There are so many angles I could take on this subject. What emotions to overcome, hindrances of self-esteem blocking the path to self –love, or, just write about things to do that make me feel good about myself. But my many years of experience in this quest leaves me no option. I don’t want to think about it. I want to understand the experience of this profound subject that has brought me to this point in time. I will just start and see where it will take me…

The self is a good place to start if we want to understand love. Do we love ourselves and how do we love, from the heart or the mind? We do many things to make ourselves feel good in the search for self-gratification but the temporary highs based on emotional needs are not fulfilling, and somehow leave us empty. Dive into that empty space and seek what is missing then we can truly love. It begins with the ‘self’.

The ‘self’ portrays a myriad of reflections of the mind. To find self - love without mind, now that is the challenge. We grow to know the feeling of love through others, through our projection of need and we attract people and situations into our lives that meet these projections to fulfil us. The merry-go-round of emotions that follow help us decipher these projections but simultaneously these emotions want to dictate our lives and that’s when, we forget our selves. We think it is in the name of love that we act but usually there is an underlying agenda we are not fully conscious of. It’s a mystery, it’s the emptiness of what is missing and is what we need to explore. After all it’s about self-love.

The experience of self-love is a unique feeling. Learning to trust the heart space, hridayam we start to feel and intuit rather than think and calculate our self- worth, self-love, who to love and how to love.

The essence of self-love is a liberating all-encompassing knowing, and yet, not knowing. The dichotomy of living life to the fullest demands our fullest attention. There remains no seed of selfish projection, there is only an acceptance and surrender to the greater picture. We were taught from an early age the feeling of unconditional love, we just have to remember how to love ourselves that way.

Ah … the love and security of a mother is what nurtures us and is our grounding base in the new world that will confronts us. Then as we grow, we forget and desire and ego take over. Mind is like a kaleidoscope as it begins to create a multitude of shapes taking on the impressions of our unfolding life. A necessary process of growth and development of who we are to become. Unconditional love for the ‘self’ is allowing the positive of you to shine through.

The kaleidoscope of mind stuff is just a mirror of what we need to let go of in order to regain our original nature, our original source of love coming from the mother. Then the unconditional love, given as a gift from the moment we are born can become our anchor and reference when love becomes confused, when we are feeling lost and when we are feeling sick. In the delirium of deep pain we cry out for our mother, reaching for the anchor, the embryonic attachment of our being.

Self-love is remembering who you are to really be able to love, remembering your childhood joy, and the innocence of that joy. The heart space of that joy is the spontaneous, bubbly and is contagious to all. The simple qualities of presence, mindfulness, kindness towards ourselves are just the small steps to a deeper understanding of self so that love can flow, flow as naturally as a river into the greater ocean of our being.

Yoga and meditation is a beautiful beginning to our discovery of self. We learn to become responsible for ourselves. We begin to cultivate our intuition and not be governed through the mind of chaotic emotions. Personally, I found that Yoga opened the heart space to anchor the mind. For me it has been a life long journey of integrating the exploration of self with the journey as it unfolds. And when the seat of mind settles in the heart there is a renewed and spontaneous awareness that begins to envelop us, like the loving hug of a mother’s arms. We begin to learn how to stay in our centre of self, yet merge with others around us in loving and compassionate union.

Self-love, is nurturing yourself, growing with mindfulness to expand consciousness in many directions. Like the orb of a ray of light, self becomes illumined beyond the limited impressions of mind. It’s a vibrantly energetic feeling of ‘love for all’ that takes over. It’s a feeling of contentment beyond the desire of ‘I’ want.

That is the uniqueness of self- love, a discovery of loves original source and the greatest blessing we could all have is to have experienced the love of a mother. And even if there was no mother there was someone else that cared for us. Tap into that original source of your nature, your anchor and there you can rest in the contentment of self- love and love for all.