Not Unconditional Lover Yet - Self-love or narcissism?

I always feel a little twinge of guilt when I hear about "self love". How do we distinguish between self love or "selfish" love? Is being an unconditional lover mean being unconditional loving to one's self also? Back in the older days of self help workshops, we were taught to look in the mirror and tell ourselves how much we loved us - that image love was narcissistic to me - you? ron


Reply by Silja Saareoks
Unconditional is never selfish and it is impossible to love someone unconditionally without having it inside first.

Reply by Ron Alexander
Ah, again, dear Silja, the perfect words in such a succinct answer. You are indeed a sower of words that are "sweet as honeycomb, soothing to the soul & healing to the bone." in gratitude, ron

Reply by Silja Saareoks
Ron, you DO know what the love is and how to show it, guess you don't need so many questions! But of course for some strange reasons we see the selfish love as well, but believe me, these people just haven't learned to truly accept and love their deeper nature. Sometimes we act in a selfish way too and then it is great when we notice it and lead ourselves back to our true nature.
The deepest human nature is pure love and it is truly unconditional. As pure as the newborn baby who is giving a smile to you. It needs a work to do to get so deep inside and this way is endless. When giving the love, we really should not leave ourselves out of it.

Reply by Ron Alexander
Ron, you DO know what the love is and how to show it >(sometimes, Silja, but have a ways to go, and I am on a good path with help from people like you and many here on this site), guess you don't need so many questions! (No, I am full of questions and believe in inquiry as a great learning tool)But of course for some strange reasons we see the selfish love as well, but believe me, these people just haven't learned to truly accept and love their deeper nature. >(I am one of "these people"" & I love myself for the path I am on) Sometimes we act in a selfish way too and then it is great when we notice it and lead ourselves back to our true nature. (I am "noticing) more & returning back to my true nature more often)The deepest human nature is pure love and it is truly unconditional. As pure as the newborn baby who is giving a smile to you. It needs a work to do to get so deep inside and this way is endless. When giving the love, we really should not leave ourselves out of it. (Truer words could not be spoken, Silja, however I still "leave myself out of the love" quite often).More and more I am resolving this disinheritance shock from Mom, for example when a colleague asked me "what did you do to your Mom to cause her to leave you mostly out of her will" I found myself starting to get defensive, but I stopped myself and admitted I indeed did some things that would cause negativity between us.
More and more, I am seeing that she helped me with Divine Inheritance, as it has caused me to go to Love as much as possible - more meditation, more prayer, more support groups. Meditation has helped me the most as well as this magnificent site.
I purchased this bumper sticker yesterday - "The best things in life are not things." That, as well, as a shaman telling a friend that "thoughts are things."
Because I want to be more and more in mindfulness the rest of my life, I will be going to the ten day silent retreat of Vipassana, like Drmike, Chad, & Jeanne have done and benefited so greatly from. I will also be going to several other meditative retreats, and who knows, may even go on staff on one of them?
To be or not to be is the question, I chose TO BE! and you are a great teacher, thank you, Silja, ron

Lee replies:
To me narcissim is a form of self objectification brought upon by the limited perspective of our senses. The difference between what I used to call love and real love helps me see this more clearly. To say I love you into the mirror is a good measure of how well we have embraced real love and let go of old definitions that were object centered. That twinge of guilt when I say "I love you" to myself is that measure. As with the attacks we spoke of earlier it is a call for love.

Accept the divine nature at your essence, do not consider yourself an object, consider yourself the love that you profess for yourself and all that is, be the grand human that we all are without limits wrought by the need to feel limited so that we may then fully experience love.

This gets into a view I currently hold, on why we must experience duality before we can understand oneness. I think that is a different discussion except to say that narcissism is an expression of the opposite of love in the form of fear to be what it is that we ultimately are anyway. To exist as the grand human we are takes a lot of discipline and requires great responsibility, and these things I fear. I fear I will not measure up, I fear the effort required, I fear feeling alone, but these are the dualistic nature of our trip to the realization of true love. Along the way as love quashes these fears we can conceptualize its true nature and power, and eventually, maybe someday, let go of the need to conceptualize it or anything at all, and just be..........perfect..........as we always were.

As more achieve this realization a light in the direction of truth gets brighter and brighter, making the path clearer for the rest of the pieces to find their way home, and eventually all the pieces will rejoin the whole, and with them a grand, headshaking experience is welcomed into a new way of being.


Hmmmmmmm, I wonder as I read this if it is possible that this is happening every moment, that a new way of being is always coming into existence. A flow of experience transforming continually as oppossed to some event that we must wait for and then look back upon. As I ponder this an image popped into my head. Please note that this particular image does not necessarily align with any spiritual or political beliefs I have, but it gave me a chuckle, so for what it is worth I will share it here.

I imagine our recent President Bush walking down a dimmy lit path toward a much brighter light that can't be denied, but that is really not casting its own light onto his path. As he walks he considers his experience in a thoughtful way with his head looking to the ground. After some time he approaches the light, lifts his head and recognizes it as a mass of what can only be described as love. In awe he looks back, slowly looks at the light, points to his past behind him, and asks, "what the hell was that". Then shaking his head he enters the light and his experience is absorbed by love as that experience holds another piece of the puzzle that is becoming once again whole.