Loving oneself first.

I feel the need to do a post about 'self-love' after reading a post by EM on the topic.


I also feel the need to call out EM on the sheer amount of BS he is posting of late, and done in the usual "I know everything.. I have 40 years experience blah blah" fashion.


In his latest post he writes that the idea that one has to learn to love oneself first before loving others is wrong, not correct.


He writes:

"There is an old saying that has gained a lot of believers in the West that you cannot love anyone until you first love yourself.

Not only is this overly simplistic, but from my experience, it is just wrong.

How does a toddler learn how to love him or her self?  Easy, by being loved by the mother or father.  At about age three, the toddler has reached the developmental stage where it can .."

It is very tempting to assign an external cause to our lack of self love, be that external cuase parents, teachers, living environment etc.

But as Gotama Buddha pointed out about 2500 years ago, training seems to be required in aquainting ourselves with the real cause of our suffering, lack of love, etc.--> craving, clinging and seeking externally. It is no coincidence that most schools in Buddhism, Vedanta and Eastern mind-related schools train in metta, loving-kindness and compassion for a decent amount of time while also training in attention and inquiry.

The reason for this is because love, self-love, starts at home. We can blame all sorts of events that happened at age three.. but really, loving oneself has to start here and now, in this minute with me first. If I've never encountered the feeling of love, compassion and goodwill, least of all for myself, how could I possibly offer that non-existent feeling or goodwill to an external object or person?

Even the argument that a toddler learns love from his/her parents, may seem true, but in actual fact, if one observes toddlers in horrific home environments, they are fully capable of love, wonder and gentleness despite never having learned from any external source. Self-love, love is actually our true nature, as has been pointed out countless times by sages in all schools.

Training in self-love MUST begin with oneself first. There are many practices that work on training a practitioner in first evoking and coming to know the already existent (but hidden) feeling of loving-kindness, and then once this is mastered, offering it to others and external objects. (External objects and others, which also happen to be internal representations in actual fact-- there are no 'others' or 'things' outside of our own consciousness).

One does not need a lover, mutual love, peer, or even a living teacher to learn how to evoke, come to know, and eventually be a conscious source of love, self-love. "Your earnestness will take you there".

Love and Self-love.

I recently read a post by a spiritual teacher of nonduality, related to the topic of love, especially that of romantic love and yearning of the heart. This teacher maintains that the search for love happens regardless of tradition, and there is value in exploring feelings, emotions, and psychologies behind this search for love. This teacher also prides themselves on having around 40 years’ experience in the field of Zen, Advaita, and other teachings.

 

While I find the above approach reasonable, I also find that it is so easy to get carried away with the topic of "love". It lends itself into over-analysis into the emotions, psychology, and reasons for why we act as we do. It is like taking the simple message of nonduality and then building a massive super-structure on top that somehow explains the spontaneity of things.

 

Nisargadatta completely deals with the topic of love, by taking it to be Self-love. Love of the "I am"-ness, which starts from the moment we awake in the morning, and goes on until we get to deep sleep at night. In fact, this self-love begins as a child, and comes upon us spontaneously itself. It grows with concepts and ideas, added by those around us. It seeks to experience, know, expand and "be". It is behind all movement towards supposed external objects and "love interests", despite externalities being merely projections of our internal world and beliefs.

 

Rather than attempting to explain how all this works, and how we should be dealing with emotions and feelings due to this love-yearning, why not get to the root of the matter? The "Moola-maya" or root-illusion, being that we are, in fact, this "I am", that needs to seek and perpetuate itself. If I take up a plant by the roots, is there any more need to keep pruning the branches?