Is it all about self-love?
Well,
Yes and no.
The deeper question is,
What self are you talking about?
And this is where I see it get confused.
Because we're trying to love who we think we are.
Which is to love an idea of yourself.
Which is like having love for thought while thinking thought is real.
And so effectively,
You're worshipping images.
And that comes with a whole host of problems and difficulties.
Oh my goodness,
There's so much to say about this.
You know,
To point towards that question,
Can we acknowledge that there's something within us that craves love?
And again,
We're using silly words here.
So for another person,
They might say,
I crave acceptance.
I crave peace.
I crave freedom.
But as far as I'm concerned,
These are all the same thing.
It's like trying to identify anything.
When you give it a name,
It doesn't mean it's that name.
But yet,
We see what we're looking at.
We can see it.
And so just like in the human being,
There is this craving for something.
And we see that craving.
It's visceral.
And we give it a name.
And the more lost we are,
Then the more we think we crave something on the outside.
We think we crave something in the world.
For someone who says,
I crave a billion dollars.
And if we get more honest about that,
It comes back to something that says,
I crave peace.
I crave to be without worry.
And I just think that thing in the world will give me what I more genuinely crave.
And so you see there,
It's like it can look like you crave something,
And then you can attach to that something and think that it is that something.
But really,
It's something deeper that you crave.
And we can do this with love as well.
We can have an image of love where we say,
Oh,
I crave love.
So love is this.
And so I crave that.
But you see,
It's not the idea that you crave.
But you can buy into it.
You can believe it.
And so then you might start thinking,
Oh,
Well,
Love is when somebody else promises to be with me for the rest of my life.
So if I'm craving love,
Then I'm craving someone to devote the rest of their life to me.
That's what it is.
You see how we do that?
We can give it a name and then we give it an image.
And then we crave the image.
And this is worshipping images.
And everything that is out there in the world is an image.
What is a billion dollars other than your idea of a billion dollars?
Beyond what you decide it to be,
Which is to put an image to it,
A story to it,
It's nothing.
Just as easily,
You could find a rock and call it your special rock and give it a name and believe that it has superpowers.
And now you're worshipping that rock,
But really you're worshipping your idea of the rock.
This is worshipping images.
It's all allowed.
It's just wise to see that the world is the mind.
There's nothing really out there.
It's just more thought.
So when we're chasing something in the world,
You're just chasing a thought.
As it relates to loving yourself,
What self are you trying to love?
Because if you're loving who you think you are,
You're going to look at that image that you have of yourself and you're going to say,
I judge that image.
So I have to be a different self in order for me to love it.
Well,
Good luck with that.
And that keeps you in a perpetual loop of chasing imaginary versions of yourself,
Running away from self-judgment.
Loving yourself isn't about loving your character,
Loving who you think you are.
I mean,
Sure,
We can make it about that.
And that could possibly be helpful.
But what I'm pointing to here is that the deeper craving is to crave something that's so much more expansive and real than our idea of love.
And what I would suggest is that what every human being craves,
Regardless of what we call it,
Is fundamentally the truth of their nature.
And we're craving to see what's true.
Because when you see what's true,
Just like we did with taking moments to be present,
And you start to realize that everything you're thinking isn't true,
Then as you relax into what is true,
You start to make contact with that something that we call love,
Peace,
Gratitude,
Freedom,
All these names.
We're craving to come home.
And this has been the spiritual pointer since the beginning of time,
Regardless of tradition.
In some way it says,
Let go of the world and put your attention on God,
So to speak.
It's to see what's real.
And when you see what's real,
Then what you really desire,
What you really crave is given to you.
But you see that you have it.
It's not given to you as if it comes from the outside.
You see that it's your fundamental nature,
Right?
Like just like in meditation,
You start to realize that all these things aren't missing.
We just get lost in our dream.
Which is perfectly fine.
Because just like when you have dreams at night when you're sleeping,
You're still held by reality.
You can dream whatever you dream and reality is undisturbed.
The realness of what you are is untouched by your dream.
So it's perfectly fine to dream whatever.
But what might also help as it relates to loving yourself is seeing through the illusion of everything you think about yourself.
The opposite of the love we crave is like saying we're experiencing self-judgment.
And so the love we crave is like trying to get rid of the self-judgment.
And we go about this in silly ways,
Which is trying to change something,
Right?
We say,
Well,
Okay,
If I'm going to love you,
Then you have to be different because I judge you as you are.
So I got to force you to change and be different than I can love you rather than just dropping the self-judgment.
Because as you explore the self-judgment,
You'll see that it's just not necessary.
Which is quite interesting,
Too,
Because as you drop the self-judgment,
You naturally start acting in different ways.
Like if you look at your problematic human tendencies,
Do you not see that they only arise because you judge yourself?
Rather than exhausting ourselves with trying to reach non-judgment by laying on judgment,
Let's just drop the self-judgment.
