The day you realize yourself, your very being becomes love. It is no longer a relationship, it is no longer addressed to anyone in particular; it is simply overflowing in all directions and all dimensions. And it is not something on my part, that I am doing it. Love cannot be done.Osho
Have you ever watched the branches and leaves of a tree swaying softly in the breeze? Perhaps you've observed its calming effect – the continuous, gentle movement resonating with the stillness in you. This stillness is at the center of all things, and is the essence and reality of all things. This stillness is love, and to interface with it is to know love. No attachment, no reasoning, no judging. Just love – being, radiating.
The truth of loving yourself is connecting, for the first time, with that perfect stillness in you. To look past your regrets, insecurities and heartaches, and become intimately aware of the precious You that exists beyond all that, is to begin to truly love yourself for the first time.
Forget the old ideas of trying to find something about yourself worthy of loving, or somehow learning to love your flaws and faults as a vehicle of loving yourself. To do this is to be in constant conflict, constantly pushing boulders up a hill, because you are trying to love yourself from the outside in.
Instead, go to the very source of who you are – that perfect stillness – your god nature, if you’d like to call it that – and let your natural, innate drive for self-love take root there, blossoming and radiating outwards into all facets and layers of your being. In doing this, all outward flaws and seeming imperfections are met with love and compassion, because you are loving yourself in the most fundamental sense first.
You see, love needs no reasons to be. It just is, of its own accord, radiating softly and quietly, interfacing without judgment with all it connects with. Why then, do you need to find any number of reasons to love yourself? What values, mentalities or milestones are necessary for you to love yourself? Love just is. Love meets you where you are.
When you open your eyes to this, it becomes clear that we humans have been going about trying to love ourselves the wrong way. We’ve been taught that if we can only accept ourselves first, then self-love will follow. I believe that if you love yourself first, accepting yourself comes easily – because in love, your perspective changes radically.
Self-love is born not through an arduous process of self-discovery, but in an instant of insight: that moment in which you realize that the god consciousness in all things – the trees, the falling rain, a sunrise, a wandering beetle – is also in you. It *is* you, and you are it. You are not separate from the Source, or outside of it. The ocean wave rising and cresting is not separate from the ocean – it is a phenomenon occurring within the ocean, intrinsically one with it, a microcosm. And so it is with you. You are perfect. Billions of years of cause and effect have resulted in you, and now you are here... and that's pretty damn amazing!
I like using the analogy of the tree swaying in the breeze, simply because it is easy to relate to the beauty and stillness one feels when observing it. However, we are truly a microcosm of the Universe, and all phenomena are mirrors, showing us who we are.
The rage and destructive power of flowing lava lives within us, too. But see how the nature of lava is to become still, to become a source of creation and new life.
This nature is also within you.
See how the nature of the earth's tumultuous shifting is to create majestic mountains and tranquil hills, constantly renewing the landscape.
This nature is also within you. And it's available to you always, for the cultivation of self-renewal and growth. Open yourself to this.
Love knows no object, love is not addressed. Love is only of God. When you love your woman, if you really love her, you will see the woman has disappeared and God is standing there. If you love the tree, you will suddenly see the tree has disappeared and God is very green in it, blooming. Love is only of God. Love is never of the part, love is only of the whole.Osho
I encourage you to see and honor yourself in this way.
Go to your quiet place often and meditate on the beauty and sacredness of who you are. Go outside and observe the resonant stillness in nature, discovering the truth of who you are within it.
This is where self-love is born, and where it thrives.