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Self-Love – my story and more guidance on the practice
Self-Love for Crazy People in a Crazy World
In 2017, I spent 3 weeks feeling lonely in Bangkok. I talked to strangers, tried online dating, went to conscious events. Sometimes, true story, I imagined jumping off my tower block just to never look at my to-do list again. I always want to live, but life was a see-saw between bliss and craziness every day. My to-do list is the only thing that’s ever made me want to disappear completely. I cried on the rooftop many nights.
I listened to books on self-love. Our popular models of self-love are incredibly limited. Self-love is ‘pampering, thinking you’re special, and boosting positive feelings.’ The end result is consuming more stuff, spiritual photo-shopping, and a remaining emptiness.
Trying to love an artificially isolated idea of a person, and not just that, but artificially isolated bits of that artificially isolated person. Artificially cutting off the world, the cosmos, and all the pain and glory we’re part of. Of course we feel empty, small, not enough, when we pretend we’re separate from this conscious web of life.
Real self-love is radical, paradoxical and ecological. It has no barriers or conditions, and has very little to do with our ideas of who we are. It’s not about being a ‘good enough’ person, denying suffering, or even feeling ‘good’ necessarily.
Our conditionality is a map to the craziness of how we’ve been raised and trained by our culture.
“I’ll love myself when……I’ve made everything in my family ok.”
“I can’t love myself because…..of things I’ve done.”
“I love the parts of me that….help other people feel blissful inspiration.”
“I feel love, feel loved when…someone chooses to spend time with me.”
One of my deepest unconscious beliefs used to be “I have to be amazing in order to be loved.” I would feel dis-ease with new people until I had shared a poem or inspirational rant. I would be astounded if a woman was attracted to me, before I had done such a thing.
The headfuck was, another deep unconscious belief said “I have to stay invisible, unpredictable, off the radar.” Trying to balance the ‘need’ to be amazing with the ‘need’ to stay invisible led to psycho-emotional hop-scotch, showing myself and hiding myself erratically. I still play the game, to a much milder degree. It’s a lovely paradox for staying trapped.
Lonely in Bangkok, I listened to smooth Californian stories of self-love raptures in Silicon Valley, throwing letters of forgiveness from the Big Sur cliffs. The story was a little too white in the teeth for me. I don’t think those raptures get to the roots. And the stories implicitly suggest self-love requires writing best-sellers and being best-friends with the Dalai Lama
The Californian said make “I love myself” a mantra. For an hour or so I did. But it didn’t go far enough; it excluded everything else, denied paradox, silenced shadows. It was ultimately isolating. Self-love as lifestyle porn. He was genuine, I liked him, but it didn’t get to the roots for me.
So I came up with a formula “I love XYZ, XYZ loves me.”
The obvious: “I love my body, my body loves me. I love these people, these people love me. I love this sky, this sky loves me.”
And then the less obvious, and more liberating: “I love this anger, this anger loves me. I love this filth, this filth loves me. I love this fear, this fear loves me.” It felt fucking great.
And then paradox reared its head. The spaces inside me where self-love is numbed, or inverted:
“I love my self-hatred, my self-hatred loves me. I love my shame, my shame loves me. I love this despair, this despair loves me.”
Every time I got distracted, and noticed, I just fed the latest object of attention into the formula: “ I love these beautiful women, these beautiful women love me. I love this trash, this trash loves me. I love these tears behind my eyes, the tears love me.”
It was beyond story, beyond judgements, beyond any capacity I had to argue, sabotage or block the flow of love.
All day wandering Bangkok I played. Never trying to feel more love, simply allowing it. People smiled at me much more than before. Rats and trash and the sky and the flaky buddhas smiled at me much more than before. My body, and my aches, and my anger and anxiety smiled at me more.
There’s a reason humans feel so incomplete. A reason why we feel like such imposters. Again, it’s because we’re pretending to be separate from the entire universe when we can’t be.
We can’t selectively numb feelings inside our bodies. We can’t selectively numb our connection to the world around us either. Whatever hate, trash or fear we shut down, we also shut down love and belonging. Whatever people we exclude from our circles of love, we also exclude the echoing parts of ourselves.
I know you know this. I just find my game gives the maddening mosaic of loving and numbing a voice and a name. Now, whenever I realise I’m manning the borders I say it: “I love these people I hate, these people love me. I love these parts of myself that I hate, these parts love me.”
Often I forget the game. In the initial rapture of creation I knew it was all I have to do to heal and expand every part of myself. Just like I knew with dozens of other practices I’ve come up with. Then I forgot. Now I remember. And forget. And remember. And put things into place to help me remember more.
