The three foundations of Self Love are:
- Develop a Loving Inner Voice
- Do what you Love at all times in life
- Build a community of Supportive, Loving friends.
Many of us have an inner voice that is more like an inner critic and an inner judge than anything else. It’s a voice that’s always keeping us in check, and making sure we come up to the mark.
Developing a loving inner voice is all about transforming and transmuting that inner critic or judge into an inner cheerleader. When I think about this, I always think about the Dalai Lama, who is quite famous for being perplexed when he discovered (because he was told by a Westerner) that many people living in Western societies struggle with self love. He was genuinely perplexed. And this to me says something about our Western societies which are so focused on success and achievement, as measured more often than not, in material terms. When we are constantly striving for more or better, it’s hard to be in a self-loving space, because the very nature of striving is coming from a place of ‘I’m not there yet’ or ‘I’m not quite [fill in the blank] enough’.
Our lives are brief, if we look at them in relation to the timespan of eternity (while at the same time they are long, if we see that time is a human construct). My grandfather, who I never met as he died before I was born, wrote in the many letters to his then fiancée, my grandmother, when he was pondering some question or other: ‘Anyway, in a thousand years it will not matter at all!’
This seemed to help him to see the levity in whatever situation he was looking at, whether it was what career he should take up on his return from the war, or how long he would still be in the field, or whether he would make it home alive or not. Given we are here for a relatively brief moment in time, I firmly believe that we should only do what we love in absolutely every part of our lives: relationships, work, family, hobbies, everything. When we follow our hearts in everything, we are much more likely to be living in a place of contentedness.
The third Gem in the Buddha’s Triple Gem – the three things you absolutely need if you wish to gain enlightenment, or awakening, which in the end, is simpler than we think – is community. I like to think of enlightenment in Eckhart Tolle’s terms, when he suggests we ‘stop creating any new problems.’ When we come to a place where we stop creating problems, I think that’s enlightenment. The third gem of the Triple Gem is the Sangha – the spiritual community. It’s so important to build a loving community around you of supportive friends, on a similar life path. This becomes your soul family.
Watch the video below for the full version of these Three Foundations of Self-Love.
Inner Child Healing and Relationship Blueprints
If you’d like to dive deeper into the practice and implementation of these three foundations through understanding patterns from your childhood that may be blocking your self-love, then come along to this workshop. We will have some fun connecting with others while being directed in our healing by our own wise inner child.
