Recently, I watched a video[1]. That proposed loving ourselves is not a feeling; loving ourselves is our job. At first, the speaker implied: what if we are simply an extension of consciousness, spiritual conscious awareness assigned a human mind and body to inhabit and nurture? Our job is to care for the well-being of the human we are assigned, and with that understanding, how does that change my perspective about how I live my life?
That sounds similar to a mother or father nurturing their child. The difference is that instead of caring for a separate individual, I am responsible for the physical, mental, and spiritual nurturing of my—personal—psychological, and bodily existence. That is where the job of loving ourselves begins: providing for ourselves—safety, sustenance, knowledge, and spiritual awakening out of self-love to encourage the universal energy to keep flowing through our humans for survival. So, loving ourselves is simply surviving.
Now, we, as addicts, know that if loving ourselves as caretakers is our job, we must be doing a lousy job to end up in rehab and recovery. And, being the savvy, streetwise users that we are, we immediately and intuitively ask: “How am I supposed to love myself when I can’t even find a way to like myself?” But here’s the kicker: we don’t have to like ourselves to love our “human.”
Think about it. We are the only species capable of self-analysis, the ability to evaluate and judge how we live our lives and determine if we like ourselves by comparing ourselves to everyone else. If you look at the rest of the animal kingdom, no other species has that capability or worries about liking themselves; their only job is to sustain their survival. For example, look at your dog or cat at home; their only job, day in and day out, is to eat, sleep, and survive. Their evolutionary genetic program is to maintain their universal energy flow—to survive. Their experience of existence is the activity of self-love for self-survival. That is the same DNA energy, the activity of self-love, that flows into loving you—their human—no matter what. That’s the energy flow of unconditional Love into the world, the Love energy of conscious existence—Consciousness—experiencing itself as a dog, a tree, a human, or any object—everything—that exists, and according to the First Law of Thermodynamics, energy cannot be destroyed but only transferred from one material form to another form. So, Love energy, the activity of Consciousness, is constantly being transferred—sharing itself—by creating everything we experience through our perceived existence.
The fact that we are here (in Recovery), still walking around, trying to survive, is a sign that we consciously Love ourselves. The truth is we are all addicts gathered together in Recovery, remembering, deep down, that we must love ourselves or we wouldn’t be here. Together, we remember that our true nature is unconditional Love, the universal energy source that causes our lungs to breathe and our hearts to beat—even when we don’t like ourselves—the unconditional Love that we all share is reflected, between all of us in this community—no matter our background or the story of how we got here.
Okay, let’s start there: evidently, we love ourselves or wouldn’t be in Recovery trying to survive. So, what is my “f-ing” problem if I fundamentally love myself? The real problem is that I can’t find a way to like myself enough to stay sober. When it comes to liking ourselves, we tend to get hung up on the question: what is my purpose in life; why the hell am I here because I think being here—living in addiction—sucks?
Suppose we haven’t already found some hidden talent from within to call our purpose in life. We are not one of the blessed, the lucky few—and they have problems, too—a golden child blessed with mercurial talents. In our case, we start looking around for anything or anyone outside of ourselves to latch onto and call our purpose in life. That’s what our psychological ego does: constantly craving to be something, anything real. The ego is the illusion of our socially conditioned identity: who we think we are based on who, how, and which traditions we were raised, which schools we went to, how and what we were taught to memorize, and the character quality of who instructed us. Then, after we have been trained and conditioned, the all-knowing, great, and wise social structure that we inherited tells us that we’re ready; it’s time to focus and attach ourselves to anything we can identify with to call our purpose in life. Finally, I have to decide: I Am going to be “this” or ‘that.” Is “that” what I really want to be? When, deep down, the truth is: I don’t know who the hell I Am. Most of us are “whom we were taught to be,” and many of us are trying to escape from being “whom we were taught to be” and end up addicted to something, lost and alone; the lucky ones end up in places like CeDAR, as addicts in Recovery, with a chance to awaken and figure out who the hell is the real, unconditioned me—the real I Am.
Now, most of us suffer from an ego identity that has not found its purpose in life or has already attached itself to something that turned out to be the wrong purpose. When that happens, we think less of ourselves and start disliking our ego identity compared to all the other “socially” acceptable egos in this dysfunctional world full of hate, violence, inequality, injustices, poverty, and wars. This world of people trying to escape, change, or control being “whom they were taught to be,” not knowing who the hell they “really” are.
So, my message is that liking ourselves begins when we stop comparing ourselves to everyone and everything we are taught as the right way to look, how to behave, and what to possess in this dysfunctional, man-made society in a natural, ever-changing world. Learning to like myself is the end of comparison on the outside and the beginning of asking the question, Who Am I on the inside? Mentally asking, “Who am I?” immediately—for an instant—transcends thinking, and comparison disappears. That question stops the illusion of the self-ego as being real, living in time, and awakens my true Self-awareness in the present moment as being nothing more than I am. Thinking with the same conditioned mind about what I want based on what my past has taught me is transformed into understanding how I feel and what I naturally need to survive—right now. Remembering to feel my lungs breathing, my heart beating, and that universal energy of creativity—being Love—flowing through me means I love my true Self. I Am surviving. Then, when I ask the question of true Self-awakening: Who Am I? The answer is: I Am is being Love.
We must remember that before conditioning and anything was done to us, we came from universal creative energy; we are naturally creative—that’s how we survive; we are the creative activity of Consciousness—being Love. Our job is to stay aware, which means staying sober and remembering that our survival depends on creatively loving ourselves. Sharing the activity of Love is how and why we are here. Learning to like ourselves comes from understanding that truth; when we can calm the waters of our conditioned mind so that the way we live reflects the Love flowing from within us, where there is no comparison and only the creativity of our true Self-nature—only Love—remains. The need to like my self-ego disappears when there is no comparison, and only the beauty of survival—living in the present moment—being I Am Love remains. And who doesn’t like that?
[1] Matthew Hussey Reveals Why He Doesn’t Love “Self-Love” | The Drew Barrymore Show
VAB 01-02-25
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