You must first love yourself before you love another
You are He manifesting as you. You are as legitimate as He is. If you are a part of God then He is also a part of you, and in denying your own worth you end up denying His as well.
The following are a few words from the book “The nature of personal reality” by Jane Roberts. They seem suited to the storm that the world is going through right now.
You must first love yourself before you love another. By accepting yourself and joyfully being what you are, you fulfill your own abilities, and your simple presence can make others happy.
You can-not hate yourself and love anyone else. It is impossible. You will instead project all the qualities you do not think you possess upon someone else, do them lip service, and hate the other individual for possessing them. Though you profess to love the other, you will try to undermine the very foundations of his or her being.
When you love others, you grant them their innate freedom and do not cravenly insist that they always attend you. There are no divisions to love. There is no basic difference between the love of a child for a parent, a parent for a child, a wife for a husband, a brother for a sister. There are only various expressions and characteristics of love, and all love affirms. It can accept deviations from the ideal vision without con-demning them. It does not compare the practical state of the beloved's being with the idealized perceived one that is potential.
In this vision, the potential is seen as present, and the distance be-tween the practical and the ideal forms no contradiction, since they co-exist.
Sometimes you may think that you hate mankind. You may consider people insane, the individual creatures with whom you share the planet. You may rail against what you think of as their stupid behavior, their bloodthirsty ways, and the inadequate and shortsighted methods that they use to solve their problems. All of this is based upon your idealized concept of what the race should be — your love for your fellow man, in other words. But your love can get lost if you concentrate upon those variations that are less than idyllic.
When you think you hate the race most, you are actually caught in a dilemma of love. You are comparing the race to your loving idealized conception of it. In this case however you are losing sight of the actual people involved.
You are putting love on such a plane that you divorce yourself from your real feelings, and do not recognize the loving emotions that are the basis for your discontent. Your affection has fallen short of itself in your experience because you have denied the impact of this emotion, for fear that the beloved — in this case the race as a whole — will not measure up to it. Therefore you concentrate upon the digressions from the ideal. If, instead, you allowed yourself to free the feeling of love that is actually behind your dissatisfaction, then it alone would allow you to see the loving characteristics in the race that now escape your observation to a large degree.
There is nothing more pompous than false humility. Many people who consider themselves truth seekers and spiritual are filled with it. They often use religious terms to express themselves. They will say, "I am nothing, but the spirit of God moves through me, and if I do any good it is because of God's spirit and not my own," or, "I have no ability of my own. Only the power of God has any ability."
In those terms you are the power of God manifested. You are not powerless. To the contrary. Through your being the power of God is strengthened, for you are a portion of what He is. You are not simply an insignificant, innocuous clump of clay through which He de-cides to show Himself.
You are He manifesting as you. You are as legitimate as He is. If you are a part of God then He is also a part of you, and in denying your own worth you end up denying His as well.
Thank you for the blessing of YOU Adrian... 🙏
I find in this passage a great truth, but also one that is difficult to maintain. For some reason I have a very short-sighted perspective when it comes to God or myself. And oftentimes I project my feelings on God which are very self-condemnatory and judgmental and when I do this I cannot love God or myself. I have not read the book, but there was a bestseller back in the '70s titled, I and Thou.... I believe the author was Martin Buber... he may have been a rabbi but I am not sure. The reason I bring this up is because when reading this short article I can see it's truth but I can also see it's weaknesses. Perhaps for some they find no trouble synthesizing both sides of the Dilemma of self love, love for other, and God's love. But for a simple person like myself, I can often become very self-critical and wish that I were different, that I had more energy, that I had more joy to share with others, that I always had what was needed to fulfill my obligations to love God with all my heart soul mind and strength and to love my neighbor as myself.... but as the author says sometimes it is difficult to even love ourself. Lately, I have been trying to focus on the way God loves us... the way a parent loves and cares for and nurtures and protects a child. Maybe some of us did not experience this bonding fully as children, and therefore we still suffer with the wounds carried over from childhood, from our preconscious infancy and early years. From the little bit I've learned it is very difficult to overcome the feelings which may have been implanted in us before we were even conscious of who we were in the world. I believe I am very fortunate to have experienced firsthand the love of God so many times in my life that when I think back it is truly truly amazing.... and yet, like so many, you wake up on a new day and face the world with little perspective or appreciation, and an attitude of okay but what have you done for me lately? And when we see our own deficiency to do the simple things like tidying the the house, doing the grocery shopping, calling old friends that have been on your heart but you've ignored for lack of energy or just laziness and apathy, Etc and multiply this by hundreds of little lapses in our obligation to God and man and then on top of that some of us have to face the reality of things we did consciously in violation of God and our fellow man and woman. There have been so many days in my life, where I felt like it just couldn't be any better then to be alive and to experience this miracle all around me... and then as if to give me a wake up call, into my perfect day God allows me to pass a man struggling down the street with braces on arms and legs because of the horrible condition of cerebral palsy. Or I remember going to a New York Knick basketball game back in the late 90s. The company I worked for had sixth row season tickets. Being in sales, I was off in the recipient of these coveted tickets to entertain clients and I was a passionate fan and also someone who played the game four to five times a week with my closest friends. But if thought that as haunted me for many years was taking my daughter who was between 9 and 12 during that time. And on some bitterly cold January and February evenings as we walked several blocks toward Madison Square Garden from our parking lot, we would see a half dozen or more homeless people living on the street in the bitter cold of Manhattan where the winds blow across town from the Hudson River eastwood toward the East Side River with a nasty, biting, cruelty... I can remember my daughter's Eyes when she looked up at me and said Daddy why are these people lying out here in the cold?.... with big, genuine, tears In Her Eyes. I tried to give her the most loving, compassionate, explanation I could muster, but as we walked on we would encounter yet another and another and another. This reality has followed me all through a life that has been pretty good thank God. I have never experienced War personally, I have never been unemployed, I have never once not had the ability to purchase whatever I wanted, and overall, personally the good has outweighed the bad. But one thing is certain, if this is all there is, I would be more than willing to have my life and all I know erased from memory this very moment. For the suffering of this world and those I know and love, both living and deceased far outweighs whatever temporary Joys and ecstasies and even Simple Pleasures I've experienced along the way. I believe I have tasted and seen glimpses of Glory along the path and it is those glimpses that give me hope and encouragement that in the end it will all have been worth it. So to conclude, thank you Lord for this day. Thank you Lord loving me and giving me such wonderful friends and a good and wholesome mind that can appreciate Beauty and virtue and also see the Dark Side of man and even the humor of life's absurdities. Thank you God for everything.... thank you God for the death of your son Jesus Christ, my Lord and Savior without whom I would not want to live one day in this life amen and amen.