Understanding the True Nature of Loving Yourself as the Prerequisite for Loving Another

 The idea of self-love, like all truly profound ideas, exist in a basic state of paradox, and can be a bit difficult to understand in terms of how to actually apply them by doing or becoming them. The mind, like everything, exists in a basic state of polarity where dual aspects perform different functions in forming a unified experience of reality. This polarity, which is inherent in everything is the masculine and feminine energies, which in this case corresponds to the idea of the left and right hemispheres of our brain, the conscious and subconscious minds, the brain and heart, the inner and outer, doing and being, thinking and feeling, embodying and outwardly expressing, and so on. This is the primary law of the triad or trinity, which embodies the most fundamental principle of all as the three-in-One concept. Every singular being or life form exists in a dual state of symmetry and harmonious balance. This demonstrates the in-flowing and out-flowing electromagnetic aspect of subtle energy that animates the material body it inhabits and operates through as a unified being.

All doing comes from being. How we are in terms of our inner feelings, thoughts, beliefs, memories, and imagining, forms all of our outward expression as how we’re being at any given moment, and how we behave and act as a result. Our inner state is always being projected outwards and forms the very basis of our perceptual lens and what we not only see and react to in our environment, but what we also act to stimulate, awaken, and produce biological chemistry as the equivalent of our inner state or feelings. How we’re feeling inwardly determines how we’re being and what we’re doing outwardly. We can only see, activate, interact with, and produce more of what we first cultivate in ourselves. In order to love another, we have to first love ourselves, because the experience of both are created out of the same mind.

Most of us somewhat get the masculine aspect of loving ourselves as making yourself a priority in your own life, honoring how you feel, demanding respect and appreciation, or providing for yourself and taking good care of yourself in the material sense. But the feminine aspect can have a tendency to elude most because it’s not about an outward idea of doing something, but rather an inward state of being. The feminine is our inner self that pure feeling as a state, and is what creates and gives life to all outer experiences. To love yourself in this aspect means to become love as a quality of consciousness. It means to cultivate and build up feelings of love that form the eyes we look through, that sees and awakens only that which warrants love in everyone and everything around us.

By seeing only what warrants love in others, what it is about them that makes us feel more love, we stimulate and awaken those same feelings in them. We act to initiate and bring out in them the same loving state, we bring out in them more of the qualities produced by that state, which forms the basis for the nature of the interaction. By interacting through love as our mental and emotional state shared between us, we amplify, increase, and draw back into us more feelings of love. We create experiences that become memory of love as an outer reality. This is the significance behind the statement you get back more of what you give out. What we emanate as our state of being, we bring to life all around us through the relationship we form with it, and develop and strengthen it through the energetic interaction itself.

So counterbalancing or forming the foundation out of which we outwardly act to love ourselves by taking good care of ourselves, is to become love itself by embodying it, and becoming the vessel through which love expresses in the world. To become impregnated with love, grow and nurture it from within you as your being, then express through that state, giving birth to it in every interaction, and reproducing it in others. By being love itself, we inspire love in others just through our presence and attention. A loving gaze awakens those same energies inwardly, calling them forth, and using them to create experiences of love for both people. While the masculine energy separates and contrasts something as the means of experiencing it from without, the feminine energy enters into and unites with it, experiencing itself from within it as it. This is literal not symbolic. Our inner state as our vibratory frequency is forming resonance with everything around us, attracting and absorbing some, while repelling and reflecting others. Whatever quality of consciousness we embody and become, forms our mental paradigm as a lens, that only sees, interacts with, and forms all activity out of that state.

To love ourselves is the same thing as loving another, because they’re both produced by the same state of mind. In this sense, all perception is self perception. We can only see in others and the outer world what exists in us as a quality of consciousness that only recognizes and produces outer realities of the same quality or nature. How we experience others is the same way we experience ourselves, either by being just like them, or by contrasting and opposing them. It comes about through both measures of entering into relationship with another, uniting in mind and relating to them, or separating from them and contrasting and comparing to define ourselves through our differences. We’re always measuring similarities and differences as a way of experiencing ourselves and others.

All doing comes from being, you can’t love yourself unless you first have love in your heart, and possess it by being it. To become love itself as an internal state, is to express as love in all your perceptions, interpretations, and behaviors. You become the outward expression of love. Love flows into you, fills you, and overflows into the outer world. The masculine is the outward expression and activities produced out of the feminine. In order to truly love another we have to first love ourselves, because it’s the same mind perceiving both. When we exist as love, we can only enter into relationship with love in everything else. Love isn’t something we find in another, it’s something cultivate in ourselves and use to attract and see others. It’s what forms the foundation necessary to build loving relationships with another!

Dr. Linda Gadbois

Transpersonal Psychologist, Personal Transformation Coach, and Spiritual Teacher