True Self Love

In this presentation we will analyze a rather serious problem that affects most people, to a greater or lesser extent: the lack of self-love or acceptance of oneself as one is. This is a problem that has a negative impact on the feeling of well-being that one can have. We will begin by examining the expressions of this lack of self-love, seeing what its main symptoms are, then we will examine its causes and finally we will see what to do to remedy this situation.

It is worth mentioning that this analysis is not limited to self-love in the sense of self-esteem, which has more to do with individual personality, but rather focuses on the feeling of existential unconformity with one's own Being. That is, this analysis focuses on the fundamental or essential nature of Being and not just a deficiency in personality.

Symptoms of lack of self-love

To begin to understand what this lack of self-love is about, we can note that it manifests itself in so many ways in our lives, but that in its most basic and general form it presents itself as a feeling of "I don't feel good about what I am. I am not satisfied with myself, I feel that something is missing, I feel that I am not complete as I am. Moreover, I feel that something is inherently wrong with me, as if by nature I am corrupted, as if in essence my heart is impure”. This feeling can be summed up simply as the feeling that "I can't just be the way I am, because something is wrong with me". This feeling of discontent, unworthiness or deficiency that one feels towards oneself is expressed in multiple narratives such as: "I have to be different from who I am now, I need to change, I need to improve, I need to fix this in myself". "I need to reach this or that goal to feel fulfilled". "I need something or someone to feel complete". "I need to heal these wounds to feel good about myself again".

In essence, this lack of self-love is a resistance or conflict with who we are NOW. We do not feel satisfied and at peace with who we are NOW. We place our hope in the future or our satisfaction in a memory of the past. This resistance or conflict is suffering, an existential suffering, a suffering that we have for the simple fact of existing or of being what we are. How can we verify that this is so? This suffering can be verified by the fact that we make an effort to be other than what we are, that is, we make an effort to pretend to be something or someone that we are not really. That is, we are dishonest with ourselves: we put on a mask with which we try to hide our feeling of dissatisfaction. This mask is what is known as Person, Ego or Individuality. The Ego is a false identity and is built of lies and opinions. Those lies are what separates us from our hearts and their honesty and transparency. These lies take us away from ourselves, they take us away from the truth that is already in our hearts, and so we make an effort to "appear" rather than "to be", camouflaging our feeling with feelings that we do not really feel, wanting things that we really do not want, saying things that we really do not want to say, carrying out actions motivated by necessity, comfort or obligation. In other words, we do not listen to the heart and do not trust its wisdom, but rather we prefer to support our lies, since they make up this identity that we mistakenly assume, out of fear and habit. By not listening to the voice within, we surrender to the external voices and the narratives of the mind and its conditioning, which tell us how we have to be and live.

In short, feeling bad about ourselves makes us feel dissatisfied and in conflict with the honesty of the heart, seeking answers outside and living according to the conditioning of our false identity and the opinions of others.

So we live without knowing who we really are.

The cause of lack of self-love

Now, why do we feel this way? What is the true cause of this feeling of dissatisfaction and inner conflict?

The cause is very simple: we take ourselves as someone we really are not. By not recognizing our true identity (our real nature, our essence, our being) we create all kinds of fictions and stories around us, believing them to be true and we take these stories as our identity. We cling to that false identity and this false “I” is the one who feels dissatisfied and in conflict with itself. He feels dissatisfied because he feels limited and by feeling limited he also feels that something is missing. You feel in conflict because you feel divided, alienated or separated from yourself.

We think that we love this false Self, but in truth we do not, since we only love it when it meets certain criteria or conditions, such as when you feel that you have something valuable, when you have achieved something important or when you feel loved by others. But as soon as these conditions are not met, we no longer like it and we feel bad about ourselves. That is, by loving this false I, we do not love ourselves, but only an image in the mirror, and only when we like what we see in that image. But that image is not what we are, it is just an artificial identity that was built by conditioning. This I only loves itself superficially and conditionally, only if it satisfies certain conditions, both in its person and in its circumstances. If circumstances are not favorable for this I, you feel unhappy.

Thus, both its self-esteem and its happiness are only conditional. That is to say, in truth it does not love itself when it seems to love itself, since it only loves an image and not itself. Nor is this I really happy, since its happiness is fragile and fleeting, depending on things over which it has little or no control.

In short, the root cause of this sense of dissatisfaction and conflict, which is also experienced as suffering or unhappiness, is that we cling to a false conditioned identity and thus both love and happiness are also conditioned.

What to do to solve this problem?

By acknowledging the root cause of this lack of self-love, it is easy to see that in order to resolve it, it is necessary to recognize who we really are and what our true nature is. And not only a recognition, but a permanence in that true Being. In other words, the solution is to be what we really are.

