Loving Yourself

This past week I returned to Texas. I attended the Unity South Central Region annual conference in Houston and a Mediate Your Life® training in Arlington. Both events presented me with many opportunities for self-reflection and growth. I had occasions to come face-to-face (sometimes literally) with the ways others perceive me and how my action or inaction has impacted them. It gave me pause to consider how I choose, consciously or subconsciously, to express love to others and how I express love for myself. I was reminded of the words of the master teacher, Jesus.

In the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 22 (NRSV), one of the Sadducees asks Jesus, “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. The second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” So, what does that mean for us today? How does it look when we live those commandments? Let’s explore it.

In The Revealing Word, a metaphysical dictionary by Unity’s co-founder Charles Fillmore, ‘Lord’ is defined as “The activity of the spiritual I AM as the ruling consciousness.  The Lord God of the Scriptures is Christ, the Spiritual Man; our divine consciousness; the creative power within us.”  To love “the Lord” is to devote time, talent, and resources to embracing and embodying Christ consciousness, and doing whatever it takes to live from the awareness that the I AM, the Spiritual Man (human), is the only Truth.  It is being committed to the practice of worshiping, as The Revealing Word defines it, “bestowing one’s love on, or identifying with,” God in every thought, word and action; God being the One Life of All expressing through Love as One Presence in and as All creation. 

To love one’s neighbor as one’s self can be interpreted in at least two ways. It can mean to love one’s neighbor as though the neighbor is the self, which is the essence of oneness consciousness. When we know that we are one, we also know that what we do to another we do to ourselves. Thus, from that understanding loving one’s neighbor is tantamount to loving one’s self. In Matthew 25 Jesus also said, “Just as you have done unto the least of these, you have done it unto me.”

Jesus could also have been instructing us to express love to each other in the same way that we expresses love for ourselves. If indeed this is the meaning of the commandment, then I would argue that most keep this commandment in that we often love our neighbors in the ways we love ourselves. Unfortunately, most often, we do not truly express love for ourselves.

We are encouraged by spiritual teachers and many self-help writers to love ourselves, but they often do not give us adequate instruction in how to achieve that goal. It is as if we are to adopt the Nike® motto and “Just do it”™.  In similar fashion, we are often encouraged to “forgive” or “let it go” and when we find that it is challenging to do so, that we can’t “just do it”, we sometimes judge and criticize ourselves. In effect, we frequently love ourselves even less than our neighbors

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We are complex beings with multifaceted perspectives, deeply held beliefs and values, and intense multi-layered experiences and emotions. At times, we judge certain aspects of ourselves and do our best to resist or reject them. I offer that to love ourselves we must be willing to meet ourselves, all aspects of ourselves, with understanding, compassion, acceptance and appreciation. Only then will we be able to truly love ourselves and our neighbors completely.

We must be willing to feel our feelings without judgment, have compassion for our unrealized values and unmet needs, accept that we are doing our best, always, and appreciate all that we have achieved, the joy that we have lived, and the good that we do.

I hope you can join us on Sunday for our 10:00 a.m. service as I explore these ideas in greater depth. If you are unable to join us, please listen to the recorded message available at unitydenver.org.