‘Love yourself’ is a motto of our days. It is spread across covers of magazines, emphatically discussed on the net and on the screen, and is the central message of much of the self-help literature. Surely it is good advice, sensible and straightforward to apply, with immediate and liberating benefits – at least so we are told. But do we truly understand what self-love means and what it entails?
It is easy to utter the words out loud and consider it done – ticked, I am loving myself now, all is good. But then, what actually is this about? How does self-love manifest? How do we even start to love our self if we can only glimpse at our self, let alone know the self entirely?
Several hurdles emerge when considering these questions, and when observing how self-love is commonly interpreted. Firstly, self-love is too often mistaken for self-centredness or selfishness, implying that my needs are the only thing I consider when I act, or that my needs are more important than the needs of other people (including the people we most care about). This, however, is an ego-attitude that misses the point that the person is more than their conscious personality: the self is much larger, deeper, richer than the ego, so much so that it reflects a collective experience of being. That is why self-love, in its spiritual sense, always goes hand-in-hand with greater love for everything else alongside our individual self. When I learn to love my self, I necessarily learn to love those parts of my self that mirror shared experiences with other living beings, and those parts that evidence patterns of being and acting inherited through ancestral lineage, and those parts that I feel so uneasy about that I project them onto something other than me. Self-love is really a love of the magic and mysteries of life: love of the matter that makes the body, love of the breath and the spirit that animates it, love of the soul that seemingly gives the body and the mind a sense of purpose. Self-love, then, is about humble reverence for the wonders of ‘just being’.
Secondly, self-love goes far beyond a superficial attachment to one’s looks, one’s skills, or one’s possessions. This, again, is an ego-attitude rather than a reflection of the self. Self-love transcends the present persona, the wishful thoughts and the harsh critical voices. Self-love tasks us with acknowledging our pretence and our masks; with admitting to our weaknesses and flaws, understanding where they come from and why they are so, and loving all of what we find out then because all this is the self. Self-love is also not about condoning our excesses or our lacks; rather it invites us to recognise that these are parts of our life experience which is meaningful in this moment. Therefore the judgment (‘I am good’, ‘I am not good’) becomes far less relevant than the ability to relate to the state itself which we are experiencing, whatever it may be: pride, joy, embarrassment, anger, fear, anxiety, excitement, inspiration, desire, shame… This suggests that self-love is not something we can think about or activate through the mind. It is truly a process that is located in the heart. Self-love is in fact love for the life that flows in and out of the body with each breath, that beats time and again in the chest and through the entire body, that creates and connects the thoughts, images, feelings and sensations that make our living experience such an inspiring path of growth and openness.
Observe what happens in your mind and in your body when you say ‘In this moment, I love myself’. Where do these words resonate? Where might they create discomfort or uneasiness? Why might this be?