"If there is a panacea, or cure-all to life, it is self love." Paul Solomon, Spiritual Teacher And Universal Mind Channel
If the development of personal power is the first golden key to psychological and spiritual health, then unconditional self love is most definitely the second golden key.
Personal power and self love are the building blocks of a healthy self concept and self image. The most important relationship in a person’s life is his relationship to himself. If we are wrong with ourselves, we will be wrong with all other relationships. If we are off center in ourselves, how can we be on center with others?
Self love begins with the understanding that there are two types of love in the world. They are conditional love and unconditional love. Conditional love is egotistical love. Unconditional love is spiritual love. This type of love applies to others, but more importantly first applies to ourselves.
The first key question we each must ask ourselves is whether we love ourselves conditionally or unconditionally. Unconditional self love is based on the understanding that we have worth and we are lovable because God created us We are sons and daughters of God. God doesn’t make junk. Of course we have worth. If we don’t have worth then God doesn’t have worth. In other words, our worth and lovableness is a spiritual inheritance.
If you don’t believe this, then your ego steps in and says, "I have a different interpretation." The ego says your worth and lovableness are based on meeting certain conditions. You have to have a certain kind of physical body. You have to go to college, have money, have a high paying job, be in a certain social status, be perfect, be spiritual, meditate, exercise, have a relationship, get good grades, be successful, and so on.
Now a lot of these things are very noble things to strive for and I recommend that you continue to do so. However, they have nothing to do with your self love and self worth.
Your self love and self worth come from who you are, not what you do. There are no conditions you have to meet. You can do everything in your life right or everything in your life wrong, and your worth and lovableness are the same. This cannot be emphasized more emphatically.
A good metaphor for understanding this is to imagine that you just had a baby. Does this baby have to do anything to have worth or value? Does it have to look a certain way? Isn’t there just an inherent value in the spark of life? Of course, your baby is of value and lovable. Don’t you continue to love that child as it grows older, even if it gets into trouble or fails the first grade spelling test?
The point I am now coming to is that there is a difference between the soul that is that child and the child’s behavior. The soul is always lovable and worthy. The behavior may not always be so. This is an extremely important discrimination to make with others and with yourself.
Taking this analogy a step farther, we are God’s children. He gave birth to us. Don’t you think He loves us as you would love your child? And don’t you think He continues to love us even though we make mistakes in the spiritual school called Earth life?
So the question is: At what age does a child lose its inherent value? We all seem to have it up to a certain age. It is quite ludicrous if you think about it. God loves us even though our behavior is often bad. Certainly He would prefer we got it together, but He loves us even if we don’t.
Another facet of self love that has been brought out here is that we need to love ourselves as God loves us unconditionally! Jesus said, "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." You will notice he didn’t say to love your neighbor and hate yourself.
You can determine where you are on your spiritual path by seeing how much you love your neighbor and how much you are loving yourself. We also need to learn to allow ourselves to feel God’s love. God’s love is like the sun. It is always shining. It is just a matter of whether we are going to give ourselves permission to receive it. One of my favorite metaphors is that we are diamonds with mud on us. God created us so we are diamonds. Our faulty egotistical negative thinking has put mud on us. I am trying in this book to get out the hose and wash off the illusions of faulty thinking and show you the "real you". Your true identity is the Christ, the perfect creation of God. It is only the ego’s false, negative, pessimistic interpretation of you that makes you feel unworthy or unlovable.
Earth is a school. Our mistakes are not held against us. There are no such things as sins. There are only mistakes. Some believe that a sin is like some stain on our character that cannot be removed. This is absurd. Mistakes are positive. Did you fully hear and get that? Mistakes are positive! You don’t go out of your way to make them. But if they happen, you learn from them.
Every mistake is a blessing in disguise because there is always a golden nugget of wisdom to be learned. We learn the easy way or by the school of hard knocks. We are in this school to know ourselves and, hence, know God. God’s universe is governed by laws. There are physical laws, psychological laws and spiritual laws. We learn by making mistakes and then making adjustments.
The spiritual path up the mountain is five steps forward and four backward; seven forward then six backward. Don’t buy into the ego’s game of creating this impossible perfectionistic standard where mistakes are unacceptable. The spirit believes in striving for perfection but looks at mistakes as positive and unavoidable.
Life as a Dream
When we go to sleep at night and have a nightmare, we wake up and say to ourselves, "Boy, am I glad that was just a dream; it seemed so real while I was sleeping!" Well, that is what I am saying to you right now. Wake up from that bad dream or negative hypnosis you have been experiencing. Snap out of it!
Wake up! Let the mud fall off your diamond and see who you really are. You are the most valuable precious thing in all creation. Do you think God loves a rock or tree more than His own children who are made in His image?
Now comes the key to the whole process. Your thoughts create your reality. Your thoughts don’t create truth. They just create the reality of the people who are thinking them. In other words, if you think you are unworthy, then you are going to live in the nightmare and self created hell of your own thought creation.
You will live in your own bad dream and nightmare, even though it really isn’t true. You are what you think. The great need is to push these false unworthy and unlovable attitudes out of your mind and to start affirming the truth about yourself. By doing this you will re-record a new message into your subconscious tape recorder.
Selfish Selfless Balance
Another aspect of self love is what I call the selfish selfless balance. This means there is a time to be selfish and there is a time to be selfless. To be selfless is to direct your energies to helping others. To be selfish is to take care of yourself. The spiritual path is the path of balance. We are not here to be martyrs. We must learn to be spiritually selfish.
Many very sincere and good spiritual people misunderstand this. I am not saying you shouldn’t help others. I have already said that the greatest among you is the servant of all. I am just saying that you have to take care of yourself also. You are a part of God. You are a son or daughter of God.
Not to be spiritually selfish at times is to reject a part of God. If you are too selfless you will probably be resentful. The great lesson is that when you are selfish don’t feel guilty, and when you are selfless, give and don’t feel resentful. Be decisive in whatever decision you make.
Developing an Understanding of the Inner Child
The second major understanding in obtaining unconditional self love deals with the understanding of the inner child.
We all have a relationship to ourselves. I have called this, at times, a right relationship to self. What is this self I am talking about? Another name for this self is the inner child or inner self. In other words, we each parent ourselves. On that note I would like you to look at the Diagram on page 23, The Parenting Model.
I am suggesting that there are two ways of parenting ourselves or a real external child. There is a spiritual way of parenting or an egotistical way or parenting. The spiritual way of parenting is to be firm but loving (yin and yang balanced).
The wrong way to parent is to be too firm or too permissive and spoiling. A parent who is too firm is critical. As the diagram indicates, when a parent is too critical this creates a child who is unworthy or deflated or who feels unloved. A too lenient parent creates a child who is spoiled or rebellious. A firm and loving parent creates a balanced, well adjusted child.
The first step in understanding this whole process is to look at how your parents raised you. Were they critical or firm and loving? It is very likely that you treat yourself the exact way your parents treated you. Now look at how you raised your children. And lastly look at how you are currently raising your own inner child
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