The True Invitation of Valentines Day

Love is always loving you. You are this Love. You are that Love. Know this. And rest as such. Love is always loving you. The heart of Existence is waiting for your return. When will you come home? Will it ever be now? - Anand Ji

The feeling of self-hatred is a chronic illness in human beings. It leads us to violence, depression, conflict and separation, addictive behaviour, greed, and a constant state of restlessness. This self-hatred is what the ego is. The ego is in a constant state of self-hatred.

So, the question arises: ‘Can one love oneself?’

Before you can love yourself, you have to see yourself. Loving yourself is more of an idea. You try to do it but it’s difficult to understand how to do that so instead of trying to love yourself, transcend self-hatred.

How to transcend self-hatred?

In order to transcend self-hatred, you have to see yourself beyond the idea that you have of yourself. When you can connect to the source within, through your practice, then there’s a natural love that starts to fill you up. There’s a natural feeling of connection, of bliss. Then you can see the self-hatred, instead of collapsing on it.

The beginning of this might be just the intention to look inward. In that self-observation, the necessity to change, transcend, evolve, becomes very clear and through that you realise that this act of self-observation is in itself one of the most important parts of awakening.

As you observe yourself, you start to transcend the vrittis. You see that there is self-hatred in there and then you can transcend it, instead of running around and trying to fix things or trying to get something to fill the hole in order to feel self-love. This happens through observation of one’s true nature. That self-observation is key.

All that there is, in this present moment, is Love. You come from love, you exist through love and unto love you shall return.

You have sought this love all your life but somehow the conditioning, the society, the world has told us we’re not good enough, that we have to be more, that we are this, we are that, we are anything but love, that we have to be a certain way in order to deserve love, to receive love. This is the biggest lie that has ever been told and it has destroyed the human spirit.

It is very important for us to claim back our love, not somewhere in a distant future, not when we have the perfect attitude, face, personality, body, relationship or when everyone says great things about us, or looks up to us. These are all ego-based.

The only love that can liberate us is the love that can be experienced now, a love which is vertical, the love which is at the source of who we are, at the base of who we are. When you can experience that love, that existential love, that love that is right here, right now, then all self-hatred disappears.

One has to acknowledge that there is this chronic self-hatred inside, even if one is denying it. Through self-observation you can see how the self-hatred becomes a driving force in your life.

But as you practice self-observation and you start claiming back your love, then the driving force in your life is love, not self-hatred. And that love is self-love and love for life and love itself. It’s not just, “Oh I love myself and I hate everybody else.” It’s just love and that becomes the driving force in your life. Then life becomes an expression of love instead of the pursuit of love.

Make your life an expression of Love rather than the pursuit of love.

If pursuing love, we will never find it. The love that will set us free is the love of who we are. That’s self-love.

The mind cannot love so it is not about, “Oh, I’m going to love myself’.” It is about experiencing the love of who you are.

Drop in and experience the love that is already there at the source of who you are. That love is all that surrounds you.

In this very moment you are alive, universal intelligence is plugged into you, working through you, experiencing through you. If that’s not love, what is?