“Loving yourself as a way to love your neighbor” is very important these days, because we often understand that loving yourself is a matter of selfishness and this is something we should avoid in our lives. However, learning self-love is a way of practicing the second greatest commandment, which is 'Love your neighbor as yourself.' This means that we start with ourselves to then love the other to finally love God, which is the first greatest commandment. The neighbor is the way to love God. But, what to do to love yourself? One of the most important things is to accept ourselves the way we are, with all the limitations and imperfections that exist in us." This is one of the tips from the book I Choose to Be Happy, by Rossandro Klinjey. When we accept ourselves in this imperfection, we are able to accept the other. When we think we are perfect, we demand perfection from the other. But he does not deliver, for he is still in the imperfect state, just like us!,
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To begin this process, we must think about the shadow. The shadow is everything that is stored in the unconscious and we don't know what it is, even if it has effects on our daily lives. Everything that displeased, hurt, harmed us is thrown into the shadows and forgotten. The moment we put light in shadow, suffering ends, because the unknown becomes known.
When limitations and imperfections are unknown or denied by us, they haunt us. When we met her, we started to accept them. Therefore, the proposal of self-love is to know our evolutionary rhythm, to have the personal capacity to adjust to the environment, to know what we can handle, to know our limits, not to charge ourselves with the impossible and to know that inner approval is more important than outside approval.
Lecture given by Ana Tonelli Racy.
