What Does It Take to Love Yourself?
Who do I love…when I’m talking about loving myself?
There’s a lot said about self-love. We’ve been told that it’s important. Self-love is the ticket out of shame, guilt, depression and hopelessness. But the more self-aware we become, the more craziness we’re aware of in ourselves…and the more challenging self-love seems. When we become aware of the nastiness of some of our thoughts, it may feel hard to imagine embracing that.
But is this the “self” we need to learn to love?
With self-awareness, we see that our minds are constantly judging our selves and others. A banter of fear-mongering self-talk is in the background of our inner worlds most of the time. Is any of this inner dialogue familiar to you?
Why did ya do that, you idiot?
You’ve got to be kidding – you look really fat in those!
Jeesh, I’ll never be good enough to do what he did….
A meditation practice helps one to become aware of the constant mental evaluating that goes on. The mind excels at defining our separateness from others and rating our own existence, over and over again. It’s a babbling, inner stream of unconsciousness that takes us out of truly experiencing the present moment.
But we are not the mind.
A meditation practice helps clarify that fact. In the gap between thoughts, there is a silent presence that witnesses the thoughts. This witness is consciousness itself. It is who we are in our essence. It is universal, eternal, and in that essence, we are One. In that eternity within, there is unconditional acceptance, peace, generosity, joy, curiosity, wisdom, creativity, safety, comfort, security…all the qualities of genuine love.
Loving yourself unconditionally comes automatically when we stop identifying with the ramblings of the mind.
Love, in fact, is the nature of our essence – therefore, when we identify and connect with our authentic essence, there is only lovability to experience. There is only lovability in that gap between thoughts.
Be with a baby if you need to understand why we are, in our essence, naturally lovable and love itself. A newborn baby lives in the moment, expressing itself authentically before its soul is entrapped by societal conditioning.
Many things can help release us from the prison of our inner chatter.
Meditation, music, creating art, dancing, basking in nature, Oneness Deeksha and other forms of energy transmission and energy medicine. Our consciousness is kind of like teeth that need to be brushed everyday….without brushing, the gook of over-thinking builds up, clouding clarity, dampening joy, and keeping us from experiencing the naturally buoyant bliss and peace of our true nature.
To love oneself is to see that it is our human nature to have crazy-talking mental chattering. To love oneself is to intimately know the eternal self…that Higher Self which is our divine, ever-present essence.
Loving one’s self is really about making a shift from identifying with the chatterer within, to connecting with the powerful, sacred, inner witness who sees without judgment.
