Love Story with Yourself ( I)

by Emanuela Munteanu

How much you love yourself?
Have you ever thought that you do not love yourself enough? Or maybe you are one of those who believes that there is no need to love themselves, that this is even an immoral or non- spiritual act– considering the only duty of the Truth Seeker to love others and to always neglect himself.
Well, if you think this way, you could be wrong. There are authors like Lise Bourbeau – the founder of the most famous school of personal development in Quebec, whose life philosophy is now broadcasted in 22 countries and in 9 languages - who states that diseases are the alarm sign of our body that is warning us about insufficient love for ourselves.
In other words, the overcrowded clinics and hospitals can be considered as a barometer of love that people in today's society have for themselves!
Many of us dream of a soul mate, of a relationship that by its total and unconditional love will fill the emptiness of our heart and will heal all wounds of our soul.
And yet, there are many of us who ignore all their life someone very close to them and who is always longing for our love: we ignore ourselves!

Accept and love yourself the way you are
A lot of our soul wounds are caused by us due to an inadequate way of perceiving ourselves. When we start to accept and love ourselves as we are a bigger part of aggression that we are used to think is coming from outside suddenly disappears.
The outside violence needs an aggressive mind to get inside. An aggressive mind directed to our own being can hurt us, with no difficulty, in many ways: thoughts of discouragement, helplessness, feelings of inferiority, states of rebellion, fear etc.
Depending on how often we allow such inferior things happen, they gain power. Thus, our aggression toward ourselves creates the breach through which the outside hurts us.
The fair measure in loving ourselves is almost as difficult to achieve as acknowledge of ourselves. We always vacillate between pride and despair. When our individual universe works as we like, we take this as a sign of our personal value and a reason for pride.
When it does not offer sufficient rewards we tend to think that we do not deserve God's love and allow the sadness take over us. Thus, wave after wave and the abyss after abyss; we spend our entire life without ever really loving ourselves.
After numerous passes from one extreme to another, a middle way starts to outline: self-pity – that in fact, does not really have anything to do with self-love, but rather causes as many wounds as vanity or self-mistrust.

Explore the love of yourself
There are many obstacles in manifesting a true love for ourselves. The most superficial blockage consists in the preconceived idea that "it is not necessary (or moral) to love myself." However, this is just an excuse to not recognize that we are not (yet) able to manifest this love.
Weather it refers to the outside or to our own being, love is always a test of inner nobility. It involves courage, dedication, expansion of consciousness.
On a human level, except for highly elevated beings, love rarely exists in its pure form. It is not gold, but gold sand. Therefore a loving relationship always involves patience to select piece by piece what is pure from what is impure.
We manage to convince the others that we love them, but it is impossible not to seize how many gaps this love still has. So, regarding us, we do not try to lie that we love ourselves, but we prefer to argue that it is not necessary to do so.
Exploring self-love means among other things to get into that mysterious space where love exists and where sentimentality is missing. This is a fundamental lesson, without which it is really hard to grow up emotionally.
Practically, the first love story is much easier to have with yourself; because you start from the point where you get with the "other" only after some years of a relationship with him, when you have managed to destroy many of the illusions about your own perfection from the beginning.
And also because, although you have probably shattered the illusion of your own perfection long ago ... it is impossible to separate from yourself! You'll have to go with yourself till the end.
Beyond sentimentality, love is a sincere and continuous search of good, harmony, beauty - for yourself and for those who you love.
If this search does not exist or is suffocated by a lot of tension, confusion, avidity, it means that you have to choose more carefully "gold sand" from your inner universe. Also love is patience, tolerance, transparency.
It is lovely to know all of this while interacting with others, but if the relationships you’ve had so far, did not offer you this chance; nothing prevents you to start right now by addressing to yourself.
First step would be to figure out how much you really love yourself. For this you should recognize the child inside of you who needs patience, tolerance, encouragement, love, tenderness ...
Do you offer this to him?


(to be continued)

 

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