Loving Ourselves

There are three levels of love, according to Osho Rajeenesh:

The lowest level of love is loving materialism; goods, products and inanimate objects that cannot love us back. When we try to find happiness by consuming in order to feel better, our yearnings can never be satisfied by material objects. It is vacuous because it cannot satiate the need to be loved back, so we lose interest in the object, and look for the next thing to fill the gap.

The second level of love is loving another human being but this too, leads to disappointment, as we place our dreams, hopes and validations on the other person, that can never be fulfilled by someone else. We have been duped into believing in a fairy tale ending where everyone lives ‘happily ever after.` Society insists we can only be truly happy when we find our ‘twin flame’ or ‘soul mate.’ Those who are alone, must be unhappy and unfulfilled, so we strive to fit into society’s box, and search for happiness in another.

But, the only real love is loving ourselves. When we love ourselves, we love all parts of our personality, including all the dark, shadow sides. We love our vulnerability, our shame, our pain and our anger, and we become intimate with ourselves. If we are not intimate with ourselves, it is impossible to be intimate with someone else.

When we love ourselves, we are fully self-sufficient and not needing validation by anyone, and can become truly liberated. The fear of being who we are dissolves, and we can be in our vulnerability, naked and soft. When we have a deep intimacy with ourselves we become powerful and untouchable. We are not affected by the outside world because we no longer need anything or anyone to make us feel whole.

Loving ourselves is the ultimate goal for those living shamanically. When we start loving ourselves, our behaviour immediately changes, as we automatically start loving everything around us. We immediately start seeing that the external world is only a reflection of what we are feeling about ourselves. We realise that how we feel about ourselves is how we act towards others, and the world. When we start loving ourselves everything becomes more abundant, peaceful and harmonious and our actions become more harmonious, loving and healthy.