Self-love is one of the most profound gifts of spiritual growth. It is also one of the most difficult challenges we face in our life journey. Self-love is generated through the integration of many other spiritual challenges. But why would we want to achieve something so difficult? It sounds good, but what does it really get us?
I wrote about this subject about a month ago discussing the essential action pieces to this puzzle. But I didn’t really write about why we would want to chase this state of consciousness. So let’s step back and feel the big picture of our life. What is it that grabs our attention constantly? The fact that it grabs our attention demonstrates that it is important to us. The experience I hear from people is all the stuff that stresses them occupies their attention most of the time. We seem to be in a constant battle with life. We are rarely at peace. This tells me that the feeling of peace is a powerful goal and motivator for us if we are constantly fighting with all the things in life that conflict with our peace. It is that feeling of peace and contentment that tells us we are ahead of the game with life and that we are succeeding.
Self-love creates that feeling of peace we are all seeking.
The earlier newsletter talked about the “how to” steps to create self-love. But truthfully, these action steps are more how a person who has self-love acts. Copying outer actions is not the same thing as feeling it from the inside out. Following the inside out process is essentially the same thing as spiritual growth. This process is not well taught or understood here in the western world. What is presented seems to me to be outside the context of our normal life. Spiritual growth is presented as something you do off in a monastery or ashram somewhere a long way away. Nothing could be further from the truth. We are all engaged in our spiritual growth every minute of every day. It is built into the choices we make about what we pay attention to in life and how we respond.
The cycle of growth is fairly simple. It begins with the discovery of our deep inner feelings bubbling up from our unconscious mind. These might be feeling desires and longings that call to be met. These are different from emotional reactions that are built from our ego drive to survive. The ego always puts itself first. Ego is the source of most of our stress because it is always in competition with the rest of the world. Ego wants everything to be its way. Life isn’t, so the ego is always stressed.
The deep unconscious feelings are about aspects of our self longing to be brought into manifestation. Perhaps we have a creative side longing to be let out, or perhaps it is a side that loves speed and movement, or perhaps it is a side that really wants to be a caretaker. We are each different and unique on our blueprint level, but each of us has the common drive to bring our blueprint into creation realization. As we discover these pieces of ourselves, we seek to assert their reality by giving the feelings a physical form of expression. The purpose of that expression is to form a connection with others. We seek out self-expression so we can participate with the larger community of humanity and life itself. We take in the feedback from life to refine our expression into forms that both support others and in return encourage support for ourselves.
This simple cycle of growth goes around and around day in and day out. Every day we discover a little more about ourselves and seek to assert and express those bits of self to the rest of life in a way that is welcomed by life. This is not an easy process, because developing the skills of self-assertion and expression in a way that will be welcomed by those around us requires us to pay close attention to how we are received. We have to constantly adapt and modify our outflow to create harmony with life. But life is diverse. Every person we meet is different, and we have to develop highly flexible and adaptive self-expression skills to meet those differences. This is the basis of spiritual growth. We are here to learn how to love all of life, to be of service to all of life. Figuring out how to do that with all the differences that surround us is very challenging.
This is where the payoff we are looking for comes into the picture. Every time we figure out how to be and express our uniqueness in a way that is appreciated by another, we feel an ease and peace that comes from the connection that results. That ease and peace say you have succeeded at the game of life. That success builds your self-esteem and allows you to love yourself. You can’t feel self-esteem or self-love from a state of separation or stress, only from a state of connection. I know we would like to believe we can feel good about ourselves while also being in resistance to life around us, but we can’t. Ego can feel proud about securing some enhanced state of survival while in a state of resistance, but our feeling self can not. That deep unconscious part of ourselves lives in constant connection and communication with the rest of humanity. Many fascinating scientific experiments have demonstrated this, but day to day we are unconscious of this. We identify with the part of us that believes in our separation and difference – our ego. The connected part of us is quiet and lives in our deep feeling self. That is why growth begins when this part of us bubbles up a piece of us to manifest.
Why do we want to chase self-love? We chase self-love because we want to be happy and fulfilled. Self-love is just part of that total package along with peace of mind, joy, and fulfillment. We get confused about what drives us because we have an ego on board that is designed to ensure the survival of our physical body. The moment to moment survival needs of the body seem like powerful motivators. They push us to eat, sleep, and acquire a safe space around us. This is all good and necessary. But when the deeper unconscious drives come up, we will ignore even basic survival needs to pursue fulfillment of the deeper needs and drives to be our self. Survival alone is not enough. We must be who and what we were designed to be in a context of a larger community of others.
As I have followed this cycle of self-manifestation around over the years, I have found that, at least for me, the easiest way to work my way around that cycle is to find out how I can be of service. I have learned that the initial feeling that comes up from the unconscious has no form attached to it. My creative mind quickly attaches a potential form of expression, but this form often is unable to work its way around the cycle successfully. For instance, several years ago a feeling surfaced in me for an image upgrade in my presentation in the world. My creative mind decided that what that meant was that I wanted a Corvette. Then I got a Corvette, but it did not generate any greater connection to life. It felt cool to drive around in the Corvette, but it did nothing to improve my relationships in life. So I gave the Corvette to Ellen and tried a different way of upgrading my presentation in life. The result was the creation of this newsletter. This newsletter gives me a way to show up in life in a way I did not have before, and it feels good to offer this service to my patients.
We often get hung up in our initial pictures of what will fulfill the desires and longings that bubble up from “the deep.” Pictures are just pictures. When one does not work out, go back to the feeling and generate a new picture, a different self-expression. The clue: success follows the path that brings your expression into a greater appreciated connection with life. Ego loves to think it is better than everyone else, but this only results in feeling alone. Peace and ease flow from positive connection to others. To love yourself, love all life.
This is the message for this holiday season.
Goodwill to all,
David