Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these. ~ Jesus of Nazareth
I was 8 years old when I was first taught Catholic ideals, coupled with a strange mix of shamanic teachings. The above passage from the bible was my first taste of the concept of Self-Love.
My teacher Don Angel saw my confusion and explained: “This is where we vary from Catholicism. We learn to love ourselves alongside Mother earth. How can you love your neighbour as yourself if you don’t love yourself first?” It took me a few years to understand what he meant.
As I grew older I observed how common it was for people to advise others who were struggling with themselves to “accept who they are in order to live happily”. I’d observe that many would take this advice on board; they’d build up enthusiastic momentum, but something would happen. Their enthusiasm would fade, and they returned again to their old patterns.
Self-Love is at the core of learning anything that will improve your life. If you don’t have enough esteem for yourself, what will motivate your pursuit for a better you?
Loving Others Requires Selfishness
It sounds like a paradox, but unless you’re selfish, you cannot be altruistic. Unless you’re capable of truly and honestly loving yourself first, even the darkest side of your being, you can never love somebody else.
Egotism and selfishness are preached in all societies as sinful behavior. We encourage the virtues of self-sacrifice towards a ‘greater good’. History, (including many modern films), is plagued with stories of the individual hero’s willingness to sacrifice his life for the survival of a group or collective of people. If these ‘selfless’ virtues hadn’t been imposed, none of our societies would have prevailed.
The truth is that the purpose of our society’s social conditioning is to preserve and develop society as a whole, not to allow individuals to reach their full potential, or get what they want if that will affect the basic structure of society.
The virtue of Selflessness essentially allows for the physical survival of the collective, but not for the soulful and peaceful happiness of the individual.
First we must be able to truly see through this conditioning if we are to make any change to our life through Self-Love. As a theory, Altruism implies that the purpose of life is to serve other people. What are these people you are serving doing here? They are here to serve you. Doesn’t it make more sense to serve yourself in what you truly want instead of what others think that you might want, just as long as it doesn’t result in violence, chaos or death?
Otherwise we have a situation where the blind are guiding the blind. But someone must be ‘selfish’ enough to learn how to see first, to learn how to read a map (even if reading will give him individual ‘power’ above the rest) in order to guide others.
If you can’t love yourself – where your love originates from in the first place – how will you ever be capable of true altruism, or of loving anybody else? You can’t give away that which you don’t actually have.
Selfishness Does Not Mean Egotism
On the surface it’s understandable how the word ‘Self-Love’ could be confused with the words ‘Egotism’ or ‘Narcissism’. But this couldn’t be further from the truth.
A person who loves themselves wants to become the best they can be, they want to explore themselves using techniques such as Involution in order to see their faults, deepen their lives, and in doing so they discover how harmful gaining their self worth from the ego can be.
We are taught to believe that being “selfish” will jeopardize society as a whole – regardless of what you actually do – so it is condemned unconditionally. This attitude is evident when we describe the behaviour of a person who succeeds at the expense of the well-being of others, with words like ‘selfish’. But this isn’t selfish, this is foolish and idiotic!
A person with mindful Self-Love is aware that they aren’t actually looking after their own interests if they step on other people, because they’re causing pain and suffering while also creating enemies and negative consequences in the long term, which makes life a lot more difficult for them. This behaviour is actually Self-Destructive, which is the complete opposite of selfish Self-Love.
Also, is there any such thing as Altruism, really? The actual act of helping other people does benefit us: it makes us feel good. In a way Altruism can also be thought of as a ‘selfish’ act, which in a way is what we want. If you truly love yourself you want to take care of yourself. It’s only self-hating egotistical people that harm themselves physically or mentally.
Self-Love has nothing to do with egotism. On the contrary, the desire for honest self-exploration requires immense respect and love for yourself. Egotism revolves around the ego, and the ego depends upon the respect of others, not yourself.
Active Authenticity
You can’t just decide to suddenly feel good about yourself. It will never work.
As I mentioned in my previous Self-Understanding article, there are two important elements to Self-Love; love and respect for yourself. But don’t make the mistake of confusing self-love with feeling love and respect for yourself by itself. The way you behave is just as important.
