Tips On Learning To Love Yourself?

[Guest Annetta]

Just collecting some info on how to do this, anyone gone through self-hatred to self-love and lived to tell the tale?  How'd you do it?

[Guest Annetta]

@Snick Not at the moment, I have not learned this yet.

[S33K3R]

Loving oneself is not easy from what I have seen/experienced. No shame in this question. The way I remember to love myself is I remember how much time and effort went into creating my experience. All of the work everyone before me did just so I could exist. Then I look at all of the wonderful things I have done for others so they can exist. I also sometimes just sit and feel the love that is in every moment in existence. Love is all around us. It cannot penetrate our ego though. If the ego is in control the love will not be felt, even the slightest bit of ego will drown out the quiet whisper of love. 

If the mind is in the past or present the ego is at work. If the mind/ego is in the present the mind/ego vanishes and there is only love. 

[Prabhaker]

@Annetta

one has to begin not by loving oneself, because you don't know who you are. Who are you going to love? If you start by loving yourself, you will love only your ego, which is not your self, which is your false personality. Almost everybody loves his personality; everybody loves his ego.

How many things you have admitted that you know perfectly well are not true. People say you are so loving, so sincere, so truthful, so beautiful, so honest -- and you never deny. This is not the love I have been talking about.

Yes, I would like you to love yourself, because unless you love yourself you cannot love anybody else. You don't know what love is if you have not loved yourself. But before you can love yourself you have to know yourself; hence love is secondary, meditation is primary.

And the miracle is, if you meditate and slowly, slowly get out of the ego and out of your personality and realize your real self, love will come on its own. You don't have to do anything, it is a spontaneous flowering. But it blossoms only in a certain climate, and that climate I call meditation. In the climate of silence -- no-mind, no disturbance inside, absolute clarity, peace and silence -- suddenly, you will see thousands of flowers have opened within you, and their fragrance is love.

Naturally, first you will love yourself, because that will be your first encounter. First you will become aware of the fragrance that is arising in you and the light that has been born in you, and the blissfulness that is showering on you. Then loving will become your nature. Then you will love many; then you will love all.

In fact, what we know in our ignorance is a relationship, and what we know in our awareness is no longer a relationship. It is not that I love you; it is that I am love.

And you have to understand the difference. When you say, "I love you," what about others? What about the whole existence? The more narrow your love is, the more imprisoned. Its wings are cut; it cannot fly in the sky across the sun. It does not have freedom; it is almost in a golden cage. The cage is beautiful, but inside the cage the bird is not the same bird that you see in the sky opening its wings.

Love has to become not a relationship, not a narrowing, but a broadening. Love has to become your very quality, your very character, your very being, your radiance. Just as the sun radiates light not for anyone in particular, unaddressed, meditation radiates love unaddressed.

Of course, first it is felt within oneself, for oneself, and then it starts radiating all around. Then you love not only human beings, you love trees, you love birds; you simply love, you are love.

You are asking, "What does it mean to love myself?" It means meditation. It means to be yourself. And nature will bring love as a reward. Just don't listen to the priests. They are the enemies of love. They have been teaching the world to hate yourself and to hate the world, because they have been teaching either it is a sin that you were born or it is because of the evil acts of your past life that you are suffering in this life. But no religion accepts this life with joy and rejoicing, as a gift, as a reward of which you are not worthy, of which you don't claim any right. You have not earned it.

So the first thing is, avoid the priests. They have taught you life-negative values. And my effort here is to bring back life-affirmation. That's what I call loving yourself, accepting yourself not as a sinner. How can you accept yourself if you think you are a sinner? How can you love yourself if you think you are nothing but full of guilt, nothing but an accumulated past of evil acts of millions of lives?

You will hate yourself. And that's what your priests have been saying: renounce life, hate life, hate pleasure, hate everything, and sacrifice everything if you want to enter into paradise. Nobody has ever returned from paradise, so there is no evidence of any paradise anywhere, no proof, it is just a futile exercise which has never been able to come to a conclusion.

The old priest was warning his congregation about sin.

"Sin," he said, "is like a big dog. There is the big dog of pride, and the big dog of envy, and the big dog of greed, and finally, there is the big dog of sex. And you have to kill those big dogs before they kill you and prevent you from getting to heaven. It can be done. I know, because over the years I have done it. I killed the big dog of envy, the big dog of pride, the big dog of greed -- and yes, my children, I killed the big dog of sex."

"Father," came a voice from the back of the church, "are you sure that last dog did not die a natural death?"

You cannot change nature. If you can simply live naturally, transformations come. If they come, then sex disappears -- but not by your efforts. By your efforts it goes on hanging around you. The more you repress it, the more you have it. The more you live it, the more is the possibility to go beyond it.

An old couple were sitting at home one evening listening to the faith healer on the radio.

"Okay folks," he began, "God wants to heal you all. All you have to do is put one hand on the radio and the other hand on the part that is sick."

