Do you Want to Love Yourself Really?

Whitney Houston sang: "Learning to love yourself is the greatest love of all."

 Currently Justin Bieber is on the radio with a very snarky song about loving yourself, as in it is a very self-centered, selfish thing to do. To give you a flavor of the song, one line is,

"My mama don't like you and she likes everyone!" 

 Well which one is it? Is it selfish to love yourself or is it necessary to love yourself? Is it the greatest love or is it the puniest? Is it self-absorbed and narcissistic? Or is it expansive and enlightened?

Perhaps the confusion comes from what is self-love? The original meaning was one of excessive attention to self, but now most of the dictionaries define self-love as looking after one's well-being. It is seen as positive and desirable. 

Many writers believe that self-love is not a feeling but rather actions that one takes to establish self-worth and well-being. 

I believe that self-love is closely related to self-esteem and self-respect. I agree that if you don't love yourself, it will be very hard if not impossible to love someone else. When my self-love is solid, I am a good friend. I can take criticism and negativity with greater ease than if I am feeling emotionally fragile.

The aspect of me that gets in the way is my inner critic. You likely have one of your own. The inner critic always makes me feel small and incapable. The most difficulty I have in maintaining my self-love, and staving off the inner critic, is when someone tells me I am not doing a good enough job and I secretly agree with them!

A recent incident catapulted me into rigorous self-inquiry. What am I making this mean? What can I learn about myself and my habits that would help me live  a more self-confident life?

I hear myself saying things I SHOULD have done! With every SHOULD I give away my self-respect. One of my early teachers taught me to change the "should" to COULD. That certainly brings more clarity while maintaining  a shred of dignity. So instead of, "I should have called my Mom." I could change it to  "I could have called my Mom but something else took precedence."

I believe it is valuable to do things you are good at. It is valuable take some quiet time for observation and reflection. Self-love does not mean over-spending, over-eating or over-indulging. Those are all kinds of self-contempt.

Now the truth about it is that you and I are made in the image of Spirit, whole complete and perfect in every way. One of my favorite and most-powerful affirmations is four simple statements of Truth: 

"There is only One Life.  That Life is God's Life. That Life is perfect. That Life is my life now."

 I think the world would be a much lovelier place in which to live, if we all practiced one act of self-love every day. I stumbled across the following poem which I think is exactly what I am attempting to say. It is by Suzy Kassem, titled "Apply Within."


You once told me
You wanted to find 
Yourself in the world -
And I told you to
First apply within,
To discover the world
within you.

You once told me
You wanted to save
The world from all its wars -
And I told you to
First save yourself
From the world,
And all the wars
You put yourself
Through.

Training the Puppy

The only puppy I have ever had was a beautiful Saint Bernard puppy whose name was Elsie. It was the worst possible time for me to learn how to train a puppy, especially one who would grow so big. I was a newly-wed and also in my first career as a middle school teacher, having finished college in August, I landed a great job and got married that autumn. I had so much to learn and an equal amount to do. I had very little time to be at home. 

Meanwhile Elsie was adorable. She had a sweet temperament but we were ill-equipped to have the responsibility of a dog. Needless to say, there was very little training going on for Elsie. She was training us and not the other way around. 

Within a couple of months, my husband and I could both see that neither of us were able to give her the kind of home that she needed. We were living in a two-bedroom duplex, fairly cramped quarters for what would become a very large dog. She would sit beside the coffee table and with one friendly wag of her tail everything would be swept onto the floor. She rarely had a walk never mind a run! We eventually found a farmer  who said he would take her and look after her, that he had lots of room for her to run and play with his other dogs. All the guilt I had been feeling for not giving her the kind of home she needed evaporated when I thought of her running with the other dogs. That was the fantasy and it helped me cope with my feelings of inadequacy.

We use the metaphor of "training the puppy" to help us learn how to bring awareness to our minds in meditation. We know that a puppy that is loved and trained will grow up to be a wonderful companion. We also know that a dog who has been beaten, mistreated or neglected ends up being an anti-social, mean, unpredictable dog.

It is the same for your mind. If in meditation, you set impossible standards for yourself, scolding yourself for not attaining enlightenment in the first week of meditation you are simply delaying the benefits of meditation. If you can bring gentleness, kindness and love to your thoughts, your body and your feelings, you will see benefits in your life. And nothing is going to happen if you do not make a decision to "train the puppy."

The whole point of meditation is to awaken to the truth of life. It is to see that all life is interconnected. We begin to see that the only love we can give to others, is the love that we first give to ourselves. 

Many people find it difficult to accept and love themselves just the way they are. Our inner voices are often harsh and critical; we have an inner terrorist. What we really are longing for is acceptance and love.

Start today. Give yourself a modest goal, perhaps five minutes. Notice your thoughts, without judging them. Be kind to your thoughts. Be kind to yourself. It is a very good way to start.