Incongruent living is exhausting. Many of us claim we love and respect ourselves, yet we work in jobs we don’t find fulfilling, we don’t take care of our bodies or minds, and we ignore the exploration of our deeper selves to find out who we truly are. Self-love is action, not just believing or feeling it, but proving it with your being. The more active you are and the more you practice, the greater the feelings of Self-Love you’ll experience.
Here are some suggestions you can use to begin your cultivation of active Self-Love:
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- Take care of your body: Everything you do in life begins first with your physical well-being, from mental to spiritual matters. Be nice to your body. Stay in good shape. Don’t poison, abuse or neglect it. The only way you can be authentically you is if there’s no interference from external physical factors such as grogginess, bad moods, fatigue, hangovers or ill-health.
- De-construct who you think you are: You may idealize being an artist and waste your life trying to become one without finding fulfillment. Alternatively, you might be naturally artistic yet fail to understand and measure the difficulty of following that career. One of Buddha’s observations applies perfectly here in that the main cause of suffering is our desires, that is; wanting to be something other than what we truly are, or the constant attempt to escape our own intrinsic nature in both what we are, and what comes naturally to us.
- Be true to your emotions: We all carry around an incredibly ‘fragmented’ individual self within us. A person who is afraid or who has not honestly faced their anger, or their sexuality, or their controlling tendencies, or their fear, or their jealousy, and so on, tends to handle adversity poorly. People who have psychological breakdowns do so because they ignored or rejected too many parts of their personalities. Be authentic to your emotions, if you’re sad, accept it and allow yourself to be sad. Don’t pretend to be happy, to smile and put on social masks.
- Respect your surroundings: Respect everything from the environment that you live in, to the little mushrooms that push their way through the ground at your local park. Respect everything and everyone around you.
- Cultivate knowledge and qualities: For example, you could try furthering yourself with skills, languages, abilities and art crafts you are interested in. Feeling as though you have a variety of skills is a great way to build your self-esteem. Are there any qualities you admire in other people, for example: compassion, generosity, humour, thoughtfulness? Cultivate and improve these qualities within yourself.
- Respect your time: Put aside the action that provides immediate gratification for the action that bestows you with long term benefits. Spend time pursuing things that build a better future for you, rather than running around doing aimless activities that provide momentary stimulation.
- Don’t confuse indulgence for self-love: In the marketing age that we live in, we’ve been taught that buying ourselves ‘things’ is the best way to prove how much we love ourselves. While rewarding yourself when you’ve achieved something every so often is a good idea, don’t confuse things like seeking comfort from your fears through food or material objects, with that of acts of self-love.
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Cultivating Self-Love is essential if you ever hope to improve your relationship with yourself and the people around you.
Are there any activities that you find help you increase love and respect for yourself? Please feel free to share them below!
THANK YOU!!!!!
Thank you, Thank You, Thank YOU.
Hi Mateo,
If find your article very interesting, But there are specifically two points on which I find rather confusing. Those are “Deconstruct who you think you are” and “Be true to your emotions”.
I am really troubled about how “Deconstruct who you think you are” is presented. Some may not necessarily idealize being an artist, but perhaps that is what they would ultimately love to do (luckily not myself). But what about if it doesn’t come natural? It means that they have to stop trying? Who else but oneself know who we are, or at least try to find out by ourselves. Denying us the delight of pursuing our passion just because it is not an intrinsic skill or gift or however you want to call it, does not mean we/they have to call it quits.
In regards to “Be true to your emotions”, I can understand that ‘doing peace’ with our flaws is good, however, ‘if you are sad, accept it and allow yourself to be sad’, or in the same line ‘ jealous and be jealous’, ‘controlling’.. and so on. I am not sure if we are to let go of our emotions, in fact, we should not let go of destructive emotions. One cannot tell a Depressive person “allow yourself to be sad”, it is a ticket to let them give in to their illness. Same with the rest. It worries me that this article doesn’t exhort to try to conciliate with our emotions, nor advises to try to change the ones who are detrimental to our character.
Just my humble opinion..
Thank you for the rest of the article.
Best,
Karla
Lately I’ve been getting stuck on the idea of figuring out ‘how to love myself’, all the while realizing that there’s no real instruction manual for this. However I found this article to be one of the best conceptualizations of self-love. It really made sense to me. Thank you guys so much for sharing your wisdom with us all, I’m genuinely grateful.
Thank you for this article! I enjoyed it and also learned lots!
