Do You Love Yourself?

Do you love yourself?

If answered “yes…”

Is it true that you love yourself? Can you be sure it’s true? Do you love all of yourself, or just parts of yourself? Is loving yourself a mental concept or a perpetual action?

~~~

Most people know self-love is the most important ingredient in awakening spiritually and creating a better life. We all learn to love ourselves more all the time. As I continue to evolve, big blind-spots to love surface again and again. There’s always more love to share with oneself.

Everyone’s story is unique. The trend at this time on this planet is that in one form of another, parents and society ingrain patterns of self-hate when we are developing. Self-hate is a well-intended trip; it uses negative focus to help highlight what is “bad” with the intention that one may learn and make oneself “better” or “good. In actuality it just reinforces negative energy. Everyone in one way or another learns that giving to others is what is best, and focusing on yourself and what you want is wrong. Everyone learns, one way or another, that the purpose of life is “success” rather than happiness. Get the love you want outside by being an example of success!

While unknowingly subconsciously programming self-hate, my family instilled loving myself was just in recognizing and using my talents… The real truth was that love was only allowed when I was “good.” Good meant putting others before myself always. Good meant shutting up my truth because it might not go over well with someone. Good meant giving up what I wanted for what others wanted. Later it got even more complicated: in order to be “good” in the reality of one of my family members, I had to completely take their side and go against someone else within the family. And that’s when “trying to be good and selfless” turned into severely fragmenting my personality just to accommodate all of the manipulate people that would only keep loving and supporting I if pretended to be fully on their side alone. Yet I actually had no idea who to believe.

I was never taught to nurture myself. I was never taught to allow myself to want what I actually wanted. I was only taught to fit in and do what people do. Use my brains well and be successful. I started to undermine my conditioning early, and started doing radical and bold things, traveling the world and honoring all of my heart’s desires.

Spiritual awakening hit seemingly suddenly. And I discovered this realm, inside me and all around me, of Pure Unconditional Love which was palpable, sensational, and ever-present. 20 year-old Dante practiced loving himself finding his own truth, yet still that Unconditional Love which is the ultimate spiritual reality was only accessible to young Dante when he behaved in the ways that he believed were “good.” When I stopped doing all of my sadhana and meditation, I stopped seeing myself as good and stopped being able to love myself. I was still conditioned to give myself love “only if” I did what was “good.” Yet the contradiction here is that… yoga is meant to be an act of loving oneself, yet for me it became the permission slip I needed to feel love for myself. I wasn’t actively loving myself as I practiced. I was hating all of the blockages and issues in my body and following the motions and stretching and working so that I could just feel good about myself. I would feel so connected and in bliss only if I pushed myself and my body further than what I could actually handle. It took a while to learn how to turn my practices into real acts of love.

Later I learned to love myself unconditionally for who I am, to dig deep into my programming and beliefs and seed my subconscious with these positive thought-forms. I learned to keep my frequency high in appreciation and service. I learned to make myself the priority within my relationship. I used my gifts to make a difference and help people, and brought them that Unconditional Love. As they reflected it back to me, I could hold a bit of it.

My gifts have expanded over time though I’ve been also in very deep processes of release many times. When I’ve been “successful” in my mind, I’ve been able to feel love for myself. When I’ve failed, loving myself was the very hardest thing to do.

Perhaps 15 months ago I read in Teal Swan’s book: whenever you make a decision for the next entire year, ask yourself the question, “What would someone who loves themselves do?”

I followed love consciously since then, I used it as a tool to take my love to a new level. I have habituated a pattern, to always do the very thing that will bring me to feel the greatest level of love regardless of all else. I let that flow of love guide me. And it’s brought me deeper into love, feeling as if life is simply an organic flow.
Though the truth is, I’ve been terribly insecure. Minor rejections, especially for individuals who represent something to me for whatever reason, is a terror. I am also habituated mostly to give and give and give, to validate and validate and validate others, and let my amorphous truth and amorphous being meet them in some way. The level of love I’m able to share with myself has been largely dependent on how much love I share with others and how that love is received; if the love I share is not “good enough,” I’m certainly not deserving of this love… This incredible energy that is infinite and unconditional, what a ridiculous thing we humans do in cutting it off from ourselves. Yet that is the whole dance of separation we are bringing to a new beginning now in Unity.

I definitely love me, in theory. Though to love oneself is really an action. And to really fully master self-love, one’s own inner self… is the first priority.

For one year, my new question is “What would someone who loves themselves /first/ do?”

This came from a wonderful channeling session I received. The exact wording they offered was to “always give love to yourself equal or greater to the love you give to others.”

To always give as much love to myself as I give to others is a bit of a game changer… It means, when I send loving thoughts to someone, send the same loving thoughts to myself. It means if I hug someone, hug myself first. It means if I even smile at someone, send the smile to myself first. It means treat myself tenderly as a lover, to let myself enjoy and receive even more.

Though those simple actions truly just bridge the gap between two chakras inside… My heart that is radiant and open, never hardening, perpetually softening, must drop into my gut, the solar plexus where the energetics between “self” and “other” are stored and balanced.

I’ve opened my soul to great and powerful Unconditional Love. I’ve been pretty awoke for quite awhile. While many relentlessly search to find that opening, I share the love that pours through my channel endlessly with the world around me. I’ve learned to love some people demonstrating the most dense and ridiculous behaviors, because I know that loving is the only real solution. Yet for whatever reason, sharing that same immense love with myself has been taboo.

The core of it is simple: my inner-child learned that self-love was selfish and evil. I was never allowed to want what I want. It always meant I was selfish. For that word to be spoken would send little Dante into instant “conform for comfort” mode.

This pattern is getting brought to the surface to let it go.

I don’t think the words do it justice. You cannot communicate the difference between self-love and service to self at the loss of others quite well enough. To me “selfish” doesn’t quite do it. There’s so many different perspectives on these words. Yet for now it’s clear enough. Self-love means prioritizing your needs, desires, and emotions, without harming others in order to create your dream.

I’m quite tired of doing good for others so that I can feel good about myself. I’m learning now to do real good just for myself first. Already this deeper dive into how to embody this self-love brings so many shifts… And I know that this is just the beginning, and that this shift will lead to incredible changes in life and relationships. Love, love, love. You can only call it in by opening to Divine Love, and giving it to yourself.

Do you struggle with self-love? Where are you at in your journey? Feel free to share in this post, and if you ever want more support I offer support in developing self-love, healing the blockages and traumas around love, and learning the tools and understandings that can help you implement great loving change in your life. ❤ I’m still learning to love myself, yet I’ve come an incredible distance from where I began. I’ve anchored my being in my Source, which is Unconditional Love, and this presence allows me to drop in deep with you to help you bring that love to the places where there is pain and resistance… I can help you reflect on the past, remove the imprints from you energy body (chakras/aura), and help you develop new practices and understandings to facilitate your transformation to a life of greater love. Assisting people in this way is one of my favorite ways to serve… Feel free to reach out.

Today I’m going to love myself first. And same for the rest of the year. I’m very excited to see where this is all going, because it’s clearly better all the time.