Lately I've been contemplating loving oneself as a grounds for all love. This was brought on by reading of some rather persuasive existential philosophy, though the notion is pretty familiar in various non-philosophical contexts. I've often heard people telling others that they must love themselves before they are able to love others.

For me this notion of loving oneself is profoundly inconceivable. The relationship towards the self is so immediate that love in the way that I understand it seems to be impossible. I'm not completely sure if this is due to some personal issues I have, or just my understanding of being an individual and the connection one has to oneself, though I suspect it is the former.

I do still think that I am capable of love, having been in a loving relationship for the past two years.

I've had two prior experiences with mushrooms, neither being particularly spiritual. I'm going in for a third time pretty soon, and I was wondering if anybody had any suggestions on how to explore this matter in the altered state of consciousness, or if doing so is a good idea in the first place.

Also, I'd be interested in reading your views on the issue.

This is a really difficult/complex thing for me to try and put into words for some reason so bare with me

At several points in my life i became way too hard on myself and over-emphasized the things i hated about my personality/behavior/mind while neglecting a lot of the positive things, and the potential possibilities for growth that lay before me. This was a very unhealthy way to live. For me, overcoming that skewed focus (still workin' on it!) had to do with accepting/loving oneself, integrating, and doing the work to make the changes i knew i had to make in life.. For a while i was loosing it, but mushrooms and other psychedelics helped open up and heal my rigid (and sometimes tarnished) emotional barriers; reconnecting me with a sort of truer sense of myself and my natural place in the cosmos..

When you dig deep enough and all of these mental barriers erected through conditioning and cumulative experience dissolve, and all of our conventional methods and incessant processes of categorizing our conceptual framework of the world gives way to the sea of ineffable information around and within us, i think at our core we are all infinitely beautiful, complex, and fascinating parts of the universe coming awake to parts of the universe. We are literally the universe waking up to itself..and here we are on a tiny organic magma rock flying around a nuclear fireball. How could i not love this amazing experience?

If we were really able to 'register' how profoundly amazing existence is right NOW then i think we'd naturally be in a state of reverence, gratitude, acceptance and love for all of the cosmos, including ourselves

Our cultural upbringing seems to disconnect us not only with a sense of connection and atunement with nature but with our actual bodies and selves, i think. Most of the time, we're trapped in these left brain mental-monkey-box conceptual worlds.. separated from the sea of perception coming in every second. And so inevitably we make up these stories or movies about ourselves that are very off the mark... in the same way that we mistakenly confuse our mental models of the world as being the world itself

Mushrooms have often helped me a lot with this...Usually on a solid dose in silent darkness or especially in nature (i usually smoke caapi leaf on them as well, or changa)...and especially during those maniacal laughing fits! ^__^

Its like an emotional dam burts during a kind of organic psychotherapeutic process of self analysis and re-tuning.. or something...and i realize many things about myself and my life, along with its relation to the bigger picture. Throughout this feeling a profound sense of oneness, love, acceptance and compassion for the cosmos and everything in it, including oneself

Couldn't have said it any better.

tat

beautiful post universecannon!!!

Concerning self love and love towards others: My belief is that when one nurtures self-doubts and self-loathing this is a kind of contraction and knotting up of the flows of energies within us. I use this as an image, a metaphor for something I only "know" intuitively - not as an explanation of how things really are. These knotts or damms really seem to inhibit our ability to feel euphoria, interconnectedness and love. I don't think you cannot love at all in these states, but I do believe that the love you experience then is to the love you could experience if you were uninhibited as an aquarium is to an ocean.

- confined and the balance that allows it to live is easily disrupted.

Nicely put posts.


This "world itself" paradigm, the longer the more it gets unstable in existence IME.

Wonderful insights. Thank you. I will surely contemplate these things on my next voyage.

Enoon, on my last trip I did feel something I can only describe as euphoria of the spirit. That occurred most profoundly during a period where I felt the distinction between myself and the rest of creation diminish. This is something I'd like to explore further, though it might be helpful to do so by going further inward, as the experience was directed outward in most respects.

a beautiful topic and one that is profoundly timely. delve a little into this lunar eclipse in scorpio and you will find that this, along with the other two eclipses all happening in a three week period, are all pointing to the same lesson: let go of that which does not serve your highest heart. let it die. let space open for a new energy to move in, one that brings you closer to that connection we all understand in the deepest part of us (and EXPERIENCE in hyperspatial sojourns), yet struggle to manifest in our current density...

self-love in itself in a misleading paradigm that can take one into it's very opposite vibration: self-criticism. "why CAN'T i love myself?? what's wrong with me? my life is filled with blessings but for some reason i cannot open my heart in any real way to them...WHY??" with this in mind, i propose the following: how we view "love" is skewed.

the very idea of love has been reduced to a sentimental, nostalgic, cute and fluffy amalgam of images and pre-fabricated concepts. but what is love really? i am an older man now and have explored many avenues of love in my 42 years of circling this "nuclear fireball". i have had more relationships than i am comfortable admitting. i was married. i have loved parents as they lived and felt a notably different type of love for them after they had passed. i have loved things that i have done and places/things i have experienced and still....still....only in the past year, when i was unable to move and 'do' things from multiple surgeries following a horrible accident, have i started to feel what an abiding love might actually be...

for me, to say "i love you" or "i love that" is the egoic assertion that "i" am capable of manifesting within myself the most awesome, godly power imagineable and then, with complete control and facility of this unfathomable power, i can direct it at one specific target. you.

take the woman who took care of me through the hardest part of my ordeal. i really wanted to love her more than all others. she was so selfless and kind to me. surely she deserved more of my love than anyone else, right? but as i lay there unable to do anything but feel my way toward love, i discovered something. love doesn't come from me. love is what abides long after my little broken body has left. love was here before me and love can never end. to truly love is to simply stand in that river. when you are open and empty, then you are able to allow love to flow through you and into this manifest world. and like a crystal sphere, that love radiates out in all possible directions to all sentient life. to the very earth itself.