I agree that you cannot love someone before loving yourself because everything in this world is ultimately a reflection of your mind. To me, loving others and having compassion for others is the same as having it for yourself. We are all one, and to separate yourself from someone else is the act of separating a shadow or dark part of your psyche from yourself.
There’s a wonderful exercise in ‘projection’ where we reverse any negative thoughts we have on others onto ourselves; “She’s so judgmental” becomes “In fact, I’m so judgemental as well” or “She’s so whiny” becomes “I’m so whiny”.
Our interconnection between others and ourselves is impossible to define where others end and we begin in this conscious reality. I’m happy to hear my article resonated with your experience Tash.
I’m wondering if the word “selfishness” can be interchanged with “self-preservation”.
Hola Alex,
That would be an adequate synonym. Often ‘Selfish’ people however don’t realize that it’s in their best interest for self-preservation that they don’t behave in a selfish way, as more often than not it becomes a hindrance in aspects of their preservation (quality and level of connection in relationships).
I found carrying the burden of rejection , hurt and all other baggage that tore at my self esteem too difficult to live with , silent anger is more harmful that voicing it sometimes , most people look outside of themselves at ‘those’ they see as the ones causing the pain and loss of esteem and self love in ‘ oneself ‘
It’s when one realizes they hold the key to their own happiness , no one can avoid hurt , pain bought by thoughtless words / actions but i found one can put down that burden they carry , release , forgive and walk with a head held high , as Gandhi quoted ‘ I will not let anyone walk through my mind with dirty feet ‘ , sometimes easier said than done . that’s when the beautiful energies of self love swoop in and give you the biggest warmest feeling of love. I remember with much joy and gratitude the first time i viewed myself as an awesome magnificent spiritual being having a human experience , that all living are the same , some just don’t know it . the first time I saw myself through loving eyes i cried , i cried and i cried again . tears of compassion for myself and the understanding it was only me that allowed myself to feel so inadequate , believing i was worthless and allowed myself to believe it. many years later i wink as i pass the mirror , not in vanity but in the knowledge of who i /we / us / all really are . sometimes being slapped with truth is better than being kissed with a lie .the truth is love is the only thing that cannot be created , we are just that , the human mind and conditioning dictates the lie of superficiality , blind to our true existence . the still small voice within whispered that selfish is good when viewed as ‘self is shhhh ‘ sometimes shhhh is needed , your time, taken without guilt just for yourself , we are quick to praise others , lift others up , help others and doing that for self is the best kind of love one can give to oneself . as an old soul i have learned if you cant love yourself how can you love others . I hope for all to view themselves as the most amazing magnificent creation and see that also in all that one encounters .
Thank you for such a lovely site to encourage up liftment and unity in creating a better self/world .
That is the true miracle that shifts inside, that changes the entirely way we look at the world.
Yours is a great example of the power the lies hidden within us waiting to be awoken by our spiritual journey, I thank you for sharing it with us.
Dear Mateo,
First of all, I want to thank you for all your amazing and healing articles.
I would like to tell you the story of my life: Since I am a kid I’ve been abused physically and psicologically. I grew up in a family full of prejudices, so it could never be talked about (people in my family would prefer to ignore it and to be blind and deaf about my situation, even if all knew it all) at the end my mother was their sister and I was nothing… and I find myself trying to resolve on my own all those issues. I tried with psichologists, but it never worked out.
I lived the kind of abusing relations again and again as a grown up (I’m 42) until I loved someone for the first time and he loved me, it was a few months ago… Then I realised of the lie I had lived in my whole life. I find myself now finding my origins, travelled to the city I was born in and got my birth certificate from where I could find the hospital and my first home (my mother would never help me).
Unfortunately the relationship finished, but I could only say to him that I loved him and that whatever he did and with whoever he would be would made me happy, as long as it made me happy, he was as amazed as I was after saying that. At the end, I am really grateful because he made me aware of something nobody had been capable to, which is my self awareness and worth. I am so sorry for so many guys who tried before…
And from then on, I try to find the way in which I can dettach myself from this feeling of unworthiness that was created when I was a kid, but even if I have learnt how to meditate and I practice it every day, even if I am devoted to my favourite sport which is fencing and I can see the improvements day by day, even if I give the best of myself in my job, which I really love… there is a strange kind of darkness in my life from which I would like to break free.
