First, We Must Love Ourselves

Before we can hope to offer love to the world, or to receive love from it, we must first love ourselves. This talk highlights the importance of a loving-kindness (metta) practice, sharing how to foster it and why self-love is a necessity in this life.

Transcript

We need to love ourselves before we can hope to love another or to love the world.

Love for ourselves,

By ourselves,

Directed towards ourselves has to be first before we can hope to give or receive the love that is out there.

This is because without a basis,

Without a center,

Without a place inside us that can hold that love there is no way we can hope to share it,

There's no way we can hope to project it because really we don't have a place to share it from.

Love is at the center,

Love is at the core,

Love is the first primary thing and we need to love ourselves first before we can hope to do anything in this world,

Anything of true lasting value,

Any connection that goes beyond mere transaction,

Before any striving towards a higher purpose.

If you look into most religions,

Western or eastern,

Including spiritual traditions and practices,

You'll inevitably find somewhere in there is a love-based practice,

No opening your heart to God,

A meta-based loving-kindness for yourself and others.

Look and you will find it and you'll find it for a reason because no matter how much you can make your mind focus on a singular point,

No matter how much you contemplate the scriptures or the nature of the world physically,

No matter how much you do something will be lacking,

A softness,

A connectedness,

A feeling of peace,

A sense of self.

You have to love yourself first.

You have to love yourself first,

But how?

How can you love yourself first?

Isn't that selfish?

I'm of the view that we need to be a little bit selfish to be selfless,

Help yourself and then from that place of strength help others.

Make sure that you are safe,

Make sure that you are whole,

Make sure that you are moving forward and growing and then help.

Now in practice this happens concurrently,

We give ourselves love,

We give the world love,

We give ourself love and we give the world love,

We give ourself love and we accept love,

We give ourself love and we act for the betterment of the world and of others.

But you must put yourself love in there as well,

That's a vital component because it's easy,

It's oh so easy to see just how bad a person you are.

You know all of the thoughts that arise,

You know all of the feelings,

You know all of the actions and the reasonings behind them,

You know.

You were there,

You are the prime witness,

You see it all and you can compare that totality with a highlight reel that you see of other people.

You only see other people in relation to yourself,

You only see other people based on what they show you in person and online,

You only see other people based on their actions and what you can read on their face and hear in their words and the tone of their voice.

You don't have access to their inner world,

Thus by definition people will seem either more loving or more cruel than you could ever imagine,

That you could ever imagine for yourself.

But you see everything of yours and you need to love it,

Love yourself,

Love your inner child,

Love your shadow,

Love your totality,

The good,

The bad,

The ugly and the unknown.

Because the reality is is that there's not one thing to love,

It's a structure,

A ever-changing nature,

It's you as the remnants of your past,

It's the unbridled human nature,

It's your responses to the things that happened as a child,

It's your shadow.

Love it all,

Love who you are,

Love yourself in this moment,

In the past and into the future.

The question now becomes how,

How do you give yourself love and therefore give love to the world and therefore be able to receive love.

The simplest approach is to instill a loving-kindness practice and just force yourself through it,

Because it will feel cliched and will feel fake at the start,

But that's okay,

Because it's like doing exercise,

The more reps you do,

The more you get into it and the more you get into it,

The more you learn about it and then it becomes natural,

Then it becomes just easy,

It's like walking.

You sit down,

You do your normal meditation practice and at the end you do a little bit of loving-kindness,

You send some love to someone that's easy to love or something that is easy to love,

A pet perhaps,

And you say the words,

May you be free of ill will,

May you be free of suffering,

May you be full of loving-kindness,

May you be happy,

May you be free of ill will,

Free of suffering,

Full of loving-kindness,

May you be happy,

And then you offer that same love to all of the different people in your life and eventually when you feel ready,

You offer it to yourself,

Then you can offer it to strangers,

Offer it to the world at large and even offer it to people that may have wronged you.

It's suggested that some of the hardest people to send love to is ourselves,

So work with something that you know you can love and extend from there.

That's one approach that I work with and that a lot of people I've worked with have worked for as well.

The other approach is to just hold your hand over your heart or imagine your heart space being open as you're around people.

Imagine a line of loving-kindness and care and connection between you and those around you.

It's like it detaches from me to you if we're in proximity and you start to get this sort of visual connection,

This loving energy,

This sort of power.

For me,

It's a gold strand between my heart and yours,

You know,

Me through the computer right now,

But as I'm walking in the street or,

You know,

When I'm with my family or when I'm with anyone,

I'm imagining this radiant,

Healing,

Warm energy.

Once again,

It's imagination.

Once again,

It's words.

But eventually,

Those imaginations and those words click in and there's this sort of deeper sense of connection and love.

And you're like,

Oh,

I feel this.

It feels,

Well,

It feels like more,

Deeper,

True.

And then,

Well,

Once you've got that feeling,

You send that to yourself now and into the future and into the past.

You forgive your past self for the things you've said and done and the consequences of those choices.

You acknowledge that you're only human and you offer yourself love.

You send that same thoughts.

May I be free of ill will,

Free of suffering,

Full of loving-kindness.

May I be happy.

You send that connection from your heart space to the heart space of you in the moment and to the past and to the future.

You offer the baby version of you,

That innocent little child,

Love.

And you sit in that space and you practice that daily,

Just a couple of minutes at the end of your normal practice.

And you develop it over the time like a muscle,

Like mindfulness.

You must offer yourself love first.

We must love ourselves first.

If we want to love the world and want to be loved by the world and want to make a positive,

Deep,

True and lasting connection to the world.

So I offer you this,

You,

The person listening to this right now.

May you be free of ill will.

May you be free of suffering.

May you be full of loving-kindness.

May you be happy.

May you laugh.

May you have a breath of peace.

May you smile.

May you feel content.

May you feel like your life is a life that is worth living.

May you feel connected.

Joy,

Pleasure,

Contentment and every other good feeling that the human mind and body and soul are capable of.

May you be free of ill will.

May you be free of suffering.

May you be full of loving-kindness.

May you be happy.

And may you feel the radiance that I'm sending you from my heart space to yours now and into the rest of your day.

Namaste.

Reviews

This resonates with me. I really enjoyed this talk and version of loving kindness. Thank you!