If you are interested in personal or spiritual growth, then I’m sure you are familiar with self-love as a concept. I hear a lot of spiritual teachers and Youtubers talking about how much learning to love themselves has helped them on their journey, but I always felt that the term self-love never really resonated with me, as it felt a bit too self-absorbed or even arrogant.
I always associated somebody loving themselves with the kind of people who are very conscious of themselves and their image and have big egos, which I feel didn’t really give the impression that the people advocating self-love were aiming for.
Maybe it’s just me, but I feel that it’s more helpful to view self-love in terms of simply being able to accept yourself for who you are right now, rather than having to “love” yourself.
I don’t think any of us are perfect, so there are bound to be things we don’t like about ourselves, that we would like to change; so “loving” that part of ourselves is probably not as helpful as merely being able to accept it.
“I am currently jealous in this certain situation” for example; and I don’t like it and I certainly don’t love it, but I am willing to accept it, as I understand that in order to change something about myself, I first have to accept that it is there and not resist or push it away.
This is why self-love is so popular I feel, as what it is really advocating is that it is ok for people to not be perfect, and to accept the less helpful aspects of their personality and behaviour.
Guilt seems to be a big block to growth for many, so the whole “self-love” movement has been very beneficial in helping people begin to accept themselves for who they are right now and freeing up the emotional space inside of themselves to begin to change who they are.
I just think the term itself, “self-love” confuses and may alienate a lot of people, especially the more logically or scientifically-minded out there, like me, who are keen on self-exploration and growth, but can find a lot of the content out there on this subject a little “new age” or without a logical backbone to it.
I don’t have any problems at all with the more new age type teachers at all, as they help a lot of people including myself, I just feel that there is a growing need right now for a slightly different sort of spiritual teacher, more in the vein I have been alluding to, who can explain the hows and whys a bit more conclusively than a lot of other teachers do at the moment.
That’s what I hope to do with this blog and my other work, as I have felt that this kind of logical, fact-based approach coupled with the traditional emotional, intuitive side of spiritual growth is the best way for me to learn and change myself in a positive way.
So self-love is fine if that makes sense to you and you can use it to produce positive change in your life, but accepting yourself may also be a helpful way of seeing this point for the more left-brained amongst you.
So I invite you to look at your own life and ask yourself whether there are some aspects of yourself that you are resisting or “not accepting”, and if this is stopping you from being able to move past the issue.
Best Wishes
Jack