I know we are more than our body and experiences, that we are a soul, that we are divine…. but still there is something there that does not go right… I would define it like a sort of insecurity, fear… I don’t know… and I can’t quite figure out how to overcome it… what do you think? Is there any hope for me?
Hola Me,
That is quite the incredible journey you’ve had so far, not necessarily good or bad, but a difficult one.
Our families can often be our worst enemies, as we cannot choose them and we feel an innate sense of emotional connection with them making it all the more complex. They unknowingly influence our whole developing years and many never come to the fortune, like you, to break free from that trap by awakening to influence.
From what you’ve told me, it sounds like you’ve found positive activities that encourage the cultivation of appreciation for yourself, your body and mind but there is no active deconstruction occurring.
Sports provide physical health, a sense of purpose/meaning to some degree (depending how passionate and involve you are in it) and meditation allows for the gap of silence between the divine you and the mind to become larger and larger. But the fact is, the mind is still burdened with heavy unprocessed unconscious weight. Our spiritual development does not occur at the same time as our psychological one, they occur on different levels and speeds.
I’ve come across many of our Involution students who were making large leaps through the spiritual work but, all of a sudden, they’d enter great depressions or chaotic states of mind because their psyche had not been worked on prior to pursuing their spiritual goals.
My suggestion to you would be to find ways to process that unconscious side of yourself. Write in a notebook your thoughts and feelings, ask yourself questions….how you think your family has affected you, in what ways. If you hold and grudges, why do you think they have done what they did?
Also, begin exploring your shadow self. Our shadow selves control our unconscious minds, just as our lighter selves control our conscious world. I’ve written an article on the subject: https://lonerwolf.com/shadow-self/ .
I look forward to hearing how your journey progresses, let me know if there’s any other way I can help.
You mentioned… right now we are de-constructing what we’ve been taught for the last few centuries either from politicians or from priests.
I have always believed that my lack of self love had everything to do with my self esteem and such? My self esteem has always been a major issue with me.
Hola Babette!
Your Self-Love does have to do with your self-esteem and self-worth, but one of the elements that has affected your self-esteem the most is your surroundings.
We are all born loving ourselves. At some point during development we grow insecurities and fears of judgment that takes that away. This can come via cruel children in school, parents who do not understand us or impose their own expectations of us which forces us to become less authentic of ourselves, due to media who instill all these false beauty expectations we should live up to (models etc…) or our religions who demand dogmatic adherence to their beliefs by self-denying ourselves in order of a “greater good”.
The root of all the above mentioned problems is a failure to have learned to Self-Love. Cruel children are cruel for a reason; they might have been abused (mentally or physically) and they most likely hate themselves. They are victims of victims, as are the parents who impose expectations on their children because they too had expectations to live up to.
And who creates these values and expectations that are passed on from generation to generation? religions and governments.
I’ll expand on this in future articles, thank you for asking an important doubt :)
I am 72. I have very distinct memories of thoughts I had as a young child that were very atypical; e.g. the first time I saw a black person, my mother stopped and waited for them to step aside for her and I thought that was wrong and felt embarrassed for her. I had not yet started school when this happened. I am pretty sure I am a mature soul. I thought so before I knew anything about the concept. I think I have nearly learned all I need to learn in this life because I feel compassion down to the smallest bit of life at the bottom of the ocean and feel an overwhelming sadness about the inhumanity of man toward man and how horribly we have abused our beautiful planet. The article about self love covers the one issue I have yet to resolve. I take out all the sorrows of the world out on myself. I have always had the feeling that it is “sin” to be happy when the great masses of people the world over are suffering from one affliction or another. My first impulse has always been to help when I see someone in need and I have worn myself totally out emotionally with that effort. That impulse recently backfired in a way that has given me tremendous pain and I have only recently began to see for myself what I need to do and it most certainly does involve my finding “true” self love. I am making some progress and was thrilled to find self love among your topics. I read one article and I do see. Thank you.
Thank you Barbara for sharing such an honest and and humbling story, that is truly the first step towards self love, to be capable of realizing we don’t truly have it.
Often it’s quite the opposite, many of us who struggle to help others do so because we have a built in unhappiness in side that we are trying to ignore with altruistic acts. Focusing on others takes away the pain of focusing on ourselves.