Who am I?

If we carefully examine this proposed solution, we will see that something is wrong with it, since we are already now what we truly are and we cannot be anything else or another being apart from what we truly are, no matter how hard we try to change or pretend to be another. We are always the same being, even if we don't know who we are.

But to help recognize who we are, we can use a very simple fact that we can all agree: "I am what I already am now and I remain the same always, unconditionally and without change." This is confirmed by the fact that we are all certain that we are the same being despite all the changes that may have occurred in our lives. For example, even though in childhood I may have been a very different person than I am now, with a totally different mind and body, I am still the same being as always. In the same way, a butterfly remains the same being that it was when it had the body-mind of the caterpillar. In this way, the being that I am is always present and does not change in essence, despite the fact that it appears to change, both in body and in mind.

Therefore, the question "who am I?" could be rephrased as “what is that which is present now and remains present forever, despite all the changes?”. Clearly, that cannot be the body nor the mind, for both change. It cannot be the Person or Ego, because being only a mental content, it changes over time. Then, what is being? Being is that conscious presence that does not change, but nevertheless witnesses the changes. This "conscious presence" is another expression for "Awareness" or “Consciousness”. Consciousness is that by which all things are known, observed, or experienced. Consciousness is not something known, but that by which something is known. That is to say, I am the immutable conscious presence, and I am not a body or a person that changes. I am the surface on which all changes appear, including changes of the body and mind. This Presence-Being-Consciousness is my true identity. I am not a person or individual. This Presence-Being-Consciousness is like the screen on which a movie is projected, and the person I thought I was is just a character in this movie. This screen, Consciousness, is who I am, this is my true nature, my essence, my reality, my true face, beyond all masks and appearances. This is my naked heart, without attachments not additions.

Since the being that I am does not change, no effort to change what I am is really justified. I don't have to achieve, or improve, or reach, or heal anything, because all those actions imply change. All that can change is the person, who is just a false identity. Thus, I am NOW what I truly am. In this way I feel fulfilled, without having achieved anything, but only having recognized who I really am. This sense of fulfillment is already the solution to the problem of dissatisfaction or conflict with myself. This recognition is my relief, my joy, my peace, my fullness and happiness. 

In this way we can conclude that the nature of this Presence-Being-Consciousness is peace and happiness.

How to establish yourself in this true identity?

Although we have recognized what we truly are, that Presence-Being-Consciousness, free of conflict and dissatisfaction, the mind still has the strong tendency and habit of identifying with an ego, individual or person, so that this false Self will again feel unhappiness and fragility. That is why it is necessary not only to have a way of recognizing what we are but also to consciously remain in this true identity. Thus, in the moments when we forget who we are and feel bad about ourselves or our circumstances, we need to have a direct way to reconnect with our essence and feel its fullness and freedom.

A very effective way to establish ourselves in our true identity, being what we truly are, with clarity, is to use a force that is already present in all of us and that is the primary reason for all our activities. To discover what this force is, we can ask ourselves: what do we really want? Or what do we most desire or love? Or what do we love when we love something, someone or some experience? We do not love things, people or experiences on their own, but we love them for the happiness they bring us, since if they do not bring us happiness, then we would not love them. The happiness we get from them is only an indirect or derived happiness, and therefore is not true or fundamental. All these things are just means to achieve true happiness. In simple words, what we truly love is true happiness.

What's more, we only love happiness because we love ourselves, since if we did not love ourselves we would not love happiness either. We love happiness because we love ourselves and we love ourselves because we love happiness. We feel that this happiness is our true nature, our natural state of being, our health, our home. We feel that in this happiness we experience ourselves as we really are.

Since this happiness is our natural and real state, why look for it, whether in things, people or experiences and why strive to achieve it? We just have to recognize the presence of this happiness in the here and now. This is recognizing that what we love most is already present. This is true love: love for oneself, the unconditional love that the real Self feels for itself, as unconditionally as the presence of the Self itself, which cannot be missing. This love of ourselves is the force that can keep us in our true identity and bring us back to our home every time we leave it. This self-love is the direct path to happiness, since it is the force that unites happiness and Being, or rather, love discovers or reveals that Being is the happiness that we love so much.

However, the self-love that we are used to having is only conditional love, that sometimes loves and sometimes doesn't, that accepts some things and not others, according to its preferences and aversions. This is only a love for the Ego or Persona, which is a false identity constructed by conditioning. As long as we believe that we are an Ego or limited being, self-love will continue to be conditioned and therefore happiness will also only be conditional and impermanent. On the contrary, the love that the Self feels towards itself is the love that finds happiness in itself: ever-present happiness by the mere fact of being.

