WORDS/PHOTOS: ADRIAN DE GROOT
PORTRAIT PHOTO: MIA MEDAKOVIĆ
The theme of this issue of RYL is Self-Care, Self-Love. Self care and self love have naturally dual aspects: externally, taking good care of yourself physically and esthetically, such as eating healthy, your hygiene, make-up, clothes, appearance, accessories, jewelry, hair style, interior design of your home, cleanliness of your house inside and out, your car, etc. Once in a while, when you have the financial means to do so, you buy yourself new clothes, shoes, furniture; hang a new painting on the wall, spruce up your garden, etc. These are all valuable external things that express self care and self love.
However, in this article I will focus primarily on the internal, psychological, and spiritual aspects of self-love and self-care.
Recently, I responded to a friends’ YouTube video online and suggested that we look in the mirror daily and say things to ourselves like: “You are absolutely beautiful, I love you, you are alive and I celebrate this with my whole heart. To be able to say to myself “I AM” is a miracle and I AM so grateful. Oh, it’s so good to love myself for my miraculous existence. I am always beautiful, at any age Dear ______ [your own name], I love you dearly”. Make up your own words, filled with love and gratitude about yourself. She liked it so much that she quoted me in her next video.
Sri Paramahansa Yogananda revealed and went as far as to say: “Love yourself passionately. Fall in love with yourself. I do not mean your looks, money, or fame, but your own core energies, your own gift of life, your own creative principle. Be humble in your adoration and filled with gratitude in loving yourself. This will bring out the God presence in you, and you will transcend all to know you are God.”
Clearly, he wasn’t talking about narcissism, which is a trait of the ego. Elevated self-love is not a thing of the ego, but of the divine, higher self. Thus, this deep self-love is of course not about selfishness, but about, and I’m making up a new word here: selfloveness, whereby universal love is included and central.
Yes, we are of course talking here about unconditional love for self and others, that is, a love without judgment, which even embraces your enemies, as the great philosopher of life and way-shower Jesus encouraged to practice, as in “Love your neighbor as yourself,” as all people are our neighbors of course. Remember, discernment and observation is never the same as judgment. You can observe a person to be mean spirited, but you can still love that person and not judge.
If you love yourself fully in this way can you then possibly “hate” your neighbor? Self-love and self-care is the foundation upon which you can and also will love others. If you are always critical about yourself, putting yourself down, what will you radiate outwards to others? It has no value to them.
Not long ago, it took me two days to watch all of a high energy filled day-long webinar, hosted by Jamie Kern Lima, attended by around 250,000 people worldwide, and with high profile guests reiterating her theme. Her entire webinar, which also launched her latest book Worthy: How to Believe You Are Enough and Transform Your Life, was totally focused on you feeling totally worthy about yourself, as self-doubt and self-devaluation remains the number one problem many face: people don’t feel worthy or deserving of love, because of such reasons as their weight, their skills, their appearance, etc., or because they have been bullied, labeled, rejected, verbally abused, etc., or because they made mistakes in life and are scared God will judge them when they die, etc. Of course, her message was and is that we are totally worthy, without us having to do anything. Your existence alone makes you totally worthy! You are always number one.
So, instead of focusing on how supposedly “sinful” or unworthy or “damned” you are, you focus on your intrinsic, unique and most valuable worth. Each person is so wonderfully unique and so extremely valuable to and part of the WHOLE.
I write WHOLE in capitals, because today, more and more open minded scientist (since Nobel prize winner physicist Max Planck, who said that there is nothing but energy which is Consciousness) and of course the spiritually open people are all telling us that in fact, we are all ONE. So, since there is no such thing as matter and it’s all energy, and since this energy is ONE, and we are all part of this energy, so we are also ONE. We experience the illusion of separateness in this world, but we are truly not separate, but one, and people who have near death experiences, as well as other spiritually gifted people, all tell us this sacred truth. A friend of mine often tells me “I am you, and you are me”. That is correct. Part of the same universal Oneness, Consciousness, which also goes by other names such as “The Universe”, “God”, “Spirit”, “Source”, and whatever your prefer.
