Self-love,
As in love to oneself.
Do I love myself?
If you ask this question to yourself,
Would you get a definite answer without hesitation?
And would this answer be comprehensive?
You know love isn't just one thing.
There are many types of love and many shapes and colors it can have.
But let us,
For the sake of simplicity,
Take those three.
The universal human love.
Passionate romantic love.
And friendly affectionate love.
Now it may be simpler to develop love for others in all of those three categories.
For example,
If I practice kindness,
I would be kind and loving to humans in general and I would work on that consciously.
And if I practice well enough,
I will even apply this universal human kindness to my personal relationships.
My partner,
My relatives,
Friends.
Sometimes we get too carried away with our personal issues and we forget to give simple human kindness to the most important people in our life.
But if we do,
Do we extend it to also ourselves?
Do we really treat ourselves with the universal human kindness that we give to others?
That we maybe see is an expression of our spiritual practice,
Our discipline in mindfulness and just living a good life.
Do we love ourselves in that way?
Do we forgive?
Are we patient?
Do we listen to our own needs and observe it when we need help?
And can we just be present and tolerant with ourselves?
Then there is this beautiful passionate love that is maybe easier to cultivate in our romantic relationships,
But this is also a very pleasant activity in our self-love practice.
And yet it comes with many challenges.
One being to learn to really see the beauty,
To activate your senses,
To be inspired.
To not let yourself be bored,
But also to fully live every experience that you are given in this relationship.
And particularly now in the relationship with yourself.
Do you love yourself passionately?
Do you value every moment spent with yourself?
And lastly,
Let's ponder the friendly and affectionate love.
The love that values both virtues and flaws,
That smiles at our little weaknesses and finds good humor in the most every moment in life shared with this person that we love.
When we love a friend,
We enjoy spending time with them and observing them just as they are,
For who they are,
For their full colorful personality.
We wouldn't wish our friend to be perfect.
When a friend shows good quality,
We may be proud and happy for this friend.
And when he or she achieves something great and lives through something positive,
We celebrate with this person together.
Do we also celebrate our successes and our good qualities?
Or do we only criticize ourselves?
And when a friend shows a not so good quality,
Maybe a flaw of character,
Just a weakness or a vulnerability,
When a friend opens up to us with something messy in their life,
We show up for this friend with all the love that we have.
And we smile at their imperfections and we support them in their moments of weakness and in their challenges in life.
So my question is,
Am I a friend to myself?
Are you a friend to yourself?
Do we extend this friendly and affectionate love to ourselves as well?
These are three ways that you can now think of self-love in.
And I would add on top of that that showing love in each of those three ways isn't always proactive,
It's also passive and observant in just receiving.
If you practice self-love always taking action and not letting yourself just naturally be it is also not loving in any of those ways.
Because in any relationship in our lives we act and the other person act and then we are passive,
The other person is passive.
Those dynamics are changing,
Shifting.
It's not always the same.
There is not one receiving and one giving party and just like that with self-love when we come from this intentional place from our mind and we just decide to give ourselves this love and we always address ourselves and direct something at ourselves.
There will be no space for us to just observe ourselves and be with ourselves and this is one of the most loving things to do,
Just to be with the person.
So I invite you to be with yourself,
Be kind to yourself,
Be with yourself as a human and be present for all the sensual experiences with yourself and the beauty that you are and be a friend to yourself and enjoy your own company.
Thank you for listening and I wish you lots of love and light.