True self-love is not a love for the ego or the person, but for the Presence-Being-Consciousness which is also happiness. This love has such a great force that it can make us feel this happiness the moment we love who we are. But this love is not something that we have to acquire, but it is already present in everyone, because everyone loves themselves, without exception, even those people who have self-destructive behaviors, because these behaviors are means with which some kind of relief is sought.

The problem arises when this love covers itself with mind and thereby loses sight of what is already present now. The mind is subject to time and change; in fact, the mind only perceives change and therefore cannot perceive that which does not change, which is the Presence-Self-Consciousness. In this way, love+mind loves that which changes, therefore it loves the person (the ego or false identity) and the circumstances that are favorable to this sense of personal individuality. But this love is clearly conditioned, since it loves only what it considers "good" and despises what it considers "bad", according to its conditioning.

But true self-love, love that is free of mind, is unconditional love. That love that does not set conditions for loving, but simply loves, because it is its own nature. This is true self-love: the love of happiness, that happiness that is the very nature of the Self. True self-love is loving what one is NOW, without caring about anything else, without there being any past or any future, without there being a possibility of change, without expecting something to improve and without taking into account any conditions. This is loving yourself for the simple fact of being or existing. Loving oneself for the simple fact of being is loving oneself unconditionally, because whatever condition one finds oneself in, one always is, one always exists. This is the most fundamental fact of our experience: the fact that we exist, whatever our experiences. Thus, to love being is to love what is most fundamental. This love is the essence and purpose of life, for there is no other purpose in life than to be truly happy, and this love is that happiness.

The mind has the tendency not to see the ever present happiness and that is why it strives to be happy or fears losing the happiness it believes it possesses. But the love of Being, which we now and always are, tells us clearly: “the happiness that you wait and search for so much is already here and now and cannot abandon you, since it is the intrinsic nature of being. Stop waiting, searching and trying to be happy, since the happiness that can be achieved is not true happiness, because everything that is achieved will be lost again sooner or later; On the other hand, true happiness is free and always present, without any effort. Only the mind seeks happiness in the conditions, in the past or in the future, because it feels absent here and now. But the heart, in whose center shines the love of the unconditioned being, finds happiness in itself.”

For this love there is nothing to expect or change, but only to recognize what is already present. This is the love that reveals the happiness that was hidden by the clouds of restlessness of the mind. Therefore, to establish ourselves in this happiness, it is only necessary to feel this love that is already present, which is the very force of life and the impulse in all our activities, and make this love our continuous and natural practice.

A simple practice to feel the happiness of Being

We have seen that the main obstacle why we do not feel the peace, freedom and happiness of Being is that the mind creates narratives and judgments against oneself, since it does not know its true identity. To counteract this habit or tendency, one can recognize that the Being is always present whatever the circumstances and that the nature of the Being is love and happiness. Therefore, there is no valid reason to suffer or worry. Thus, every time the mind creates judgments against oneself, entering into suffering, one can recognize that those judgments are not true. Furthermore, the individual who is the subject of suffering is also not real, since the true Self is not a limited individual. What is real is the ever-present and immutable Presence-Being-Consciousness, whose nature is freedom.

To weaken the judgments of the mind that lead us to suffering, we can rather listen to the sincere and naked heart that tells us: “I love myself as I am right now. I love myself despite my flaws, I love myself even if I don't have what I want, I love myself even though I don't seem to be what I want to be, I love myself despite all my past mistakes, I love myself even when I'm going through difficult times. I love myself in health, I love myself in illness; I love myself in fortune, I love myself in disgrace; I love myself when people love me and I love myself when they despise me. I love myself even when no one really does. I love myself regardless of what people think and regardless of the judgments of the mind. I love myself regardless of my age, my beauty or my body. I love myself regardless of my knowledge, my intelligence or my personality. I love myself no matter what this body is like and no matter what this mind is like.

I love myself for the simple fact of Being. I love myself no matter the circumstances, no matter where I am, no matter my environment and situation. I love myself even though I can't change anything and everything is inevitable. I love myself whatever my destiny is. I love myself whatever life puts in front of me.

I love myself if I win and I love myself if I lose. I love myself in abundance and I love myself in scarcity. I love myself whatever my experiences are, because I remain the same whatever they are.

I love myself just because I am, without needing any reason to love myself. I love myself because that is my true nature. I love myself because I can't help it. I love myself because this is who I am. I am this love that loves happiness. I am this happiness.

I am present in you.

I am the presence itself.

Love this presence.

Love who you really are.

Love, for that is what you are.”