Do Unto Yourself !!
as you would have others
Do Unto you!
At first glance this quote above seems extremely selfish and self centered. It is, this is the correct use of selfishness and self-centeredness.
This is about learning to Love ourself.
I must have Love for myself before I am able to have any to give away.
If I am not able to Love myself, then I will seek it out to obtain it from outside of myself.
ANALOGY:
I need butter. I do not have butter. I do not have a cow to make butter. I go to the store to obtain butter. I get the butter from the store. I come home and I have butter. However, the butter I obtained from outside of my own ability will run out, and I will need to seek it again. If I only had my own cow to make my own butter, I would never have to seek it out again. And even more so, I would have plenty of butter, more butter than I would ever need. So then, I have plenty of butter to provide or share to others in need. I would not have to seek it from else where.
As you might be able to see from the analogy from above, If I am selfish about learning to Love myself, and then discover I have all this love in me, only then the by product with be selflessness.
Adding to the analogy above. If I do not have butter, nor a cow to make butter and I need to go to the store to obtain butter, and I do not have money to purchase the butter.. what then? Just like our mind, when a problem arises, there are so many different solutions to resolving the problem of not having the resources to obtaining the butter from the store. We can steal it, which invokes Dishonesty, or take it on loan (borrow money), let someone else buy it for us, get butter from another person (which we cannot take all their butter, and we will owe them in return) or go with out the butter. So our mind is very resourceful for seeking out what we need externally, and usually involves, dishonesty, manipulation, or the like. Had I have my own (resources) cow, to make my own butter, I would not have to go through all the above mentioned.
Love is really simple, but its the mind that complicates it.
In order to learn to Love myself, I first need to understand how it is I am not Loving myself, I need to find out what are the components of Love that I seek outside of myself (Butter), that I try to get from other people, places and things that just never seems to be enough, and I find they continuously fail me or cannot meet my demands or they meet them temporarily. I have to find out, what it is that is lacking in me that I seek from other people, to learn how to provide it for myself.
There are many example of this; Here are just a few.
-Attention; I demand that people give me attention. However, Do I give myself attention? If I received attention from myself, maybe I would demand so much from others.
-Praise; I demand praise from others, However, Do I give myself praise? If I gave myself praise maybe I wouldn't demand so much from other.
-Honesty; I demand honesty people be honesty from others, But Am I honest with myself? If I were Honest with myself, I might not demand so much honesty from others.
-Self respect; I demand respect fro others, But Do I respect myself? If I respected myself enough, maybe I would not demand so much respect from others.
-Understanding; I demand to be understood, But Do I understand myself? Maybe if I understood myself, I would not demand so much understanding from others.
-Consideration; etc.
-Patience;etc.
-Kindness; etc.
When I find that I have a sufficient amount of these things, and in their totality, I find that I am loving myself. No we will not be perfect lovers to ourself, and this is where what remains that we are unable to to for ourself, we gain the support of others to provide, and support until we are able to. These come from family, friends, and intimate relationships.
What happens, we find that as we are able to provide many of these things for ourselves, we are not burning to much unnecessary energy and time running around trying to get these things (usually through dishonest and manipulative means-hurting others), and find we have more freedom, time and energy to spend/provide these things to the people around us. That there is a balance of give and take of support, there becomes a lack of the seeker consistently taking. The consisytant taking is selfish and self centered.
So; I need to find out what it is I lack, that I seek and from others because I am unable to provide for myself. because if I honestly think about it, If I am unable to figure out how to provide it for myself, let alone on a constant bases, how can I expect and demand someone else to have the ability.
So What Can I do? With each subtitle: Make a list under it of the things you need, lack, or want for yourself that are reasonable for what else to do for yourself. and each day learn to do those things for yourself, and better.
Physical:
Financial:
Intelectual:
Emotional:
Spiritual:
