Don’t delude yourself about self-love

James Anderson

Much is said these days about the need for self-love. How can we love others unless we love ourselves first? It shapes our well-being, and today’s culture sustains it. Self-love is a popular concept in self-development circles. It is considered a necessity for life. The problem is, the love we hold is warped, so we live in delusion about it.

We must be honest with ourselves. Self-love is rarely grounded in Truth. In fact, it rests on shifting sands that crumble away because the love we embrace is imperfect. We shouldn’t delude ourselves about self-love because the rest of our love is flawed. Love today is based on attachment and ego. How many of us can claim to love with complete disinterest? Self-interest is always present; there are always preconditions. This is the reality of human love.

We pay homageto unconditional love, but are we conscious of what it truly means? We walk a treadmill of dissatisfaction and misery if we are attached to the flaws ofour human love.
Up to a point, it must be admitted, ego initially assists our growth. In fact, at first, we cannot do without it. Ego is how our individuality first lays its footprint on the world. But in the end, it becomes what Sri Aurobindo calls a ‘bar’, and it stops us growing in an enduring way. We condemn ourselves to a life of limitation if we persist with it. True love cannot be sustained by self-obsession.

What we love and admire in ourselves is just the shell of our being. We go no further than surface depths. At one extreme, in cases of narcissism, there is a complete self-immersion in the form. Self-love amounts to no more than what the Mother, Pondicherry, describes as ‘a pleasant word for vanity’. It means that “one loves oneself more than anything else…” Only when we forget ourselves can we truly love, but the reverse is true with common self-love. We constantly place our limited being in front.

There is no control over our ego nature because of an insufficient sense of identity within. A demarcation line is marked between ‘without’ and ‘within’. A tussle is going on between our inner being and our surface nature. As long as this line persists, we cannot truly love. We need to practise and orient our consciousness within. We need to learn to live inside for it to govern the veneer ofour surface nature.
True love is based on states of purity and identity.

They exist hand-in-hand. We need a purity which exceeds the dross of our nature, so pure that it can identify and become one with the Divine truth and love residing deep inside. Anything else brings diminution. The Mother, Pondicherry, says, “Self-love is the great obstacle. Divine love is the great remedy.”

The solution is to surrender to our psychic, evolving soul, within. It is the only way. The psychic is the authentic master of our being. Surrender evolves gradually, as control of our nature is simultaneously transferred from the ego to this centre. Surrender is only complete when this exchange takes place. The psychic being must replace the ego. Give yourself entirely to it if you wish to radiate true love.

Whatever our limitations, nothing can stop us from aspiring for Divine love.

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