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To love yourself means to know yourself. To know yourself in all the aspects of your being. Because you cannot love what you do not know. If you don’t know yourself, you cannot love yourself. Not your true Self. You love an image about yourself, an image created by your mind. You love who you think you are, not who you really are. You love what you like yourself to be, not what you are really like.

To love your ‘image’ is known as narcissism and the story of Narcissus is exactly this : Narcissus, a young boy known for his beauty is said to have stopped one day to rest on the shore of a small lake. When Narcissus saw his reflection in the waters of the lake he fell in love with it, not realizing it was just an image. Unable to capture his reflection, Narcissus stayed by the pond until he starved to death.

Narcissists do not love themselves, they love an image that they project about themselves. A false self. A product of their imagination. A very appealing product, because in their Image they are very important, very special. It is a good image. The best. So they prefer the Image. And continue to keep that Image. They cling to the Image because they are afraid to look inside themselves. Who knows what they might discover? It is safer to stick to that Image. So they will do whatever they can to perpetuate it. To keep it real. It is not real, but it is the only way they can accept themselves. What does not fit the Image is unacceptable. And it is denied. The story of Narcissus is not the myth of Self-love, it is the myth of Self-denial. Narcissists always run towards their false Selves and always run away from their true Selves.

Loving yourself is very different. It is in a sense the opposite of narcissism. Loving yourself does not mean to not run away from yourself. It means to honestly search for yourself. With brutal honesty. And embrace yourself ‘as you are’, in all your aspects. It is not a denial of who you are, it is an acceptance of who you are. It is going deep within yourself and bring to surface the portions of your being that you were not consciously aware of. Portions that have been hidden in the Shadow and never seen the light of your awareness. Loving yourself is to see yourself from one end to the other. Inside of you there are parts that you do not recognize as being yours. But they are yours. They belong to you. They need to be validated. They need your acceptance. Your love.

A narcissist might consider himself a very wise person. He has this image about himself. It is his identification. Everything that does not belong to this image is suppressed and denied so that the Image would not be affected. Would not be damaged. The Image is protected at all costs. To love yourself is the opposite of suppression and denial. It means acceptance and recognition. If narcissism is living in a Fantasy Land where you are the wisest person, loving yourself is getting out of this Fantasy Land. It means to see within yourself that you contain both wisdom and foolishness and embrace them both.

If you see yourself as a wise but you do not see yourself as a fool, then you see only half of your being. You accept the wise in you but you deny the fool in you. You love only half of yourself. When you realize that you contain both wisdom and foolishness, you will be a wise and you will also be a fool. You will be both. You will become a WISE FOOL. Then, you will be whole, because you have covered the whole spectrum of your being. You have known your two polarities from one end to the other. And when you do that, the two opposites merge and something strange and beautiful happens: both polarities disappear into each other. They cancel each other. None of them exists anymore and what remains is the middle point between the two. It is a completely neutral point. This is the zero point of the balance of duality.

Loving yourself is seeing all your polarities. And validating them. It is bringing them to this Zero point. The point of equilibrium. Which is also the point of your power. Because from here, everything you will allow to emerge, will emerge. It has no other choice.

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The whole idea of loving yourself has nothing to do with narcissism. It is not egotistical. Narcissism produces one result, loving yourself produces another result. Two completely different results. Narcissism leads to Self-ishness, loving yourself leads to Self-Realization. Because one is Ego-centered, the other is Self –centered. One divides the psyche, the other unites the psyche. Loving yourself is a process of bringing together the pieces of your fragmented psyche. It is an integration; an acceptance of who you are. And who you are is an image of Creation itself. Because you are made in the image of Creation, as it is said: As Above, So Below. There is nothing that Creation contains and you do not contain. There is nothing that Creation has and you do not have. You have it all, everything is in you. But you are not consciously aware of your whole being. You are aware of only a small part of yourself. You see only what is on the surface. You see only the role that you are playing in the theatre of physical reality and you become so identified with the role that you think the role is who you are. But the role is not the actor. The actor is YOU, and the role is just a role. It is a mask. But you are playing your role so well and take it so seriously, that you end up believing that the mask is your real face. Do not be afraid to take away that mask! Behind the mask there is the real you, waiting to express itself. To show itself to the world. It has been kept in the chains of social conditioning for so long. Because you think that the mask is more beautiful than the real you. But the mask is a dead object and the real you is alive. It is life itself. How can a dead object be more beautiful than life itself? Yes, when you drop your mask, you will see yourself naked. But will not be ashamed. You will be fulfilled.

Loving yourself brings all fragments together, because love has one quality: to unite. To bring the pieces of the puzzle together … all of them. With no exception! Because love does not make any judgments. It does not invalidate some pieces of the puzzle and validate other pieces. It does not invalidate any manifestation in Creation. In the eyes of love, everything has its place and its purpose. Everything in Creation is valid and is exactly where is should be. Love does not exclude anything, but it includes everything.  When you are in love, you feel that you include more of reality. Things that before you rejected, now you accept, what before you condemned now you embrace.  Mind cannot understand these things, because love is not something that you understand with the mind. It is not intellectual. It does not belong to the mind, it belongs to the heart, and the best that mind can do for this new love to emerge is to surrender itself to the heart. And this is not an unintelligent thing for the mind to do. It is the most intelligent thing that mind can do, because it is a surrendering to a Higher Intelligence. In this surrendering mind is not thrown away. Mind will remain what mind is. It will continue to function. But it is not the only one in command anymore. It is no more the supreme authority in control.

To love yourself in the true sense of the word is not a selfish act. By contrary, it is the most altruistic act that one can do. Because when you accept yourself, you also accept the other. What you do not accept in others is in fact a part of your own Self that you do not accept. It is a part of yourself that you reject. And you project this rejected part in others. Because you don’t see it in yourself. You see it as a reflection in the other and finally you end up by rejecting the other. It is an illusion. Because all that you are rejecting is nothing but yourself.

You are denying a part of yourself that needs your recognition. Only by loving yourself, this part can be discovered. Otherwise it remains in the dark. It remains unseen. Only love can bring enough light to expose it. To make this invisible piece of you visible to you. When you bring this missing piece of the puzzle together with the other pieces you become more whole. You become more of who you are.

Mind sees the concept of love for yourself and the concept of love for others as two different concepts. Mind sees that love for yourself is one thing and love for the others is another thing. It sees that loving yourself is different from loving others. Mind makes this distinction. Because this is what mind does. It makes distinctions. But mind creates two separated concepts because mind is separated. Mind is not whole. When mind becomes whole the two concepts don’t make sense anymore as different concepts. When the concepts about love disappear, then only love remains; undifferentiated love. Concepts have to disappear in order for love to appear. This love is not focused in one direction or another. It is not focused in any direction at all. It just flows. In all directions. It is a presence. Whether it is for yourself or for the others, you are not able anymore to tell the difference, because when you look at the others, you see an aspect of yourself. Wherever you look you see a reflection of yourself. The world becomes a mirror reflecting back to you what is inside of you. The boundaries between you and the world melt. Loving others is loving yourself, loving yourself is loving others.

by Dan Motoc