💛 The Self-Love Manifesto

“You shall not take vengeance or bear a grudge against any of your people, but you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
— Leviticus 19:18

Authenticity in our world is lacking because correct self-love is absent. The world is filled with people so anxious to please and to appear as loving that they will repress entirely their own identity in the process. What is love in our day and age except for a thirst for approval from others? Why else do most of us love?

It would be immature to say that people act so nice before others only to get what they want, and just to avoid conflict; that people just quieten themselves and mute their voice solely out of respect and humility. No, there is something much deeper and significant happening here.

Our individual is so paralysed with self-doubt, self-worry, self-hate, that he so eagerly pleases others in order to fill this void by which he rejected himself.

In other words, people are not even capable of being rude, not even capable of evil, of disobedience. People are only kind and soft because their identity is purely run by the opinions of others. No one thinks for themselves and just accumulates the opinions of everyone that seems more grounded in reality than they are. Modern audiences are so easy to sway to control because their reality is determined not by themselves, but by the one with the stronger frame.

So forget about even reaching the higher paradigm of loving others if you havent even cultivated the ability to freely hate, reject, disrespect, disobey others. Forget about loving others if you are lost in self-sabotage, self-doubt, jealousy, judgement. All of sin can be purely hazed into one problem - a refusal to introspect and understand one’s own self. Once an individual becomes free from all the negative thoughts, the negative energy which they are addicted to, then they can see fit to love others. One should not struggle to love when he has mastered himself, because once he has introspected and realised all of his own dark secrets, problems, mental attitudes, underlying beliefs, he will tend to look at others with more compassion and love. When one commits wrong to others - he is only reacting to the darkness he keeps within himself. All low energy, depression, anger, sadness, pride, fear, even shyness - is just a reaction to all the mess within.

True wisdom is really understanding that it is not due to external happenings which affect our sense of self-satisfaction, but rather just a matter of these externals triggering existing problems in us and bringing them to our awareness. No one but the Self is ever the cause for one’s sense of helplessness and discontent: everything is self-inflicted.

Everything then must start with self-love realising that no one is more important than yourself. It is selfish to posit other people before you and then live a lazy, fruitless existence. Forget about being humble, self-sacrificing, caring, responsible, or any other attribute which we love society confusing with our real identity. One cannot be said to have sacrificed himself if he has never stepped down from greatness. To sacrifice in one’s own mediocrity is pure laziness and a refusal to understand the meaning of personal identity and authentic living.

As Christians, we mistakenly think that by being ordinary and ‘rejecting’ the life of the rich is a sure way of being humble and close to the path of Christ, who worked as a mere carpenter. But deep under the surface, most often we find that there is a deep resentment for those who pursue greatness and we lacerate them with moral condemnation: “they are unhappy. See all those rich ones and those famous ones. They are spiritually struggling.” And these rationalisations justify our laziness in never pursuing anything helpful, and our slaving away at an average job only for the money but never for the good.

Just as when a child is taken to new places outside of his home, he realises that the world is much bigger than his home; so too, when one receives riches, validation, fame, glory all to one’s content and beyond, do they then realise that life is so much more. But I think for the ambitious youth, or even the ones in apathy who has turned a deliberate eye away from their true potential , sink into ‘humility’ and reject success, because it would be considered as vain to pursue it. It is arrogant that we even consider ourselves like the Prodigal son in turning away to a ‘life of sin’. We don’t sin very profoundly. In fact, we live in this static haze where the sins we commit we blow out of proportion to make our life seem more spiritually dramatic. Most of us live like the Elder brother: we watch our brother pursue his hearts desire and just sit still thinking that he is the real sinner. In retrospect however, we know that the one who commits failures is the one who learns, and understands more, whereas the one who doesn’t even try to fail, thinking he is justified and holy for not even daring to try - now that is true arrogance. So it is the prodigal son who is the greater one, because even though he fell into perhaps a greater darkness than the elder brother who statically abided in this monotonous haze of spiritual discontent, ended up coming back from it seeing the Father, the beautiful Light he had fled from in a much more meaningful way. What he missed and abandoned he can now see with more clarity. The Light is now brighter, richer, and more penetrating.

Lazy readers will misinterpret my words as deliberately turning a blind eye away from God and just pursuing a decrepit, despicable life that is solely to gain the experience of the prodigal son. What is really being said is this: we live too comfortably and ordinarily where days, months, years, an entire lifetime, becomes this memory-less haze of ambiguity. Nothing happens. And this is because we are not living authentically. We don’t appreciate life - not because we don’t love God, although this is the deeper consequence - but because we hate our own selves, and push away that deep Self which God wants us to exhibit. Once we realise our true purpose and appreciate the life we are given - all the circumstances, all the hardships, all the suffering, all the misfortunes, all the ‘barriers’ - we realise that what we have, everything that it is, and everything that it constitutes, and everything that constitutes it, is a heavenly blessing to enjoy. Everything that we have is set up so that we can reach out and call to God our creator. Everything is set up meticulously for our becoming the greatest self we were intended to be.

I am not advocating the idea of personal ascribed vocations, where everyone is intended to do a specific thing. It is not so much about doing as about being what we are intended to be. We are not defined as successful based on what we do or what we accomplish, or the amount of good or the amount of evil - for this is all accounted for in confession and repentance. It matters that when we live, we live as God intended us to live - free, passionate, joyful, active. Being already self-sufficient, we strive for greatness out of inspiration and awe. We strive to create and produce great successes for the benefit of those around, not so that we live up to our potential and become worthy from it, but out of a place of love. God intends us to strive to create from the same place which He created the World - a heart of abundance and Love.

"Let your light so shine before men, that they may see. your good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."
— Matthew 5:16.