i do not generate love, nor do i control it's path. in my best state of emptiness and openness, i can act as a synapse in a brain, allowing love to flow through me into all things. my work is to open my heart. to rid myself of the toxic patterns and beliefs that disallow the opening of my heart. to, as all major theologies and philosophies have said in some form or other, "be a vessel for divine love". this is the answer i have to your query. this is what my life experience has shown me.

so now a tremendous weight is lifted off of me. i no longer feel a pressure to DO something in order to experience love. i no longer feel any true difference for love of self and love of anyone/anything else. i see clearly there is simply openness to love and blockage to love. there has never been anything "out there" that i should do that would help me. it was always about "undoing". this is why and how our sacred medicines help us. in order to travel far and in bliss, our medicines teach us to let go. let go and then let go of letting go. the less we analyze, catagorize, name and judge, the deeper we go. we don't try to "bring back" something (knowledge, insight, etc.) from these journeys. we lay in reverence as the tears dry on our cheeks at what we were able to let flow through us. a moment of divine love so encompassing we are able to let go of any separation from it. this is their gift and this is what we all come to this website to communally try to reconcile with the world around us. it all comes from emptying oneself of the tiny spec of awareness that one has labeled "everything" in one's mind.

trust me on this one- EVERYTHING is a lot bigger than your mind can ever imagine...

my advice to you, my beautiful brother/sister is to commit yourself to a meditative practice, a yoga, a tai chi, a qi gong, etc...
before anything new can fill us, we need to learn how to make space, flush out toxic loops in our minds and allow unhealthy belief patterns to slowly dissolve back into the great ether from which they originated. they no longer serve you and are the real obstructions to a heart-felt KNOWLEDGE of divine love.

with the deepest love and gratitude (coming through me, not from me)

cant tell ya how much i've missed your posts Ant! Good to see you here again

The deepest love,

Is a coherant love.

to clear away the false beliefs and allow the truth that is love to flow through! antrocles!

Epoe

I would perhaps rather use the word compassion as its far more descriptive of what I have experienced through my personal experience. It has taken me many years to cultivate compassion for myself as ever since I was really little I would always help others to my own determinant and give away things in my life in order to help others. Though I discovered during my travels to India that all my life I was being to hard on myself and how was I to truly give to others and nurture them or help them if I hadn't cultivated or received compassion in its purest essence for myself.

After experiencing compassion in its truest form which was omnipresent all around me and through out the entire universe, in every living being, creature or plant. I realized that if I didn't feel compassion for myself how on earth could I feel compassion towards others as we are all a reflection of each other and apart of one another. I have grown so much in my entheogen journeys since I have started nurturing compassion for myself. Now my life just unfolds before me as it should and on so many levels such beautiful and powerful things have come into my life. Finally I feel content within my own skin, my future and being able to create my own meaning for the first time, before I felt like I was continually lost and struggling nothing seemed to be flowing within my life no matter how hard I tried to manifest positive and meaningful things.

Also cultivating and imparting positivity into the smallest actions in my day to day life even if its as small as infusing positivity into a cup of tea it makes an incredible difference in my experience of life. Even other people seem to notice and comment, gosh that was a lovely cup of tea. Through growing compassion for myself I have a great respect for and am aware of the preciousness of life and every living thing, if an ant is having a hard time and is drowning I will do everything I can to help him out of trouble as I have found this awareness and profound respect for life has made a huge positive impact on my life and perspective of consciousness. It is a continuous journey that I do my utmost to keep hundred percent focused on I have never felt so content and peaceful, compassion is key to ultimate happiness and understanding within life...


Much Peace and Compassion

beautiful my siSTAR. compassion is the foundation. after a beautiful hour long morning meditation, this is the first thing ive read today and i have to thank you for putting this mantra in my head. oft overlooked but absolutely crucial to begining any process of self-inquiry or growth. it all starts with compassion. compassion for where you stand RIGHT NOW in YOUR process.

and as for finding positivity in the small things....i am reminded of one of my favorite quotes:
"How you do one thing is how you do all things"

love and gratitude!!

Ant

My brother I am honoured to have put the mantra in your mind, indeed compassion is the foundation. Cultivating true compassion is a long and difficult journey... though each day I continue to practice compassion and try to be aware and nurture positivity through cherishing the small things. My treasured Lama says as long as you are trying to cultivate and nurture compassion within your heart, it is okay even if you move slowly slowly.

He is a beautiful old man who says trecious instead of precious, my next step is also to focus on dissolving my fear and understanding the nature of emptiness. Each day I try and take even a small step forward within my practice, hopefully I will get there one day but I have a great distance still to travel in my journey.

Such a beautiful quote thank you for sharing it with me my friend...


Much Peace and Compassion

Thank you so much for your wise words.

I find thinking of it as compassion in stead of love really helpful.

I managed to share my issues with my significant other a few days ago more intimately than I had ever done, with anyone. I've been feeling the healing effects of this ever since. Yesterday I felt incredibly light, managed to get lots of work done and went through the day feeling like a beacon of light. I was smiling almost constantly, and really felt like I was beaming joy out into the world.

I am only on the first steps of my path towards healing but I definately think I'm on the right track. This weekend I'm going to have some mushrooms with two of the people I care greatly for, and I hope the experience will be enlightening.

You would not believe how long I've been searching for these words. You're lucky you're nowhere nearby, I'd kiss you.

Ah just reading this thread has opened my heart a little more than it was before. Thanks for the love blast ya'll. Nothing to add the beautiful words here, just swinging through