The old lady got up, shuffled over to the radio and put her hand on her arthritic hip. Then the old man put one hand on the radio and the other hand on his fly. His wife looked at him with contempt and said, "You old idiot. The man said he would heal the sick, not raise the dead!"

Live naturally. Live peacefully. Live inwardly. Just give a little time to yourself, being alone, being silent, just watching the inner scene of your mind. Slowly, slowly thoughts disappear. Slowly, slowly one day the mind is so still, so silent as if it is not there. Just this silence... in this moment you are not here, as if the whole Buddha Hall is empty.

In this silence within you, you will find a new dimension of life. In this dimension greed does not exist, sex does not exist, anger does not exist, violence does not exist. It is not a credit to you; it is the new dimension beyond mind where love exists, pure, unpolluted by any biological urge; where compassion exists for no other reason -- not to get any reward in heaven -- because compassion is a reward unto itself.

A deep longing exists to share all that treasure that you have discovered within yourself, and to shout from the housetops to the people, "You are not poor! Paradise is within you.

You need not be beggars, you are born emperors." You just have to discover your empire, and your empire is not of the outside world; your empire is of your own interiority. It is within you and it has always been there, just waiting for you to come home. Love will come, and will come in abundance -- so much that you cannot contain it. You will find it is overflowing you, it is reaching all directions.

Just discover your hidden splendor. Life can be simply a song, a song of joy. Life can be simply a dance, a celebration, a continuous celebration. All that you have to learn is a life-affirmative lifestyle. I call only that man religious who is life-affirmative. All those who are life-negative may think they are religious; they are not. Their sadness shows they are not. Their seriousness shows they are not.

A man of authentic religion will have a sense of humor. It is our universe, it is our home. We are not orphans. This earth is our mother. This sky is our father. This whole vast universe is for us, and we are for it. In fact, there is no division between us and the whole. We are organically joined with it, we are part of one orchestra.

To feel this music of existence is the only religion that I can accept as authentic, as valid. It does not have any scriptures, it need not have. It does not have any statues of God, because it does not believe in any hypotheses. It has nothing to worship, it has only to be silent, and out of that silence comes gratitude, prayer, and the whole existence turns into a godliness.

There is no God as a person. God is spread all over: in the trees, in the birds, in the animals, in humanity, in the wise, in the otherwise. All that is alive is nothing but godliness ready to open its wings, ready to fly into the freedom, ultimate freedom of consciousness. Yes, you will love yourself and you will love the whole existence too.

Source - Osho Book "The Invitation"

[Guest Annetta]

@Prabhaker @Snick @S33K3R Thank you very much!

[Nahm]

@Annetta ANNETTA!?!?!?!?!!?! Come on! ?

?

This is simple. You have complicated it and now you must put a little time in to get back to good. But it is simple! 

You feel how you feel from the thoughts you've been repeating. 

Time to repeat new thoughts. I promise you this is it, and it is this simple. The 'work' is on you to DO IT!!!

Write down how you want to feel. Repeat it over and over for as long as it takes. Write only in words of wanted. No double negatives.

Get back to me when you've done this.

(or don't of course)

Don't blow this off with believing what I am saying. DO IT. 

 

[Guest Annetta]

@Nahm Okay, so just write them down every day?

[Joseph Maynor]

Accept every emotion and don't balk at them.  Open yourself up so that your shadow gets expressed more and starts to shrink.  Transcend the self and practice awareness, openness, and acceptance.  Release all monkey-chatter thoughts.  Try not to tangle up your emotions with beliefs.  That's what feeds the shadow.  When the emotions come up, let them in and look at them impartially, without judging them good or bad, and beware of associating the emotions with certain thoughts.  Watch Emerald's 2 videos on the Shadow and Shadow Work.  You gotta shrink the Shadow to kill your demons.

Edited July 3, 2017 by Joseph Maynor

[WaterfallMachine]

I've gotten from intense self hatred to great self compassion with these choices.

• Self compassion meditation. You can find many of these on YouTube.
• Reflecting on being human and thus being imperfect.
• Practicing being grateful for strengths, victories and small everyday wins rather than only criticisms. There's something in Stoicism called negative visualization where you visualize an even worse situation with yourself and compare it with now to be more content. You can use this for this area of your life.
• Using a modified loving kindness meditation — where you focus on the love for people close to you and then try to create that in yourself rather than the two steps reversed in order.
• Using the Dropping The Roles You Play video by Leo. Lots of self hatred comes from overemphasizing a role to yourself. Someone for example can be hard working. And that's often true. But they associate that role with being perfect in discipline all the time, doing certain things and talking to certain people etc. Until they end up having a role where they feel terrible when they're challenged. For this example, the role of the "hardworker" may end up with workaholic traits because they feel they should still be this "hard worker" when the concept is more of an estimate or even a total falsehood.
• Gaining a sense of humor with yourself. It helps to look for a "humor" role model to see things from their angle.

