Do you feel unconditionally loved when you are all alone?
Sometimes we believe we understand something, but it only actually makes sense intellectually. The idea of loving yourself unconditionally was that for me. I could talk about self love, and explain examples of what it looks like, but that didn’t mean I was actively loving myself.
You can regurgitate the phrase: “You have to love yourself before you love another,” but knowing this doesn’t mean you are actually doing this. If you could tell someone how you wanted to be loved, what would that look like?
This might feel strange, as does the concept of self-love to many. This hasn’t been a long held cultural priority, or even something we have been asked to put thought into. It can a foreign feeling to get to a level of unconditional self love, if you have never experienced it before, either during childhood or romantically.
How can you begin to show yourself the unconditional love you are worthy of? Put some thought into the answers for these two questions. If you loved someone unconditionally, how would you treat them? Or how would you speak to them?
The biggest lack of love I was giving myself was through self-talk. Have you ever listened to how you speak to yourself? Do you dwell on past mistakes? What about worrying about what others are thinking, or saying, about you?
Here are three components to shifting your baseline emotional state to becoming more loving. Love is an energy and an emotion. Fear or jealousy are examples of low vibrating emotions on the opposite side of the spectrum. To operate in a vibrational state of unconditional love will change how you experience life, and change is attracted to you.
Being kind and gentle to yourself, and having fun are important, but the words you speak to yourself, the thoughts you are thinking, and beliefs you hold are the key. Especially, if you are receiving any love unconditionally from without. True love comes from within, and the words you say and think are crucial to experiencing a lasting state of loving kindness for self.
Self-talk
Can you recall a time someone criticized you in anger? Maybe it was about something you believed, or something you said wasn’t what they wanted to hear. Or it could be something said that was beyond your control, like your physical appearance. How did that feel to receive hatred verbally?
If the attack was from a stranger, that’s different from someone who is consistently part of your life. It can be difficult, especially during developmental stages, knowing how someone feels about you. You may be reminded of it frequently, when in their presence.
The feeling of not being good enough for someone else can be defeating, but you can remove yourself from other people. You can’t get away from yourself.
Our inner dialogue can be so consistent that we aren’t even cognizant we are doing it. Your thoughts and beliefs about yourself are part of your self-talk. Are you speaking lovingly to yourself? Do you believe you are both deserving and worthy of unconditional love? Does your inner voice soothe, uplift and express pride in who you are, and who you have become?
For me, I was never good enough. Never satisfied with the moment. I would chastise myself for not doing better, or the mistakes I made. I would dwell on the takes that I missed, even if no one knew about them. I was hard on myself, and my own worst enemy.
Even if I learned from my mistakes, I would chastise myself because I didn’t know better before screwing up. I would not give myself a break, and I absorbed this self-talk for so long, before even becoming conscious I was even listening to it. It became like background noise, with a series of insults on repeat. I was essentially subliminally programming my mind based on the parasitic voice shit talking to me all day.
I never considered the importance of how I thought about myself. My focus was entirely on having others see me as I wanted to be seen.
Expressing unconditional love
How we treat someone is a reflection of how we feel about ourselves. From a place of unconditional love we offer patience and grace for another. We can show unlimited kindness, and be incredibly giving without any expectation of something in return. Seeing each other as one, and as equals, is imperative for peace.
Yet, even if you are kind to others, it doesn’t mean you are kind to yourself.
How we speak to someone says much about us, too. If you are critical and attacking someone’s beliefs, person or character, this is a marker of someone not vibrating at a high frequency. The emotions we are feeling are projected through our words, actions and even how we listen.
Words spoken with the intent to harm is a habit of someone struggling with their own fears and insecurities.
I used to just see self love as doing nice things for myself, like taking a bath or cooking myself a nice meal. But like with human interactions, people can do kind and loving deeds, but does that indicate unconditional love, or just transactional love in the moment?
Loving deeds are part of unconditional self-love, but would someone be happy in a relationship if you were saying hurtful words to them, while you were engaging in acts of loving kindness? No, it would be confusing. Words can be more influential than actions, so we must learn to quiet the negative self talk.
Unconditional love is love in all acts of expression, including touch, speech and thought.
We have all experienced contradictions of love, where people seemingly give it, and then take it away. This is called conditional love, and we can mistake it for actual love if it’s all we have ever known. It is confusing when those who say “I love you” are the ones who create the most pain for you. We can take this unbalanced perception of love into adulthood, and become confused by the term unconditional love, because it’s an energy that we are not familiar with.
When I reached a level of experiencing unconditional love for myself, using compassion and grace, I realized it was something I had never felt from anyone before. I always felt that if I made a mistake, or didn’t do what someone else wanted me to do, then that love could be taken away.
I also realized I had never loved another unconditionally, because as the saying goes: the capacity to love another is rooted in self-love. This emotional experience could be described as the heart opening. Ready to receive and give, but we live in a world where many hearts are closed, and this is a protective measure conditioned from past experiences and indoctrinated beliefs.
Taking ownership
It’s important to accept that we do have control of our thoughts, as well as the words we say to ourselves. Developmental psychologists will say our inner voices are created through early childhood programming, and how we talk to ourselves is a reflection of how we were once spoken. Perfectionism and self-criticism aren’t traits we are born with.
To love the self, we must not judge the self. We must not talk shit to ourselves.
When I became conscious of the speech I was using unconsciously to myself, I became aware I had done this most of my life. If I wasn’t receiving criticism from the outside, it was coming from within.
Boundaries are great and you can remove everyone from your life who disrespects you, but the voice that remains is coming from within, even though it may sound like someone else. Becoming aware of self-talk is the first step to changing it, and this is possible.
Unconditional love is a feeling. It’s an energy, and an emotion. It’s being fearless and truthful.
There is a spiritual term known as ascension. Some believe it is a physical experience where we ascend from Earth to the realm of heaven, but maybe this is a symbolic journey that exists within us. Fear is a base level emotion, and is of the lowest vibration. If we ascend emotionally we get to experience higher vibrating emotions, like love and authenticity.
Once experienced, we have unlimited access to it. Unfortunately, it feels like the world has been trying to keep us trapped in lower vibrating emotions by perpetuating hatred and division. It can be hard to get to a place of unconditional love, if it’s something you have never known from outside of you.
Conclusion
There is a lot of love in this world, but the unconditional kind has become rare.
Intellectually, I have understood choosing love over hate, but how do you choose an emotion you have never truly felt? The mantra for self love is that you can never truly love another until you love yourself, and now this makes sense to me. We just don’t know how. It isn’t something that can be taught, only understood through experience. If we are surrounded by examples of people who show themselves love, then it may be easier to reach this level of awareness.
Unconditional means unwavering, and the choice must be made, with each interaction, until it is automatic. When we stop trying to do things to initiate love coming from others, and focus on the things that are within our own control, then life can get easier. The only person you can make love you is YOU. Though once you embody that high vibrating energy, others will be drawn to it.