Self-Love: Love Yourself to Love the World

By JIM MALLOY

A basic spiritual lesson is to learn to love unconditionally. However, we often overlook the importance of loving ourselves along with everything else. Every one of us is a part of the whole of life. A Japanese haiku illustrates this: ÒMy horse clip-clopping through the field. Aha! I am part of the picture!Ó

As you grow to realise that you are an integral part of life's grand picture, it becomes clear that loving yourself along with everything else is part of the deal. Most religions teach that selflessness is the ideal; that self-love is the antithesis of being selfless. Is self-love really opposed to selflessness? And is it the same as being self-involved?

Self-love is largely a matter of unconditional self-acceptance, with a bit of appreciation and compassion for oneself thrown in. Can you accept yourself unconditionally...without having to fulfil certain conditions, or live up to some particular standard? If not, what do you have to do or be, to fully accept yourself? Do you have to be successful? Do you have to look a certain way or be constantly productive? The list of conditions we may attach to self-acceptance could be very long indeed.

The common tendency is to adopt parental conditions as our own for loving ourselves. We tend to project these conditions for being loved onto Spirit. Somewhere deep in our consciousness, the belief develops that ÒGod will only love me if I'm ....Ó (Fill in the blank with whatever conditions you discover.) This belief is absolutely erroneous, because Spirit's love is absolutely unconditional.

However, in our (sub-conscious) minds, our parents', Spirit's and our own conditions for loving us all become intertwined. As a result, we may go through life constantly striving to meet these conditions, as an unconscious attempt to earn the love of Spirit, family, and self. And because the conditions are rarely attained in full, healthy self-love remains elusive.

When we find it difficult to love ourselves, we find it difficult to truly love others because we tend to judge them by the same conditions with which we judge ourselves. It makes it difficult for us to accept love from another, because if we don't fit our conditions for self-love, we tend to feel that we are not lovable.

A shortage of self-love also tends to pose a major obstacle to creating the life we hope for. If we believe we are not acceptable to Spirit, we naturally assume that we don't deserve Life's abundant gifts and the loving support of the Universe in our undertakings. This sends a negative message to the Universe Ñ a command to the cosmic computer Ñ which is essentially saying, ÒI'm not worthy, so no matter how much I might ask, or pray, or whine, do not fulfil my hopes and dreams.Ó In this way, we punish ourselves by sabotaging our own efforts. Spirit never punishes us, but we can do a good job of punishing ourselves.

If you have a healthy sense of self-love, you will find it much easier to love others, and much easier to accept the love of others. When you love yourself, you feel deserving of the good things in life and the powerful support of the Universe. This naturally opens the door for your hopes and dreams to be fulfilled more easily, and for your life to proceed with more green lights than red.

Convince your conscious and subconscious mind that Spirit is unconditionally loving. A willingness to re-examine and toss out old beliefs, and to accept this new belief, is usually sufficient for your conscious mind.