Having a big heart can tear that person to pieces, especially if they are surrounded by unhappy or miserable people. Those miserable around them can sense their big heart and use them, leech from their emotions and leave the person constantly feeling empty and drained.
Self Love is finding your center, finding your inner source of strength. When surrounded by the disasters of the world, those without true self love will feel like a rag roll in the wind, shaken from one side to the other, trying to help here and there but eventually they end up helping very little because they become so overwhelmed.
Those with center and solidly grounded, they have deep roots and branches that not even the strongest of winds can shake them up. They are much more capable of helping others but that’s because they learned to help themselves at the beginning.
I’m blessed to see this article helped you realize what you unconsciously already were feeling. Self-Love has many different aspects and areas (like for example our recent Shadow Self) that we’ll be exploring in the future, I hope you find some of those articles beneficial as well :)
“As a theory, Altruism implies that the purpose of life is to serve other people. What are these people you are serving doing here? They are here to serve you. Doesn’t it make more sense to serve yourself in what you truly want instead of what others think that you might want, just as long as it doesn’t result in violence, chaos or death?”
It’s quite amazing how long it takes for us (well, me at least) to realize this simple fact. Not really surprising, since -as you stated- most cultures and cultural products such as children stories, cartoons, movies, and all other kinds of media promote behaviors that are in favor of the society’s survival, even in expense of the individual.
Most obvious examples are those movies where the sacrifice of the few is regarded as preferable than the demise of many, like those hostage movies where the president/commander decides to take down the plane with terrorists (and hostages) on board than risk them crashing the plane to the white house or some other public building which could cause more casualties. I get the logical reasoning, but I don’t really like the idea of “sacrificing the few for the sake of the many”.
Sadly, this idea is also promoted by some religions, which makes people all crazy about “serving”, “guiding”, “helping” and “loving” other people, while they cannot do any of those things towards themselves. Talk about ironic.
Self-love, self-awareness, or self-acceptance are among the first things we need to learn for our own and everyone else’s sake.
Thank you for writing this.
Hello Zaldi,
It is quite amazing how such a simple concept has been taken for granted for so long. As you point out though, right now we are de-constructing what we’ve been taught for the last few centuries either from politicians or from priests.
To provide ideologies to the individuals so they are willing to sacrifice themselves for the collective is what has promoted the whole destruction of the “self”, of any connection you may have with yourself. It’s no surprise that in the army they encourage you to destroy your own identity, by getting everyone to dress the same, cut their hair the same and provide them with a recruit number. The same applies to the enemies, it’s much harder to kill someone in battle who you see has their own unique tastes and identity than killing someone who look exactly the same as the other “enemies”.
Collectives do not exists, collectives are gatherings of individuals. If you truly understand this, you’ll never see any point in the sacrifice of the one for the many.
Great comment, thank you for sharing your thoughts ! :)
In my opinion, self love is one of the hardest parts of involution. It is especially hard because society, in a way, teaches us to not self-love. I myself am still struggling through this phase. I understand that is a continuous process. Thank you for the lovely article!
Hello Ms Blue,
You’re entirely correct, Self-Love is perhaps the most difficult of all of the Involution paths, simply because to truly have complete self-love would brake down all the barriers and boundaries that create such a neurotic self within us.
We’re all struggling with Self-Love, Self-Love develops parallel to our whole Involutionary Self-Growth It takes time, it’s an active cultivation but it’s almost like falling in love with yourself all over again, you forget how many things there are about yourself that you took for granted or you weren’t every aware of to begin with.
Beautiful comment, thank you!
I agree with most of the article.
Playing with words slightly, I like to use the word self-centred, but not in the traditional sense.
I feel that to be self-centred is to be self-aware. When we are self aware, we can be our authentic self and we can serve and love others in a more effective manner.
Hello Keith!
I think playing with words is the only way you can tell a person has any intelligent insight, words so are fixed, and we are so short-sighted as to think that our definitions of words are the same for everyone.
Of course it takes longer to define the meaning each word has to you, but in doing so you are providing a very clear idea of what you’re trying to explain.
To be self-aware does allow us to be authentic just as long as we are courageous enough to do so, authenticity takes a lot of courage and strength of character. But these are things we discover along the path of Involution in our own Self-Explorations :)
Great comment, thank you for sharing!