The Missing Key To Self-Love

 

Most people do not love themselves.

And yet you cannot really love another until you do. Love between people who do not love themselves is not really love at all, although we often call it that. It’s need. It’s co-dependence. And it’s not surprising that even if those relationships last a lifetime, there are a lot of problems. There are a lot of struggles. There is an entire industry of marriage and family counselors, workshops and self-help books created to fix these problems. The problem is the problem can’t be fixed until the cause is. Patching up symptoms never works for long.

Lack of self-love is the problem.

The cause is lack of self-love. Until this is fixed, there will always be problems. It’s not that people are unaware that lack of self-love is the cause of these problems. There is also a whole industry devoted to helping people love themselves, also with therapists, counselors, workshops and thousands of books. But these really don’t work either. Anyone who has been through this type of help realizes that they may be a little bit better, but they still don’t really love themselves. They still experience ups and downs in their life and their relationships. We accept this as simply being human. But it’s really that we still don’t love ourselves.

There is a reason that all this help with self-love doesn’t really work. It’s missing the key ingredient. And most teachers of self-love don’t really love themselves either. They may be relatively better off than they were before, which is a good thing. And they offer this relatively better off solution to their students. All this is not bad. But it’s still not real self-love. They are still missing the key ingredient.

The Missing Key Ingredient

The missing key ingredient is that even these teachers of self-love don’t really know themselves. Until you know yourself, how can you love yourself? What are you loving? And the answer to that question is your ego. You are simply learning to love your ego more.

Since I love myself, I also love everyone and everything else. That happens naturally when you love yourself. But you have to begin at the beginning. You have to begin with yourself. The ego is not what you are. When you love the ego (and the ego loves that), you are not loving yourself. You are ignoring yourself in favor of your ego. You are abusing yourself. Most teachers of self-love confuse the ego with your true self.

I don’t love my ego. I love myself.

The ego is just a distraction, an illusion created with thoughts. And more importantly the ego is the source of all suffering any of us ever experience in our lives. In fact, it is the only source of any suffering. If you have not directly experienced this yet, then you may not believe me or understand what I am saying. Those who have, and that includes pretty much everyone who has spent any time in the Enlightenment Experience Groups or done Guided Self-Inquiry with me, has experienced not only their true self but that this true self has absolutely no problems ever. It doesn’t matter what the ego experiences. The true self never experiences any suffering and never has.

I love what is true.

I love what is real, what is true, what is. And I love it completely. I don’t love the ego because it is not real. It is created entirely from thoughts. It is not true. And because it is not true, the belief in it creates many problems and a great deal of suffering. Why would I love that? Loving the ego is just more self-abuse. It is not love.

Because most teachers of self-love have not experienced this, they attempt to make the ego more loveable. And in a relative, limited way this can work temporarily. But it is dealing with symptoms, not the cause of the problem. So there will always be ups and downs. There will always be setbacks, not only in the students’ lives, but in the lives of the teachers too. They don’t have the key ingredient. So suffering remains. Real self-love is still not experienced.

When you have real self-love, it doesn’t matter if you are in a relationship or not. You love yourself. That is always enough. You are always complete. Since I am aware that most readers have not experienced real self-love yet, I share certain pointers that may give them a temporary glimpse into what it is like to truly love yourself. These are just things I experience in my daily life. In the last post I talked about flossing your teeth with love. In this one I will discuss washing the dishes.

Washing Dishes With Love

Wash your dishes in the sink. Don’t use the dishwasher. Why would you want to deprive yourself of this great joy? That’s not loving. Enjoy the warmth of the water as it caresses your hands. Pay attention to what is happening in this moment. Is this not exquisite? Look at these amazing bubbles that form when you add soap. See how many there are. Notice the shape of them and the colors you can see in the larger ones. Pay attention. Be present. Enjoy this moment. It will never be exactly the same again. It’s a miracle. Savor it. This is love.

If you wash the dishes in this way you will experience what it is like to truly love yourself. When you love yourself, you love everything. You love everyone. When you truly love yourself, all you see and experience is this great love. You realize that everything in this life is love. Everything in this life is a miracle. You love everything because you are not separate from anything. That is what real love is. This is what real self-love is. It is unconditional love. It is love simply because something exists, and that very existence is love.

You love simply because it exists.

You love your body, not because you identify with it because you don’t. You love your body simply because it is. So eating healthy foods, exercise, yoga, tai chi are really just acts of love. They are not things you do to make the body more beautiful or to improve it. That is just ego. They are simply acts of love.

Do everything as an act of love.

And everything you do in life is now an act of love. Whether it be eating, washing dishes, walking, sleeping, working, it is all an act of pure love because you are love. That is what you love. You love love itself. And love is what you are. That is your true self. When you finally realize this, you finally experience real self-love. And when you do, the entire world will bloom with its true self as love. Because you are not separate, your self-love and the love of the entire world are one and the same.

Maybe you feel this is not for you.

This may sound like a lot to take in. Maybe you feel that this is only for a few people and certainly not for you. Maybe you feel more comfortable with the limited, relative improvements that are offered in the books and workshops. This is more familiar to you. It is less threatening to the ego, which may be quite disturbed by what you have read here.

Start where you are.

I am only pointing you to what you are and have always been. You can begin by doing everything as an act of self-love. Notice how good this feels. Treat yourself well. Treat yourself with love as you would the person you love most in the world. Even the most loving and compassionate healers often don’t treat themselves the way they do their clients. Even the most loving partners don’t treat themselves as well as they do their partners. This is very common. Society has conditioned us to do this. But you are in this picture too. You are totally worth it.

You are totally worth it.

Treat yourself with love. Love yourself as the most beloved one in all existence. This approach is moving from the outside in. But that is the direction you are already in. You see everything as outside of you. Even yourself is still seen as a separate ego self. That too is outside of you. The more you experience love, the more you will be able to experience love as what you are. When you feel this wonderful, your ego will no longer feel so important. Has it ever really given you a feeling of love? Ever? Pride, yes. Arrogance, yes. But love, never. Real self-love is far beyond the reach of the ego.

Develop a habit of love.

Stop doing the things in your life that are not loving. Do more of the things that are truly loving. Be honest with yourself and you will know what these are. Bring an attitude of love to all you do. Turn your attention deeply inward to where this real love is and always has been. Discover yourself and you will love yourself.

This is important so I’ll probably write more about this in later posts.