How you can achieve self-love by recognizing self-hate
There is a trap of all traps that sets a snare of misunderstanding of what the meaning of self-love entails. For the very society that dangles the carrot to the knowledge of self-love, is the same society that taught you the ideas that led you down the ravine of self-hate. So how can the problem be the solution?
Life is full of contradictions, in understating the root cause of your misery in self-hate, you understand the solution to the problem. Is it not the most difficult of circumstances that teach us most? Everyone lives this truth yet not many ever meditate on it. Because of this truth, the secret to self-love is in understanding the circumstances that led you to self-hate.
Rooted in contradictions
Just like your understanding of self-love is rooted in its contradiction, everything bears root in this dual play of life. The biblical story of Adam and Eve plays with the split of man into two only to understand himself as one, everything plays the same magic trick on you. You see something as bad only to experience the good in it and verse versa.
Now this trick creates a blind fold on you because you always want to choose what you consider a more pleasant experience to avoid the unpleasant. It is in this choice that the magician flips his mask to a devil’s face. Your choice of the pleasant seeks the unpleasant. How are you supposed to know pleasant without its counter-part in unpleasant? Seeking self-love therefore evokes the experience of self-hate first.
To understand this another way, for you to experience self-love, you must be there to experience it. In this maze of your conditioning and living on the whip of your ego, you don’t know yourself. For the ego only exists in impersonations of the self; your true essence. All the impressions of the mind projected by your ego are not you. That is why you live in misery.
Therefore, how can you possibly love yourself when you are not even there? To experience self-love the self must be present. It is like a visitor ringing your door bell and expecting the door to open when you are not at home. This can not be, so how do you expect the self in self-love to appear when you’re are not at home?
Calling on the Self
To call on the self in self-love, you first must recognise its absence. Unless you acknowledge something, the ego etches denial deep down in your memory. Its survival depends on your denial of the Self. Once you realise this magic trick, you are on your way to freedom. For example, if you are an alcoholic and you don’t recognise that you are, you will not be open to any solutions.
Because of this contradictory nature of life, achieving self-love is no different to anything else. It is in understanding the contradictory nature of life that all problems dissolve. To fully dissolve, you must walk in the opposite path to which you have been walking. This is the magic trick to meet/unite the two contradicting forces. For you to achieve this, you can use any tools that can help you drop the ego.
Having tried different tools, I highly recommend meditation that puts emphasis on silence rather than chanting. This is because the Self resides in the silent crevices of your being. And it is this silence that will evoke self-love.
Simply put, don’t run away from your misery (self-hate). Your redemption is in facing it head on in meditation. This will eventually break the strong fibers that bind the energy that supports the projection of this misery and you will therefore start to experience the self love that was hidden behind it.
Happy seeking!
Linzo
Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.
Martin Luther king
How do you recognise light without going through darkness? He is right but he missed the play on the contradiction. That is life!
Personally, in order to fall asleep I need 15 minutes complete mental Silence, otherwise I won't fall asleep. I have been in need of doing so for several years now and my inner fears literally billowed out of me. This was quite tough every night and in turn again required mental Silence to undo these fears..
Well-articulated article once again!