Self love or narcissism?

[Ron Alexander]

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

[Silja Saareoks-Kaldre]

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

[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

[Silja Saareoks-Kaldre]

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.

Ron Alexander said:

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

[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]

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.

[Ron Alexander]

Quotes from Lee:
"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."

Great insight, Lee.
The "twinge of guilt" that I wrote above is actually an "attack on myself by myself", yes, I believe it is, and that calls for love from mySelf.
What you call "objectification" is what I call "falling in love with an image" instead of the Self. So an image and an object means the same to me. Yes, I have been guilty much of my life as judging women by their looks & figures, instead of their Being, which is objectification. However, until I read what you wrote, I had not thought of seeing myself as an object. Now, I can see where both are harmful - to the person you see as an object and to yourself if you fall in love with your own image, or just the opposite, when you abhor your own image. Or when one feels that "twinge of guilt."

"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."

Excellent advice, thank you Lee!

[Ron Alexander]

Crossroads (the poignant rest of my favorite song by Peter Makena) He said he wrote it from "ideas that came through words I heard spoken at a seminar (I met him singing for a Byron Katy Work shop), and I realized how truly interdependent and fragile we are and that love starts out with being love."

When you adopt the viewpoint
That all that exists within your circle of life
Is nothing but another part of you,

When you come to the conclusion
That there is no one who exists, who is not part of you,

You will wisely extend to yourself
An unconditional love that will be
The light of your day, the light of your night
The light that lightens up this world of ours.

When you come to the crossroad
Where you can choose which road to take
For the highest good of all

When you stand at the seashore
And your boat is ready to take off and sail,
To follow an inner call.

You will wisely extend to yourself
An unconditional love that will be
The Light of your day, the light of your night,
the light that lightens up this world of ours.

Peter Makena (openskymusic.com)

[Ron Alexander]

Love after Love

The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome,

and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you

all your life, whom you ignored
for another, who knows you by heart.
Take down the love letters from the bookshelf,

the photographs, the desperate notes,
peel your own image from the mirror.
Sit. Feast on your life.


~ Derek Walcott ~

(Sea Grapes)

[Candice Wilmore]

Narcissus actually hated himself, or what he saw in the reflection. That word is wrongly used most of the time. Being self-obsessed, which he was, and self-loving are so very opposite mm?

[Linda Lawson]

HI Ron, I love the questions you put forth.

Self love , it seems natural in the sense that one whose energy is resonating at the vibration of unconditional love and beyond , radiates it to self and to all life just the same. To me ,its like heating a pot of water . Every part of the water and the pot which holds it , and the surrounding environment will get the benefit of warmth from this heated state of liquid.
In my humble opinion, in advanced states of practice of heart mastery , loving self and loving others and all life is one resonance.one act .warm regards,
Linda Lawson

[Linda Lawson]

Hi Lee,

I'd like to acknowledge your response above.Beautiful. Well said.
Spoken like one who knows what love asks of us to wear her in our presence. ...Everything.

It can be unsettling to pick out one response out of many to celelbrate. They all have made for understanding to happen.
And then one message hits th e ball out of the park for the reader ... and that's it.

Home Run!

warm regards,
Linda Lawson

[Ron Alexander]

Thank you, Linda for bringing back this dialogue. I have returned to my mantra: "Everyone (including ourselves) is innocent and loving the best they can" after re-reading all of the wisdom in your and the other replies plus some positive dialogue with my nephew (facing up to 30 years in jail); Also, when I use the Ho'Oponopono "I am sorry, please forgive me, thank you. I love you" - it starts with me and I send it outwards to those I have judged (like Mom, most recently).

Here is a reply to a friend who has recently become enamored with The Koran -
"Tear out those pages", the advice that Bill Thetford used to tell us when studying A Course in Miracles
in the mid- 80's. This scribe (Helen was the channel) of this tome was describing the dualistic (ego-bashing part of ACIM)
What I look for in all religions and spiritual pursuits is their essence. If their essence is Love and the belief that God is love and that there is no seperation, no duality in their teaching, then I will study further. The Bible, the Koran, A Course in Miracles all have this essence yet they also have parts with much duality - God and Satan or God and Ego, etc. So if in the end they do not teach that we are all innocent and loving the best we can, I lose interest. For that matter, I am not interested in the Old Testament with it's condemning "God". or the first half of A Course in Miracles which tells us how bad our ego is....then both have their wonderful love chapters like Jesus taught and the ACIM finally tells us our "essence is Love, that we are wholly loveable and wholly loving!" I don't know enough about the Koran, but would discard any seperation/duality thoughts that are written there and go for its Love Essence - the Truth!
One Love, ron