The Two Faces Of Self Love
Only one version provides what we need.
What is the difference between the self-love we want and the self-love we don’t want?
On the one hand, we hear we should learn to love ourselves, but on the other hand, we believe self-love is selfish.
Yes, self-love can mean two opposite ideas depending on who says it and how it is used.
My mentor used to say this quote by Mary Baker Eddy to me: “Self-love is more opaque than a solid body.”
I was sure she couldn’t be talking about me since I was so frequently down on myself.
I had no self-love.
Yet, looking back, I know she was trying to tell me something that I couldn’t see then.
Now I see that “being down” on myself was the negative version of self-love because it was “all about me.” This kind of self-love rests in the human personality and ego of the self, and it is not surprising that it does not bring permanent happiness, and yes, it is very opaque.
At the time, I wasn’t trying to make life all about me. I was trying to be a good wife, mother, daughter, employee, and service provider. I was trying to do the right thing all the time.
But because I didn’t understand that loving myself meant not loving the human personality self but loving the qualities of God present as me, I was often in need, which meant that without realizing it, life was frequently “all about me.”
Do we need self-love? Absolutely, but which kind?
Jesus’ admonition to “love thy neighbor as thyself” clearly states that we must love ourselves well if we are to treat our neighbors well.
I know this is tricky—it is the exact phrase with entirely different meanings and results.
Perhaps the first step to understanding the difference between the two kinds of self-love is to ask, “What premise is our self-love based upon?”
Self-love that begins with the premise of a human personality and needs means taking care of ourselves through willpower, positive thinking, control, destructive behavior (actually, inverted control and willpower), and hard work.
Self-love, beginning with the premise that we are the presence of infinite intelligent Love, eliminates all those methods.
With this self-love, we love ourselves because we are the reflection and expression of the Divine.
We observe the qualities of God that we uniquely express and cherish their presence as us. We care for ourselves within the context of caring for the gift that we are to each other.
As our knowledge of ourselves as the qualities of divine Love increases, so does our self-love. This is an easy love to have. This self-love removes ego, eliminates fear, and dissolves being stuck in negative descriptions of ourselves.
We learn to love and treasure the qualities we express. We give thanks for who we are.
Life flows easily from this kind of love, and we no longer need to use any form of human control.
It’s easy to tell which self-love we are practicing. In the human version of self-love, we experience need. We have all experienced this kind of self-love need.
It is a need for anything we feel we don’t have—love, money, health, or time. Needing is not a good experience or feeling.
However, within divine self-love, there is no need, only the experience in each moment of the qualities of who we are, present and being lived as us.
We find plenty of everything in divine self-love, and our love for ourselves flows to our neighbors equally without effort.
In human self-love, we ask, “Notice me, help me, give to me, and take care of me.”
In divine self-love, the I Am is present.
Within this self-love, our personality and ego step aside to be seen as we are, the reflection and expression of God.
Self-love within a spiritual context is a marvelous way to live.
Opaque means unable to see through. We cannot know the truth of any situation through the lens of human self-love.
However, the opaqueness fades as we are willing to know ourselves as God's qualities.
In that clarity, we find freedom from need and instead experience the joy of divine self-love, which is always overflowing and fills our lives with blessings without measure.
“The spiritual life is a call to action. But it is a call to ... action without any selfish attachment to the results.” —Eknath Easwaran
When I do good, I feel good; when I do bad, I feel bad. That’s my religion. —Abraham Lincoln
It is not life and wealth and power that enslave men, but the cleaving to life and wealth and power. —Buddha