Another Nobel Prize winner in Physics, Albert Einstein, so aptly said: “A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
Shouldn’t we take good care, with love, appreciation, as well as a deep sense of awe and wonder, about this Oneness? Isn’t it better to live with love, rather than with enmity? Fighting each other in this world on any small or large level is a sign of gross ignorance of who we really are. What we do to others, we actually do to ourselves. “What goes around, comes around”. Some call it karma. There is a song whose first line is “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me”. Yes, peace starts indeed with me, with my self-love and self-care. In the eyes of this Oneness, we are all beautiful, fully worthy of love, unique, valuable, etc. We are one human family, all brothers and sisters.
The unconditional love from which we all come and which we all are is so great that it will eventually feel like you are pouring an ocean into a single drop of water. If we truly take care of our own development of love, then we become such oceans with plenty of love to share! Such love also includes total forgiveness towards self and others.
Even though at this point, my article was basically all finished, I met this 30-something man in a store, who asked me in English to go before me to pay for just one item, a pack of cigarettes. I quipped at him with a friendly smile: “I think you’re too smart to be poisoning yourself.” He smiled back and responded in a friendly manner: “I know, and I started when I was already 28 years old.” I looked at him quite surprised, and then he added: “I know, and I should know better. I’m a doctor.” I was a bit dumbfounded at that last bit, not knowing what to say next. And then he left the store. I felt though that I had made a friend, and perhaps fate let us meet again.
Now, do you think this man truly loves himself? If I had a chance to ask him, he would probably say that of course, he does. But then why poison yourself with nicotine which can lead to all kinds of health and brain problems later in life? True, some people smoke all their life and never catch anything major from get, but others do, so why play Russian roulette with yourself?
Addictions happen both on the physical level by harming our health (adding to the above such as alcoholism, overeating, junk foods, too many sweets, soft drinks, or prescription drugs for every little thing, etc. (and we agree it’s all bad for us!), or on mental levels, by exposing ourselves, via a variety of media, to violence (including video games), horror, porn, murder mysteries, and even by regurgitating the evil history of mankind that feeds our addiction to resentment and hating our fellow humans. Thus, books, museums, repulsive photo or art exhibits, etc., can actually all add to this addiction to human resentments by exposing the past, exposing us to human evil, without offering a road to forgiveness, and love for all people. Yes, evil must be exposed and eliminated, but it has to be done also with a heart of love and forgiveness I love to see a time when the resentments we carry about the past stop with us and are no more passed on to the next generation.
The sensationalist media is no help here at all! So, people fight over politics, race, religion, economics, culture, morality, gender and many other isms. And when you think about it, constantly complaining, feeling hopeless or being filled with self-pity about self and everything can also be or become a serious addiction.
Luckily, the chaos in the world today is spurring more and more people to increase their deepest desire for world peace and love among all humanity (but you do really need darkness to love the light?), but in many places in the world we have near civil war because people keep those resentments alive and feed on and multiply them.
If we truly love and care for ourselves, we will free ourselves from any anti-love towards self and focus on joy and being positive and becoming free from addictions. This will then spill over into the world around us. And: We can start today!
Allow me to give you a hint on how to make this easier to do than you might think: Don’t ever try to do this with your mind! Oh no! When you shift to your divinely created inner heart instead, there is no need to work with changing the mind, dealing with old issues and clearing the subconscious. When you shift to the heart, and this is so important, then every time all else except Love simply falls away because the moment you are in your divine heart’s vibration, you are living the truth of unconditional love and you will recognize that actually Love is your and ultimately only Reality.
As in my previous RYL articles, I come back to the same conclusion: unconditional love from the heart is key to self-care, to self-love, and to you vibrating peace, joy, love, non-judgment, coming to a spirit embracing humility, gratitude, and saturated with a deep sense of awe and wonder living in this marvelous universe and in this life on earth surrounded by such much natural beauty, which especially includes each and every precious person. Such a heart also overcomes addictions.
Yes, look again into the mirror and say how beautiful and wonderful you are! Fall in love with yourself, with everyone and with every creature and beautiful thing. It may sound naive, but true self-care and self-love thus can and will save this world.
