Let’s start by asking ourselves these basic questions; what does it mean to love oneself?, how to give up the need to feel loved, in order to love myself?, how to accept myself without falling in the mold of comparison?, how to love myself without looking for recognition in the others?, how do I start to love myself when I’ve been taught to hate me? Loving oneself has turn into a clichè ‘cause saying it’s easy, but finding the path to achieve it, is the biggest challenge that not everyone have the will to follow because that means to give up to the beliefs and conditionings that make us seek affection in the others in order to return ourselves to the source of love that can only come from oneself. 

Love is a biological and affective need we seek to satisfy and for that we need the others, ‘cause love starts with a thought where we believe, feel and interpret that’s an external emotion that’s born thanks to the stimulus other people generate in us and that’s directly related to the excess of love towards oneself called narcissism or the lack of love called emotional self-aggression. 

Love and feeling loved from the biological sense is a basic source for survival; for science is a neurological process that’s produced in the brain and for spirituality, love’s a service with which you perceive and attend life; nonetheless, love towards oneself is when we’re capable of connecting with the 3 of them from congruence, where the need to love myself is greater therefore I can love the others, where my thoughts are based on love, where my conscious state is observing everything from a place of peace and from there, teaching the world who am I. 

Loving oneself implies to accept that in us, there’s a huge responsibility that involves taking care of who we are; the responsibility means to have the ability to recognize that the abandonment that my mother and father taught me, has become into a duty with which I have to work on, in order to understand that behind all that absence I feel, I have to rescue myself; requires to have the ability to understand that behind the requirement I demand to the others so they can recognize me, I have to give up to the selfishness that conditions me; I need to have the ability to accept myself the way I am without falling back into the lie of comparison that make me think that I’m less than the others; implies to have the ability to recognize the fear that generates me the feeling of being myself ‘cause that means putting an end to everything I was told to be; loving oneself is the biggest responsibility ‘cause is the ability to unite yourself when you feel shattered, it’s the ability of saying goodbye to those who don’t know how to love themselves; therefore, they don’t know how to love others either; it’s the ability to stop projecting the deprivations we expose through our judgements; loving oneself is taking responsibility of who we are in order to love ourselves without prejudices. 

“No one deserves more of your love than yourself.”

Buddha.

I’ve always believed that the first step to love ourselves is forgive oneself; forgiving for those things the others taught us to be; to be perfect, be pretty, be thin or skinny, be stupid, being good for nothing, be with someone to not feel alone, meet the love of our life so we can be happy, being succesful, ‘cause all those beliefs of non-existent molds are the illusions that prevent us to love and recognize ourselves as unique and valuable beings. 

I’ve told you that finally came to my life: my dreamed dog, my guardian, my friend, my partner; possibly you’ll ask: what does your dog have to do with self-love? Let me tell you, finally I’ve achieved that everytime I throw the ball to him he brings it back and comes to me running; before that happened,  I felt fear ‘cause he used to go somewhere else and I ran after him screaming his name so he came back and beyond enjoying the moment, I was anxious of losing him; that’s when I realized that I wasn’t loving myself ‘cause those thoughts dragged me to dark places of control, therefore, I couldn’t love him back ‘cause I wanted to own it ‘cause when we put an emotional investment in something or someone, we create an egoistic need towards the other ‘cause Lucca my dog doesn’t belong to me, he belongs to the existence of which I am also part of; and is precisely there, where we can share the purest love with each other, but when I see it from my inseparable duality I fall back in the fear of breaking up my childish dream where I need a dog to be happy; a thought that forbids me to connect with my natural state of happiness that’s always with me. 

Being in a world with a constant noise, makes harder to think what’s the best thing for oneself when the exterior talks to me about what it’s right and what’s not; it’s harder to stop comparing when the stereotype of a human body is unreachable; it’s harder to put boundaries ‘cause we have been taught to believe that we’ve to live from the compliments of others; but in reality, loving oneself is knowing how to return to the conscious of unit when that duality feels incomprehensible and in that way, understand and accept everything we’re living so we can recognize the places where we’re not loving ourselves and where the others make us see ourselves the way we are. 

Starting a practice of self-love requires will and a huge daily commitment ‘cause nobody in the world will know how you feel more than yourself; observe the others as your teachers ‘cause beyond of believing they hurt you, all of them teach you the places where you reject yourself and teach you the work you’ve left to do; make peace with the abandonment, heartbreak, hate, aggression, judgement, self-criticism and become aware of those thoughts ‘cause they are based on those fears, so it’s time for you to choose to turn them into love and with them build your life; give yourself the opportunity of waking up the love you deny yourself so with it you can transform and help the world to raise its frequency ‘cause if something the world needs, is that we can return the love that we have denied to it, just to being stuck in a collective hypnosis.  

Loving yourself, means to love everything, Shary ChavLó ∞