In a day and age where everybody is preaching self love, it’s easy to use that message against yourself if we think our self love isn’t where it should be. So what is self love exactly?
I’ve noticed a theme of two opposing forces that make up the spectrum in this world of polarity. These different energies reside in many common things and ideas but the combination of them together seems to go unnoticed sometimes. Feminine and masculine. Love and fear. The heart and the mind. Feeling and thinking. God and the devil. Infinite and finite. Abundance and scarcity.
Through a cognitive psychologist named, Erick Godsey, I learned about the concept of humans possibly having two individual conscious entities that live inside of them. 1) The Daemon, described as our intuition, which I’ve also interpreted as our soul, our source for divine Love. 2) And the Ego, which is where things get complicated. It is technically the overarching consciousness of past experiences that we’ve recorded in our mind and body. These past experiences associate themselves into little groups and then talk to each other, which is then communicated to us through that voice in our head we all know so well. The problem with the Ego is that it’s the program we use to identify the “self,” but the main function of this program is to keep the self alive. And how do we stay alive? By recognizing threats, and then using those logged “threats” to predict our reality and help us survive.
So in order to stay alive my entire identification of self is based in fear? But instead of feeling danger and fear for my physical life that fear turns into ideas like: I may not be worthy of love unless I behave, speak, look, or think a certain way. This person is not worthy of my love because they don’t act in accordance with my expectations. Existence itself does not deem me worthy of love but acquiring things in my external world does. In order to experience love I must receive it from someone outside of myself. If I don’t portray a perfect life 24/7 I will be judged for not having my shit together. My physical achievements define my success more than my actions. The list goes on. But does my truest self live in this fear? Or is there another place inside of me that contains a truer version of myself? If my Ego lives in my mind and weaves stories in an attempt to protect me, what lives in my heart? My Love? I’ve come to find out the answer is an abundance of many things but my Ego’s reach is lengthy and it uses tricks to protect my heart from the fear it’s perceived, so that makes it difficult to access the abundance at times. It’s kind of like I’m in the backseat of a car, my Ego is behind the wheel and my heart is situated in the passenger seat buckled with two seat belts that are made of steel. So how do I get my ego in the backseat and my Self in the driver’s seat to feel like I’m the one in control and maybe loosen up those seat belts a bit?
Writing “I am worthy of my own unconditional Love” in my journal for months on end was a great starting point. It’s similar to that old form of punishment where teachers would force you to write the same sentence on a chalkboard a hundred times if you got in trouble. There’s something about repetition which seems to beat information into our brain, so when I force fed myself a message to love unconditionally I was bound to eventually create an intellectual understanding of how I “should” treat myself. Along with meditating this seemed to be improving my self love but even then my Ego would still seize any opportunity to hurl judgement, blame, guilt, or shame at me or anybody else. Which means if I’m identifying with my ego I would consider myself the source for that negativity. Then I would feel bad for being negative and judge myself even more. And then I’d judge myself because I judged myself for being judgmental. Then the feedback loop continues and down the rabbit hole I go. But what if I choose to see fear coming from a source inside of me that isn’t truly me, and then what if I stopped internally identifying with that source? Can that help me move away from all of this fear and begin to identify with Love? If I identify with the feelings in my heart instead of the thoughts in my mind, i.e my Daemon, that means I am identifying with my source for intuition, my source for divine Love. It means that I am no longer seeing myself as the creator of fear based things like judgement, shame, guilt, jealousy, anger, or blame, rather the creator of acceptance, forgiveness, gratitude, compassion, and empathy.
I’ve begun to treat my Ego like an identical twin that lives inside of me who doesn’t understand the concept of unconditional Love. Almost like a little boy that’s kind of a genius but also naive, who thinks he has to prove himself to the world and everyone in it. By responding to fear with Love I am slowly teaching him that the perspective he’s been conditioned to adopt is not the truest version of ourselves. This process is a battle. Once he noticed that I slid into the driver’s seat and he was now in the back seat he reached deep into his pockets and pulled out more magic tricks. Now he seems to be getting more creative and hides behind different ideas like an invisibility cloak. Sometimes I am able to catch the underlying attachment of fear right away and move to my heart, but sometimes I look up and all of the sudden I’m in the back seat again with my Ego In the front smiling at me through the rear view mirror. Then I remember to accept, forgive, and switch positions through compassion and empathy. One thing is for sure – the further down this road we go the deeper my impression in this driver’s seat will get, and I have faith that my Ego will start to become more comfortable in the back seat eventually.
I used to be Ryan, a man who believed every story from his Ego as truth. A man who fell into the trap of thinking his heart needs protection. A man who was quick to pass judgement and take it as part of his own character. A man who was anxious, stressed, and on edge all the time. Now I am Ryan, a man who feels an abundance of unconditional Love in his heart but works to improve himself every single day. A man who instills a sense of compassion and gratitude towards himself and others. A man who is satisfied with who he is but will never settle for “who he is.” My Ego still likes to bring up fearful narratives from my past to predict my present moment and the future, but now I know that it’s just a call for attention.
So what is self Love then? To me, it is the process of creating a balance between the opposing energies that live inside of us. It is moving further away from the separation of the Ego and closer to the oneness in our hearts. It is knowing that right now, in this very moment, you are exactly where you’re supposed to be. It is acceptance, forgiveness, and gratitude. It is understanding that to experience Love is to create it from within and then give it to the world. Self Love is striving for growth and improvement while knowing that the worthiness of your own Love is not dictated by your performance, productivity, failures, or mistakes. Self Love is looking past the conditions set in place by society and choosing to provide Love to ourselves and others no matter what we think we deserve. It is recognizing that the only thing we deserve is unconditional Love.
Give Erick Godsey a follow on Instagram and subscribe to his podcast if you want to take a deep dive into your mind. I’ve also included my favorite episodes of him on other podcasts.
Erick Godsey: https://www.instagram.com/erickgodsey/
The Myths That Make Us: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-myths-that-make-us/id1455569633
Aubrey Marcus Podcast w/ Erick Godsey: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/aubrey-marcus-podcast/id521945322?i=1000415614482
The Xpand Podcast w/ Erick Godsey: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-xpand-podcast/id1439641583?i=1000436839559
Kyle Kingsbury Podcast w/ Erick Godsey: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/kyle-kingsbury-podcast/id626299586?i=1000431056000