Every single judgment we have about ourselves – conscious or unconscious – diminishes any hope we have for achieving self-love. Every single slight or negative thought detracts from reaching our goal. We’re programmed and conditioned into believing we are never enough. Look around. So much pressure, stress and strain to be perfect – how can anyone feel love for themselves? Even sadness – one of God’s most precious feelings – has been made to feel wrong: “Don’t be sad.“
Loving yourself is the ultimate goal, one I’m sure you’ll agree is worth it. It takes acknowledging your negative beliefs, feelings and preconceptions about love and life, coming at it with an open heart, and a clean slate. It’s your journey! Your attitude and intention counts. When I began my self-love journey, I peeled off the layers and saw what was there – I could with all certainty say, it wasn’t easy facing it and putting out the effort. It felt like an abyss.
Until I discovered something very important. This discovery alone will shave years off your journey to self-love.
I had some major flash realizations:
- No wonder why no one truly loves themselves
- No wonder it’s so elusive
- No wonder there’s so much suffering
- No wonder this can’t work
I’d been trying to love ‘myself’ through my false self.
It’s like lightning struck me. I finally realized – there’s no way possible to ever truly love yourself if you’re trying to do it within the same constructs (ego mind) you use to judge yourself with. It won’t ever work, like a perpetual uphill climb or bottomless pit.
Our false selves are devious and want to keep us small – in the guise of believing we’re safe. The false self is our ultimate saboteur. It’s always running in the background, many times unconsciously, just under our radar.
More often than not, we as humans live daily through our false selves, our ego mind. We wake up into our false selves, spend the day, come home and fall asleep as our false selves – rinse and repeat. This is the self that lets us down. Seeing this truth, I felt anger and frustration at all the wasted time I’ve spent trying to do the impossible.
This is why the observer self is so important and a critical component to our growth process.
Our false self runs the show until we’re finally able see it for what it is – a perpetual suffering machine. It’s not very often we get a glimpse of who we truly are as humans, uncontrolled by our false self. These are times we’re called into being or called into the present moment. Acting on impulse in an emergency or seeing someone in need of a helping hand – there we can see and feel what it means to be liberated out of our false self. It’s fleeting, albeit, but just enough for us to know our true self exists.
In the day to day, the drone of existence – often, we remain unaware of the true self within us. The “new age” is all about love, light and bliss. It’s pathetic really. The “new age” makes it seem possible to love ourselves just by being positive and denying that darkness exists. They don’t tell us it’s impossible to love through our false self or that “faking it until we make it” is going in the opposite direction of our true self. Our true selves are organic and don’t need pumping up.
Things we’re told are true:
- You must love yourself before you can love someone or something else.
- You can only love someone to the extent you love yourself.
Love is a difficult thing to digest when living under the false self. What hope is there for our loved ones if we remain within the construct of our false self? Here’s a good example of this belief in action. I remember what a friend enquired about many years ago:
I love my child so much, but I don’t feel the same way about myself. Does that mean I don’t really love my child?
As I stated earlier, self-love is difficult to experience on top of our conditioning and negative beliefs. We talk ourselves out of it on a daily basis. When our true self is present, only pure unconditional love is expressed. If you’ve ever been in an emergency situation, or if you’ve been in heart-felt service to others, then you know no judgment exists. We are operating from a place far greater than our limitations and smallness.
There’s so much pressure and focus on loving one’s self – but no manual is given to us at birth. No one has provided a way to do it. How do I go about this loving self-thing? Well, given what I found out – it’s near impossible simply because we’re so conditioned and live within the box of our false selves, believing this is who we are.
You can’t truly love yourself (or anyone else)
with your false self!
The mind is asking the question and the negative beliefs are right behind it – throwing up fog and a smoke screen – See, you don’t love yourself, you aren’t even close. Don’t you feel inferior, maybe ashamed, perhaps you feel inadequate?
There exists another self – the true self – this is the one capable of self-love. This is the one we need to bring to the forefront – the one with all the capacity for love, the one untainted with programs, propaganda, and lies. Get to know this self.
Here’s what you need to know:
- Let your false-self just be – the one with the loudmouth and loads of judgment.
- Have a willingness and an intention to live from your true-self and then let it go.
- Your true self will take care of the rest! It’s a guarantee.
- Trust your process, trust your true self to show you the way.
- Have patience.
- Continue to practice being an observer of your false self, make notes of any patterns.
- Look for an opportunity to be of service to others.
You will be led on a journey. It will feel scary, and daunting at times, it may even look worse before it gets better – but it’s ok – you’re in good hands.
Read More about Self-Love
Am I Selfish if I Love Myself? Uncovering the Myths and Lies of Self Love
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The Journey to Self Love
Wouldn’t it be nice to live without self-judgment? It’s a bad habit. We automatically judge ourselves without realizing it. Have we been sold a line that we’re defective? Why isn’t self-acceptance the norm? How did we get to be so hard on ourselves?
The Path to My Heart 
Please share your thoughts…