On Self-love.

The universe you are one. Beyond a conceptual representation of reality, this statement is as true as it gets. Each one of us is not experiencing a unique consciousness but rather a unique point of view of one universal consciousness, shared among humans, animals and all things material. Causality, time and space, and materialism, are perceptual illusions of the mind, which cannot help but slice reality into discreet bits of information for it to be processed in a sensical way. Sensical is the key word here, because the mind can only operate on a sense-based understanding of the world. Living from the mind, or the ego, is then to live a fully outward-focused, material life. Outer circumstances determine our happiness and we create a clear line of separation between our bodies and the world. By material I mean that whatever I can perceive with the five sense is true and the rest is not.

This is a problem. Especially when self-love is involved. Self-love has nothing to do with the amount of favorable circumstances in your life. It is the love you experience for yourself when all doors are shut, no one is looking and when you are left with nothing but your thoughts. But what does it really mean to experience love for yourself or to love yourself? Who is loving who? Who is giving love to who and how does that feel like?

I believe that if we would rise beyond the belief that our body separates us from the world, which is a logical fallacy entirely based on a sense-based, material interpretation of reality in any case, what we consider as being self-love would completely change. If you are fortunate enough to have at least one person in your life who loves you, be it a family member, a friend or a lover, you already know what it means to experience self-love. When that special someone looks at you with those loving eyes, remember in that moment that it is you looking at yourself through the eyes of another. So when someone tells you "I love you", both the I and the you are you. The words are different and though they grammatically refer to two different people, that's just the way language works. Language and words are symbols representing an intention. Symbols should never be confused with that which underlies them.

The underlying fabric of reality is that you and I are one. It might not be easy to understand and that's not the point anyway. The mind can only understand that which can be perceived by the senses. All the mind can do here is accept. So leave the mind out for this and have faith in your heart. Your heart knows exactly what we're talking about.