Love for oneself is not an egoistical self-indulgence and self-boasting. Healthy love for oneself is free from arrogance and pride. Spiritually speaking self-love is being awakened to the presence of the Divine within us. Once we become aware of the Immortal and Divine Self or Awareness within, the acceptance of our body and mind, as the instruments of the Divine will be complete.
It is because we lack the knowledge of who we are as Pure Awareness that we suffer from misidentification of our true nature, and have no correct appreciation for our own body and mind, or we use them mainly for our own pleasure. We are not able to see them as the mighty instruments to finding the key of life, the Self-Knowledge or God. We need to learn the art of listening to our self, the joy of recognizing of our inner voice; we need to listen to what our body, mind, and the soul are trying to convey to us. To love one self means also to be on guard, and be careful not to allow in any impure or harmful elements in the form of bad food, any kind of drugs, or junk news and information to enter into our body or mind.
Self-Acceptance
One might think that self-acceptance would be the easiest thing, but it is not. It takes courage, compassion and wisdom. Some people don’t like their own looks, attitudes or painful experiences.
Some are angry and dismay at their own limitations and character flaws often masqueraded in the form of the complexes they have. More than often people feel embarrassed of who they are and they feel guilt weighing them down.
In reality, each one of us has a complex, an experience or a memory that we would like to conceal. We all have an unpleasant side. This side of us requires acceptance and love in order to heal. But that love and acceptance must come first from our own heart.
Acceptance really means accepting those parts of ourselves, such as our anger, aggression or fear, our sensual nature, memories, or hurts and things that we find difficult to reconcile with. They are like the toxins in the body, which if not cleared out of the system, continue to poison the body. The more we push these aspects of our personality away, or beneath our conscious mind, the more toxic they become. Self-acceptance is generally a not pleasant or happy sight. We need plenty of courage to efface the unpleasant side of our mind and to accept it – with perseverance, honesty and with no judgment or shame. Learn to step away from your mind, and learn to evaluate your experiences dispassionately and as accurately as you can. Neither the acceptance nor the healing can take place if we allow ourselves to be completely absorbed in and identified with any mental state.
Remember that ultimately that we are not these emotions, feelings etc. We are the Divine Self in whose presence these experiences are simply observed them and thus accepted and healed.
Think not much of the past. Project yourself into the future. You have a vast potential; you can make yourself into anything you want.
“Lest you get discouraged by your own faults, the Dhammapade gives you this solacing image: the purest lily can spring out of a heap of rubbish by the wayside. That is to say, there is nothing so rotten that it cannot give birth to the purest realization. Whatever may be the past, whatever may be the faults committed, whatever the ignorance in which one might have lived, one carries deep within oneself the Supreme purity which can translate itself into a wonderful realization.” ` Buddha