You are the most important person in the world. Learning to love yourself is the final journey.

As human beings, the final frontier is facing ourselves in the mirror and embracing all of our parts–learning to love every bit in its entirety.

What’s preventing or holding us back from feeling, acting and being authentically whole?

Why are we so scared to be real? Why are we so scared to be ourselves?

“It’s as if society has a strategy to condemn you for who you are but they then encourage you to be like someone else.” ~ Osho

Are you scared to love yourself authentically whole?

The kernel of personal growth is this—learning to love yourself. 

How to begin? Speak to yourself like you speak to God.

Easier said than done, of course! Self-love is the gateway—with loving yourself comes the creation of a peaceful, whole vision of both inner and outer worlds. It isn’t easy. Caroline Myss says it thus,

“To love yourself, truly love yourself, is to finally discover the essence of personal courage, self-respect, integrity, and self-esteem. These are the qualities of grace that come directly from a soul with stamina.”

The goals of manifestation and personal growth can become selfish when they’re only and exclusively inward-oriented. Without a foundation in place of self-love, giving to others can be an empty selfish experience, involving motives such as addiction, control, power play, and various other machinations. Giving wholeheartedly from a space of pure love and open-heartedness comes naturally when those qualities are already present, already deeply instilled in the giver. Thus loving yourself deeply, way beyond the superficiality of narcissism, is a gateway to spiritual growth. Yet even with only focusing on loving and growing, the spirit is still growing.

Our relationship to others mirrors our relationship to ourselves, which mirrors our relationship to God.

This cycle of inner-outer, microcosmic-macrocosmic, action-reaction, is the result of cosmic unity—the outward flow of creation dictated life within life, life within death, death within life, and the energy of life that flows through all matter, animating a rock, infusing a plant with life-force energy.

From a position of love, comes the opportunity to give unselfishly, to love unconditionally.

If a person feels incomplete, then their love will always be conditional, and the result may lead to control, manipulation or as a balm for self-loathing. A person’s goals and path is always multi-dimensional, and judging it from any one position, can give an incomplete picture, and thus a narrow judgment or perspective. It’s fair to say though that a path that only highlights the self has aspects of the egocentric, or self-centered. It can also become overly self-absorbed or self-indulgent.

Perhaps the answer is in explaining it more simply—love yourself and you open up gateways to advance yourself and the world in a positive direction. Don’t love yourself, and the possibilities decrease proportionally.

Immersing yourself in your partner, or children’s lives is also only filling a gap or deficit within yourself. Balance is the epitome of—and the path to—health. The need to be loved comes with the corollary “fill me up with your love because I’m not already full.”

“Unless we are happy and confident within ourselves, we tend to attract co-dependent mates hoping they’ll fill the missing bits.”  ~ Ruth Ostrow

Is there an escape clause from the relationships that so often causes us grief? Sometimes keeping distance is not a solution, as it may prevent us from developing the resources to be still in the face of outside pressures.

Your chosen family and intimate partners are mirrors for you to learn and grow from. By all means, spend time alone and in isolation, yet also finding the meaning within being with them, learning the lessons, and finding stillness and calm in the face of their triggers. These are your opportunities for self-realization. They’re just your teachers—acknowledge them thusly…and treat them with reverence.

Your parents and the society around you send you lots of different messages that conflict with your true nature. So it’s about getting to know who you truly are—away and outside of other people’s views/opinions.

You are your greatest teacher. Look within for the answers you seek…..

For the most part, I recommend mindful awareness (just watching/ observing). This doesn’t mean you don’t respond—just watch how you respond. Then check in—analyze what triggered you and how you responded. Then ask why why why...?

Then work on what was triggered and why.

Heal this part of you.

Then they will not trigger you anymore.

Also you can choose your responses accordingly as is your will.

Share this knowledge with others. Live this knowledge if you believe it more closely resembles who you are.

Learning to love yourself may be the most challenging journey of your life…

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Ed: Lynn Hasselberger