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Well that is what the Beatles would have us believe. And the idea certainly
has been sold to us from many a self stylized guru over the years. However, this is only a part of the picture. I want to share with you the missing part of the puzzle.
I get to work with a lot of people who are on a journey, sometimes this is seen as a personal journey, other times as a spiritual journey. Often I am told that they have discovered self love, but that they still feel that something is missing.
And there is!
Let me explain.
Let's begin by looking away from self and to the world around us.
Many of us can say that we have developed a crush or fallen in love with someone only to discover somewhere down the line that they may not be the person that we thought they were. Then we have a conflict, between the love for the impression we created about the person and the reality of who that person really is. Sometimes these relationships will pan out, but often they become dysfunctional and come to an end. It is not the other persons fault, we created the ideal and they were doomed from the start to not step up to the mark. Put another way, we fell for our own fantasy/ illusion that we created of the person.
We created a mask and placed it on the other person. Not only did the mask we created mislead us, it also blocked us from seeing the person as they truly were until it was to late.
So, what was missing?
Knowledge/ Wisdom was missing. We thought we really knew who the person was, but we actually only ever saw the illusion we created.
Now let us come back to love being all you need.
If you spend a lot of time learning to love the idea of who you are then you will be running the same scenario we just explored.
A lot of the people I speak to on a spiritual journey do this. They fall in the idea, the fantasy of who they are, this in turn creates the conflict of always feeling there is something else. Love, is not all you need.
Self Knowledge or Wisdom is the missing part of the puzzle. Often when people say they love themselves what they mean is they love the things they do, the things they own, the things they identify by. But these things are the mask, the illusion from which behind the rue self hides.
If we do not know ourselves properly then we can never truly love the self.
Would you marry someone who you had never met?
Could you love someone who you really did not know?
The journey of self discovery is a life long quest, however as we progress and learn more about our true nature we can start to develop love for the self. Now we all have things that we do not like about ourselves, this can be changed . Self love starts with wanting to know who we are, to enter relationship with ourselves. Asking the questions about ourselves that we may not always want to hear the answer to, learning to accept all that we are.
The true self know how to love the true self. The personal / spiritual journey is to grow in self knowledge, and through that self knowledge to expand the love of self. Self knowledge and love make us whole.
When we start this path of self discovery we look to the deepest inner most parts of ourselves, we begin to glimpse the light of the soul. That part of us that is ourselves made perfect. As we glimpse our own inner light we cannot but help to fall in love. We were all born perfectly imperfect with every potential within us. Yes we make mistakes along the way, but there is a spark of the divine within us.
Just being aware of this can begin to awaken the seeds of love within. You were born perfect, you have every possibility within you.
I do not know about you, but that sounds like someone worth getting to know!
So. if you are upon a journey of self love, do not forget that self love cannot truly exist without self knowledge.
If you would be interested in exploring the ideas in this blog either at the start of your journey or further along then check out the upcoming events .
When you walk beside people upon their personal/ spiritual journey's you discover so much about yourself. I work with groups and on a 1 2 1 basis. I look forward to sharing your journey with you when we work together.