You hear it so often: you have to love yourself. Many articles and self-help books are devoted to how to ‘do’ that. Saying “I love you” or “I love myself” in the mirror… they were things that I couldn’t do much with, that didn’t get to me. Until I suddenly got an insight into why that was.
I participated in an online meeting about a movement in Buddhism and during the meditation we did I experienced very clearly how I am consciousness, open space, love, life force, trust, wholeness, the Buddha nature,(every word actually falls short), by only allowing it so without having to actively do anything for it. There was no observer and not that which is observed. I had the insight that if you do assume that there is an observer and a perception, you create duality while consciousness, the open field or whatever you want to call it, is unity and self-awareness.
When I started to experience this awareness more and more during meditations in the following days, I gained a further insight into self-love. If you say that you love yourself or that others say that you should, this is also duality: this assumes that there is someone / something in you who feels love and there is another something / someone in you for whom this is intended. But who are they and do that subject and object actually exist? I experienced that this caused a split in myself that does not exist in reality. When I experienced that I am that consciousness, love itself, the whole concept or story of loving yourself was immediately superfluous and transcended. It’s something you don’t have to do or work on to get it because you’re already love. Instead of ‘love yourself’ I would say ‘Be or remember your true nature’
