Loving Ourselves: Theory or Practice?

I had been puzzling over my interactions with my son, who was six at the time. Noticing that I had begun to dislike my interactions with him, I began exploring the morning ritual of dressing, eating and getting out the door. It had become unpleasant: either my husband or me hounding Avi, rushing or pressuring him at every step. I had been noticing the unpleasant feelings associated with these daily interfaces and finally asked out loud:

“Is there a way to have this process be pleasant?”

It all has to do with love and self-love. If I do unto another that which is hateful to myself (rushing and pressuring), it is merely a reflection of what I am feeling (feeling for myself is redundant, if still clarifying.) It is coming from a lack of love in myself and is projected outward onto another.

So our real work is to fall in love with ourselves again. I say again because as children we already were in love with ourselves. We came in as love. Love of the self is love. No one taught my son to love himself, he just does. This is the ground of his being, his operating principle: His software program is love, and it came factory-installed. So what he does is a reflection, or a projection, of love.

What makes any iota of “not-love” is some disapproving adult (usually that the child is identified with, meaning not separate from, nor individuated from), casting from his or her own “not-love” such a projection onto the child. The child then feels the adult feeling bad about himself and takes it personally, which is the only way a child can take it. The child now has a piece of software downloaded that is “not-love”, feels that “not-love” and then acts from it.

As we have seen before, each time we act from “not-love”, we feel badly about ourselves, which creates more “not-love”, both inside of ourselves and in the negative reactions we experience from others.

The only way out is to love ourselves, not a theory but as an operating principle. That means that our every action, no exception, has the possibility of increasing our feelings of love, or decreasing them. If we act from love, in our every minute interaction with ourselves, we build a love-infused system in ourselves, which then spills out onto people outside of us. Acting from love means cleaning up every spot in our lives where we are feeling bad: places we procrastinate and feel bad about; inconsiderate thoughts of ourselves or others; neglectful behaviors such as overeating, overdrinking or any overindulgence; manipulative or angry actions or words toward others.

Anything at all that makes you feel bad is creating more feeling bad. Anything at all that makes you feel good is creating more feeling good. It is a moment-to-moment awareness; is it warming you and turning you on, or leaving you out in the cold?