Can We Love Everyone?

In this Zoom conversation, Richard Fuhrmann and Alexandra Kreis delve into an ancient biblical saying that resonates in many spiritual traditions: "To love your neighbour as you love yourself," or as Baba Neem Keroli beautifully teaches, "Love everyone."

They reflect on whether we can genuinely give love when we struggle to love ourselves. Can we reach out to others as neighbours, embracing them with love and serenity, even when self-expression is difficult?

Together, they explore the path to becoming a shining light in the world and nurturing compassion for all those around us.

Transcript

Hello everyone! Hello Richard! Hello Alexandra! So, Today we talk about love thy neighbor as thyself. And this is a saying from the Bible that is, I think, Very often misunderstood. Because I really believe that you cannot really love anyone else if you don't love yourself. Yeah, It's a big political discussion in Europe right now. And we don't want to go maybe into politics, But it's kind of showing up something that we might have lost. And that's often why people also turn towards meditation and the spiritual path and looking into healing themselves. Because when we're trying to just act outside of the norm, That's what I see too. You know, If we're trying to prove ourselves with outside actions only, Then we're creating another gap. We're trying to diminish the light within ourselves and saying other people are more important, For example. When we just see this saying from that one perspective of we have to help someone else, The neighbor. But the thyself part is the most important. You know, If you don't have much love for yourself, How can you pass on that love to someone else? Yeah, And it's also about, In society, Setting healthy boundaries. This is a big issue. A lot of people don't know anymore how to set healthy boundaries because it comes a little bit through Christianity as a religion to just ignore too many things, Which is also not good. And on the other hand, It's important not to love yourself from an egotistic way. So like, I'm the most important person in the world. This is not what's happening. It's basically coming back to a healthy relationship to yourself and the healthy relationship to the world outside of you, If you want to call it outside of you. Yeah, I think this topic is quite deep. And since we only do brief conversation to ignite a thought in you, We have to, Of course, Ignore some of the issues. You know, You touched on narcissistic people, People who always center every action around themselves. And I talked about the political, Societal circumstances that we are encountering here. But most of all, Within the work we do and offer what we want to help people with is to find where they are hurting themselves, Where they are, You know, Like, Where can you see that you do things that don't feel right to you? And when they don't feel right from you, From a really inner perspective, Then it's starting to, You know, Diminish the self-love, I think. If you always feel you put yourself square in a box so that you fit in, It hasn't got much to do with accepting yourself or accepting myself. And it doesn't have much to do with self-expression. Because a lot of people believe there is not much room for these things in life so that society works. And that's a funny thought, You know. Yeah, And to really find a healthy way for yourself in this whole process takes a lot of introspection and reflection of how you also interact with the world as a person. Because the spiritual path, In my opinion, Is not only for yourself. It's also not only sitting in a room. It's about how do you interact with the world on a day-to-day basis. Do you mean, Like, How honest you are in your interactions? Or how do you mean that with the interactions? It's not for me like, Okay, You can do spiritual things or a spiritual practice and then be a complete asshole in the rest of your day. This is just not a spiritual practice. This is I don't know what. But it's very far away from the truth. Let's call it like this. Yeah, It reminds me of this story about one of my yoga teacher colleagues said he stopped doing a certain style of yoga because every time he came out of class, He was so full of himself. He becomes so righteous. He couldn't bear to listen to himself anymore. He said, I was literally ready to punch anybody in the street outside. You know, Just that's how well he felt about his practice. So that's when he stopped doing that. Yeah. Yeah, Interesting. Maybe he could also have looked at the anger that it brought up. There are so many possibilities and chances to look at stuff, But you have to be willing and open to do it. Yeah, So sometimes it's not the practice. That's what he's saying. It's not the practice, But what we're not willing to do and deal with when it kind of steers us. Yeah. And please also, Dear people, Let us know how you see this topic, How you dealt with this topic, And how you incorporated maybe this saying of the Bible into your day-to-day life. Yeah. Thanks for listening. Thanks for comments. And thank you, Richard, For being here with us. Thank you too, Alexander.