Edited July 3, 2017 by WaterfallMachine

[Nahm]

@Annetta Have you done it yet?

[Guest Annetta]

@Nahm Yes I wrote down that I want to feel happy and peaceful

[Nahm]

@Annetta Now write I AM ________ _______ ________ ________ ______

keep repeating

do you notice anything

[Guest Annetta]

@Nahm I did for a while, but forgot the feeling soon after and the negative self talk returned, so that's probably why you suggested to keep repeating it.  I'll put some notes around my home so I don't forget.  Thanks!  

[Nahm]

@Annetta Once you get the momentum going you will be feeling great. You simply got momentum going in the wrong way. You're smart, you're beautiful, you're hilarious when you're vulnerable enough to be silly, you have learned so much that you're just flat out better than this, you can do anything you want. (Thought I'd kick start the momentum a little) 

[Emerald]

I've only been capable of true self-love when I transcended the ego. Otherwise, there have been times where I felt good about myself and there have been times where I have felt bad about myself. But it was never love, because it was always conditioned upon my meeting certain standards. The way to love yourself it to allow yourself to be exactly as you are without any negative or positive judgments of SHOULD or SHOULD NOT.

But this is difficult to do because we're in the habit of functioning in the opposite way. To love yourself means to love everything unconditionally in reality (including the self): good, bad, and ugly. It's a complete equalization of love toward all things in reality, because it's a realization of God and reality and love as the one thing that everything boils down to... including the self. So, you can't love yourself if you think reality needs to be any other way than exactly as it is. And this is difficult with all the turmoil. But only then can you see reality as perfect and recognize yourself as part and whole to that perfection. This is the only way to truly love yourself.

But if you want to like yourself and admire yourself, all you have to do is to do things that you consider admirable. So, set goals to achieve and become very hard working and count your victories. But this is only a coping mechanism to deal with a lack of self-love. It's only us drawing a line in the sand and making a rule that we can only celebrate if we cross the line. Deep down there will always be a sense of un-fulfillment because no action can ever make you any more lovable than you already are. And there's nothing you can do to make you unlovable either. Because your very nature is love at its core. 

So, in order to love yourself, you must recognize your true nature which is love. 

[Visitor]

On 6/30/2017 at 7:49 AM, Annetta said:

Just collecting some info on how to do this, anyone gone through self-hatred to self-love and lived to tell the tale?  How'd you do it?

Total self-acceptance. To have no fear of self. No fear of vulnerability or exposure, because you are aware of your truth and have accepted it.

[Zephyr]

Loving yourself from time to time alone can be quite powerful. Especially when going through hard times and dealing with strong emotions.

It's all about how you talk to yourself. The most practical way I go about it is saying the phrase "It's okay"

It's okay to feel weak. It's okay to feel hate towards others. I can understand that you feel hurt. It's okay to be socially awkward, bro. It's okay to be addicted. It's okay to feel shame and to doubt yourself. It's okay to seek and suffer. 

*Talking to myself as if I'm talking to another person

[ajasatya]

@Annetta

• chew slowly
• contemplate your surroundings often
• rarely use your cellphone
• eat healthily
• exercise (i strongly recommend yoga)
• drop your relationships with toxic people
• do not watch tv
• make eye contact with people

[Emerald]

58 minutes ago, Nichols Harvey said:

@Emerald

How do I cope with this.

Solutions. I need SOLUTIONS!!!

You can cope with it on the surface level by creating rules for yourself that you (and others) must meet in order to consider yourself worthy of admiration. So, you can arbitrarily pick a human trait such as "high work ethic" or "friendliness" or "creativity" or any other trait, and arbitrarily decide that that's the most important trait to embody. Ideally, you want to choose one that you have a natural talent for. Then, you want to pour a lot of effort into becoming better and better at that thing until you're the most proficient person that you know relative to that trait. And every time that you achieve something relative to that trait, you can allow yourself to feel good by confirming your superiority to others relative to that trait. This will allow you to feel good about yourself for a short period of time. But then the good feeling of self-admiration will fade. So, you have to seek out more opportunities to prove your (fill in the blank arbitrarily chosen aptitude) to yourself. 

Underneath everything, you'll still feel a baseline sense of inferiority. So, you'll have to constantly reaffirm your superiority to yourself to safeguard against it. But if done with a high degree of rigor and with enough ability to believe your own lies, you will be convinced that you have a high sense of self esteem and that you are happy. But you will always feel like an island because your sense of self-worth stems from comparison to others. But it will do in a pinch. It's at least slightly better than feeling a constant sense of inferiority to others with no ability for relief from that sense of inferiority. So, it's an effective coping mechanism.

But it's better to just let go of the entire illusion, lest you spend your entire life chasing a carrot that you can never catch. This coping mechanism requires tons of energy. 

[Guest Annetta]

Thanks for the advice everyone