something called the like a grand rounds, where we would all, as practitioners of different modalities, look at patient case studies with the lens of our particular modalities and what we would say, you know, from that perspective. But we never did this for ourselves. So I decided to create a space where any healer, therapist, or coach can bring their own questions. It could be related to clients or patients, no doubt, but also your own questions, like, okay, this is coming to me, right? Like this person has this issue. What is that mirroring back to me? Because it always is. Nothing comes randomly, right? Everything is a teacher, everyone is a teacher. But are we awake to learning? What are we learning? And also how do we learn from each other? And how do we draw upon the collective wisdom that we all carry, right? So that it's not like a personality-based mission, but actually one that is inviting of a true sense of connection through community and people who have the same values. Another offering of this circle of life, as I call it, is a member-led workshop. Each month we have a workshop based on one of these nine themes of the heroes' journey that I take through through this podcast, through my book, and that has just become a life map for me. And this month in October, we're actually doing a special member-led workshop with my student Cheryl Montanis, who was my guest on the last episode of this show. And she talked about her heart healing transformation through the Heroes Journey program that she was with me in. And she actually is an emotion code certified practitioner. So I asked Cheryl to lead us in an emotion code member-led workshop. I'm personally so excited for it because it's all about releasing trapped emotions that have come in when we've had such overpowering experiences that our body literally could not digest them or process them. And so they get stored somewhere in our body and keep creating problems for ourselves in different ways or the same way and just over and over again, right? So as I've gotten cleared of many things, I'm still so excited to know, like, okay, is there something in my neck from the car accident trauma? Is there any fear, you know, that got in there because that was such an intense experience? Is there still anything more from my childhood that I need to let go of? Like I'm so excited to explore this and just, you know, get into releasing more and more of this. And, you know, really just walking this path of liberation. I love teaching about this because this is what I'm learning. You know, I'm learning to be the hero of my own journey in every possible way. And it's been such an extraordinary journey. And I really just my intention is also to extend this space that I've given myself, this permission that I've given myself to receive what it is I teach other people with all the healers, therapists, and coaches who are drawn to this type of container and to this type of circle for deepening into your own mission and your own healing in that process. And as we do so, we really learn to befriend ourselves first and foremost, because that's the medicine, that's the love actually that comes from deep within, that sustains us, that heals us, that transforms us, and that allows us to continue to give from a full cup, right? And have that ongoing connection. There's a lot of loneliness, I think, in those of us who give and heal. We can feel very isolated and misunderstood. I know I've even felt that way many times on my journey. And yet just knowing that there's other souls out there who are committed to this, right? Who are on it, who are with us in their own parallel universe, you know, doing this in their own way, I think just gives a lot of strength and a lot of comfort and a lot of upliftment to the soul as we continue to evolve ourselves and really become the best version of ourselves, right? And that's what this journey is all about. And I love how, you know, in the Bhagavad Gita, this great text of the yogic tradition, Lord Krishna has said to the warrior Arjuna on the battlefield, you must lift yourself by yourself. Do not lower yourself. Yourself alone is your friend. Yourself alone is your enemy. So whether you choose to be your friend, whether you choose to be your enemy, know this that it is indeed a choice. And together, let us continue to practice this beautiful self-love affirmation that I love myself unconditionally. Let anything come and go, let anyone come and go. But I love myself, I love the truth, I love liberation. And may that be our mantra, may that be our prayer of forgiveness of ourselves, of others, of anyone who's hurt us, of ourselves for hurting ourselves, of ourselves for internalizing some very self-defeating scripts and stories unconsciously due to not having processed the experiences of life. Let us just, you know, allow it all, accept it all, release it all, forgive it all. And if this resonates with you, I really would love to invite you to join us. You can visit the show notes and learn more about the community at theancientway.co. It is co I couldn't get the dot com, so it's co slash community, and you'll learn about the circle of life there. And you can book free interview with me. The first year of membership is actually totally free. So I really believe that this container and this kind of support needs to be there for everyone who's on this journey of trying to help others and heal yourself, no matter what your situation or if you've invested into your practice or your business and your funds are limited, it doesn't matter because your presence is the medicine, and this will just be available for you. So whenever you feel ready, I welcome you to benefit from it. We have a regular newsletter and all these rich offerings that I just shared with you about, and we're growing. So, you know, the more the merrier. Please feel free to join us. And also, I I offer these transformational programs based on both of my books, which are continuing to transform me first and foremost. One is starting up very soon, actually next week, called Take Health into Your Own Hands. It's an eight-week journey to really learn Ayurveda's incredible healing wisdom, to live in harmony with nature, to really practice loving yourself in a very tangible, practical, day-to-day sort of way. I also teach a program of 10 weeks called Become the Hero of Your Own Journey. And that's the journey that I'm on, you know, learning how to do that. And I learned a lot along the way, and I continue to learn a lot from all the wonderful souls who come through that journey. And it's it's available to you. So just please feel free to check out the website, theancientway.co not.com. And we will be so delighted to meet you and to welcome you into our ecosystem of offerings that are designed to really support you to know yourself, to love yourself, and to liberate yourself and be of the highest service you can be to this divine universe. And so, with that, I thank you so, so much for joining me on this episode of the True to Yourself podcast, a place where we explore the power of authentic living. I am your host, Ananda Repa Ajameh Namaste.

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