Contemplating Self-Love

Hey Reader,

I have been grappling lately with this notion of self-love and unconditionally loving myself. Recently I came to the conclusion that I do, and I don’t unconditionally love myself, Here is why…..🥺

The external projected self is already a profile of conditions, attachments, and projections. For example, societal norms, beauty standards, cultural norms, definitions of success, fears, triumphs, relationships, and the list goes on. Through this lens, love is a spectrum sliding selective scale dissected and singled out depending on what feeds its bank. This love only trickles from personhood/character. The character itself was a creation made up of projections even before I met the element of air birthed from the cosmic womb. There is no needing love, trying to feel love, trying to love, blocks to receiving or giving love. This spaceless, timeless, self that is aligned with its true beginning is the fountain from which infinite love flows. The observer is love itself.

Growing up, some things that happened in my life that I questioned whether I had been cut off from this love or the perpetrator. This infinite flow seemed to have been blocked or resisted by some force. I realize that some people's stories can encompass a hardening process where love for themselves can be lost in the sea of their traumas, doubts, fears, and conditioning familial, societal, and systemic. Of Course, living with a hardened heart it's not easy to give love freely as it is not recognized by the character. As a result, many things take a harmful turn, sometimes a not-so-great outcome for one's offspring.

Yea I probabaly need to pause for a quick hug........

Whew, thanks for that!

After this week of contemplation on self-love and speaking with friends the truth is I truly do love myself beyond the condition and unconditional because I AM love itself. All I had to do was turn my gaze inward and there I was unwavering love. It is not enchained by what I say it is or it isn't. For even the discussion of it is produced by love's omnipresence. The person/character is concerned with being concerned about love as if it is deprived of its fullness, yet it's just an averted gaze. For Love simply IS, therefore I Am.

I invite you to allow yourself to be. Try to not suppress anything, let it all just run wild! Leave everything you push into categories of negative or positive and just be. Don't analyze, just see who's there. Turn your gaze inward, take the focus off of external fleeting things just for a moment and see who is observing. Try to Let go of all the conditions that you put on yourself to bring about a sense of loving yourself. Sometimes these conditions for me are positive feelings of being satisfied, usually based on approval of external social stimuli. Do you believe that you alone can feel love from no other source but yourself and experience it in its fullness?

I give myself room to feel the need to judge who I see, as the personality is both the judge, the judged, and the judgment. It is a compilation of yeses and noes. Some of these I was born into and others I accepted willingly. I forgive myself for what pain I have caused myself and others when I didn't know that I was in a state of numbness from familial, societal, and generational traumas. I forgive myself for not knowing that healing existed vs. simply dealing. I allow myself to feel knowing that I am nothing therefore everything through time. With this wisdom, I take it moment by moment not bypassing it as a coping mechanism but allowing things to surface as they may. In a field beyond what I think I know, I shall meet them there to espouse their axioms filled with healing salves.

There is no entry point or exit point to LOVE.

Paz, Love, and Sankofa,

SolSong.