“I love this pattern of running from love, this pattern loves me. I love this fear of all the grief that comes with love, this fear loves me. This grief loves me. I love the dizzy exhilaration of running out on thin air, beyond what I know how to control, this dizzy thin air loves me.”
I’m realising always, this capacity to let the whole universe in, is a physical capacity, it requires me to strengthen my body, nervous system, breath. I’m learning to be big enough to love everything I am, which is everything reality is.
Try it, just play with it. No effort, not stress, no judgments. Let me know how it goes.
“I love XYZ, XYZ loves me.”
Let me know what this story says to you, what you think…
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7 Replies
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let you know what i think ……… i think you are big and brave and a truth teller and i love you for sharing yourself so openly and honestly, for sharing this practise and for all that its giving me, i have also been looking for a way to let the whole world in more and more, to receive all the goodness and grit that’s on offer, to physically expand my heart and this vessel that is my body. Mostly love is what i shy away from, (i love my shyness and my shyness loves me, i love my longing for connection and my longing loves me, i love this old old apple tree in my garden that moves me to tears just thinking about its incredible sturdy and grounded love for me, i love my flustering and bustering and my flustering and bustering loves me, i love my grief that life didn’t turn out the way i planned and my grief loves me, i love my ability to be free and play and my freedom and play love me ……………..) Big love, thank you for your words x
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Ah, such beautiful sharing, thank you so much. Love how you play the game in your reply, love the flow and the flow loves we : )
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I love this way of seeing how everything is perfect because it sees the best in everything. All our clumsy foibles, fears, and worries are attempts to self soothe. I never understood how we were all one and belonged to each other until I read Andy Weir’s story- The Egg. Now I see our relatedness and why we get lost in our being, belonging, and becoming. None of that matters when you know you do what you do in love and it always loves you back. http://www.galactanet.com/oneoff/theegg_mod.html
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Yes, it’s an incredibly helpful, powerful thing to realise. I keep forgetting, and I have to keep practicing to really remember – to bring it back into my body and my state of being.
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Feeling deep gratitude for your relatable honesty and the permission to take a look at a page from your book of life.
I also played with reversing the order of the sentences: xyz loves me and i love xyz.
I experienced this order with more ease and attunement/alignment in myself.
This led me to the exploration of one of my stories that i doubt that i am welcome as i am, even when i am offering love (also humbly knowing that i can never absolutely know my blind spots (because blind is the defintion of invisible) whether i am coming from a place of pure love or a hidden agenda has unconciously sneaked in.). These reflections got me deeper into the topic of perfection, the belief of having to come from a pure = perfect place of love, in a pure way, with a pure intention. For sure, far too much “have to and shoulds” in order to be allowed or to deserve to receive. Puhh, sigh, next sentence of loving the “should perfectionism”…
I believe that in the wholeness of reality, there is no order in the mutual love, reciprocity is happening simultaneously (kind of chicken/egg question). So, i dont need an answer what is/has been/was first, yet<code><code> yet it is interesting to explore the different impacts on me and my daily behaviour: Do i wait to be loved, to receive love, kindness, operate with an unconsious expectation "they should do the first step" -interesting when it comes to dating or after a dispute ;) -or i am willing, open to open up, to receive and express, as both ends are always there, just depending on my perspective and perception.<br></p><p class="">Adding a fact from attachment development theory: A newborn's survival depends on being cared for with basic needs, not only physical nourishment but also with being regulated via another nervous system, being soothed, given a sense of safety when they experience stress (i.e. shock of loud noice, being overstimulated, etc.). The newborn is loving unconditionally the whole world as it is, itself and the person out there, yet it needs to receive love from "outside", in the form of regulation from outside in order to learn how to soothe, regulate itself. People who havn</code>t received this form of love, won</code>te able to regulate themselves, love themselves. They have no experiential knowledge how this looks like, how "to do" this.<br>angelika<br>(Dont know why the format looks like that)-
First off Angelika, I take it that the crazy fonts and format in your answer clearly proves you are downloading cosmic wisdom and flowing from higher dimensions and such : )
Second, it’s great you are playing with the practices and finding what brings you into flow and lets things move. In my live in person events, and my longer workshops, I do this a lot with people, in response to what they share, and what emerges in the group. Always play around with it.
I love when you say “in the wholeness of reality, there is no order in the mutual love, reciprocity is happening simultaneously.” I totally agree. All the games and practices are really just ways to tickle ourselves loose from the stuckness, allow things to release, and allow space for that experience to emerge. It’s where flow flows from for me : )
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Dave, I am so grateful for your connection to higher dimensions and cosmic wisdom which is shown by your ability to decipher my crazy text. 🙂 Makes me feel less like an outsider.
Thank you for referring to the heroic aspect. 🙏
I love the humour of the universe playing these tricks when I talk about perfectionism and the universe and its humour love me.
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