LOVE YOURSELF TO LOVE OTHERS:

[Pravin Kumar]

Love Yourself to Love Others:

No one can harm you as much as you can harm yourself, and it's done through your own thoughts. The essence of life is to learn to love yourself unconditionally so you can in turn be an instrument of love to others...

For many years I did things to myself that I wouldn't have allowed anyone to do to me. Not all of this harm was in the form of glaring self destructive behavior, some was in the form of very subtle thoughts, but it was harmful nonetheless. If I truly loved myself I would have never done this to myself, but I didn't know any better so the self sabotage behavior was the normal. I'm not talking about a lip service love here, I'm talking about genuine unconditional love where there is absolutely no judgement whatsoever. Love is a word that is given more lip service than actual action. You will never truly love your neighbor if you don't really understand how to love yourself and this is because you can never be anything different than what is within you.

I try to align everything I do with love as I've learned what behaviors are loving and which ones aren't. I love myself to the point where I don't want to not only cause harm to me, but I also don't want to harm anyone else. Although it may seem that I share to help others, it's only partially true. I share because it reinforces the love I have for myself. This isn't an ego thing, it's about learning how you are your own worse enemy, that is until you aren't. There was no greater harm done to me by anyone than what I did to myself, but in the space of quietness I have learned to stop doing this. To me life isn't about being good, moral, honest, or any other story that can be made up, it's one thing and one thing only and that's to learn to love yourself unconditionally so you can in turn be an instrument of love to others...

MICHAEL CUPO