True Self love… the how and the why
True Self love… the how and why.
Self love has increasingly become a hot topic, which is good in that it is a necessary component to emotional and psychological health. However from my perspective much of what is being said about self love misses the mark. Self love is total acceptance of your self, yes, but the problem is that most people confuse “self” with “ego.” You see our True Self or Soul is different from our “ego self” and the way it loves is entirely different. The ego form of self love does not bring healing, but the Soul’s self love always does, at the deepest level.
Ego self (small s self because the ego makes you feel small) love can look like the following:
· The ego self incites fear. Always. Including in its’ form of self love. As one example, it can make you believe that loving yourself comes from attaining a certain appearance … yet in reality this is still fear based because there will always be a fear of not having this specific appearance and thus losing out on love. Another example: thinking that self love comes from acheivements… but this is fear based because there is a knowing that if you don’t achieve then the love goes too. So, while ego pretends to be loving at times, it is really just hiding the fear, keeping you stuck in a place of emotional pain.
· When seeking to love yourself from the ego’s standpoint, it can look like an inflated sense of self that sees or tries to see, itself as superior to others. It thinks that to love your self means that you must be better than others, and so builds itself up by putting others down or in more subtle ways through constant comparison and competition. At the depths of our being however it does not feel good to compare and compete… because if one has to compare it means that you could possibly be on the worse end of the comparison some day.
· With egoic love there is judgment, though it is moved from inward focus to outward focus. But the effect is the same… when you judge another you judge yourself and this hurts.
· The ego does not understand unconditional love, because unconditional means it just IS and the ego is the opposite of that… it is all about concepts, judgements and conditions. The ego will always have conditions…giving the message “you can be loved if/when….” And when there are these conditions, shame is experienced and maintained.
NOW when you are loving your Self (big S Self standing for the True Self) as/from your True Self or your Soul the following aspects are present and make all the difference:
· Loving your Self from/as your Soul, means you work towards stopping all judgement towards yourself and others, because Soul knows you are one with everyone. So when you judge someone else you are actually harming yourself as well.
· Loving your Self from/as your Soul does not involve any inferiority or superiority because your Soul knows it’s perfection even in the seeming imperfection and therefore does not need to build itself up in any way and maintains a level of humility that is not debasing but is uplifting.
· Loving yourself from/as your Soul encourages you to release fear and resentment (they go hand in hand). This means forgiving ALL those who have seemed to harm you. Because only when you let go of the need to exact revenge or hold onto anger towards another, can you truly feel love. This Self love truly “holds no records of wrongs.” The Soul knows that by holding back forgiveness you are hurting yourself.
· Loving your Self from/as your Soul means that you love unconditionally. This means that everything is loved, because everything is seen as a part of your Self. This does not mean romantic kind of love but a love that can embrace anything, there is no resistance. To not love unconditionally (ego) is to have resistance within your mind and this creates emotional distress.
These are only a few of the ways that these types of self love differ. If you want to know more or want help in moving from ego based self love to true Self Love, please contact me at kelly@kellylewishealing.com.
