Unconditional Self Love - Part of the Healing Journey

I heard someone on Facebook today state that unconditional love is the root of all evil! The worst part of this comment is that no one really called this person out on the statement. Mostly people gave their definition of love (not unconditional love).

What truly shocked me is no one gave any legitimate examples of unconditional love.

This is something I thought everyone had considered at some point.

I remember being in grade 1 on the playground with my friends and having a conversation about this topic.

We came up with some pretty good examples of what unconditional love was. As well as distinguishing loving someone or something but not agreeing with their actions.

We distinguished there are times when you can love someone, yet not have them in your life. We distinguished we can continue to love something even after it died.

We distinguished we can love ourselves even if we are not perfect, since no one is perfect. We distinguished we could love our children, even if they did something horrible.

Even at that age we recognized that condoning something is not the same thing as loving something.

I spent the day stewing on this comment, shaking my head (to myself). It reminded me that not everyone does the same kind of self reflection, nor does everyone think about the same things. I do know that intellectually, but occasionally I need a reminder that people travel this life on very different paths.

My gut reaction when I first heard the comment was, "God help his children. They're bound to do something at some time in his life that will cause him to stop loving them."

His definition, or the sideways sort of ramble that he provided, included some moral traits, moral behaviors. With those definitions, virtually no one could love themselves. Including himself.

As humans, we all make mistakes. We make choices that are wrong, even some that are really wrong, maybe even considered to be evil.

For anyone who's done any kind of soul searching, or went "looking for themselves," you'll likely know that you made no growth, no expansion, no improvement without unconditionally loving yourself. Progress is not made by condeming yourself, or berating yourself. It is made by loving yourself.

For some who are spiritual, and have a belief in God, you'll understand that unconditional love is what God gives us. No questions asked. You strive to get to the point where you unconditionally love God.

I think part of a challenge with the English language is that we only have one word: Love. Other languages have many words, with distinct definitions. For English only speakers, though, it makes this kind of topic confusing.

As for unconditional self love, I personally think this is very important. With it we have the strength to grow and learn. We can also simply choose to be exactly how we are, and be at peace. It provides us a choice to be and do what we need to do, at any particular time in our life.

If unconditional self love is not what you're feeling about yourself, it's time to consider dropping whatever feeling you have for yourself that is not uplifting and supportive. I know this may be easier said than done, but it's so worth it.

You can start baby steps by giving yourself permission to consider it. If it's something that you struggle with, then do the work needed to figure out how to get there. It's a personal growth journey that pays back a thousand fold.

You may have heard the expression that we need to heal all parts of ourselves: Mind - Body - Spirit.

Every person has a different place that they're at. Every person needs to work on different areas of these 3 things in different amounts. You need to figure out which of those 3 areas needs work. If you're not self loving, then you need to work some more on what I've called Spirit. This is sort of the uplifting beliefs and thoughts we have about ourselves and the universe.

The Mind part would be what I'd call personal growth, or building character, or bettering ourselves, or our actions.

The Body part is diet, exercise, that kind of thing.

When all of these three things are fully intertwined, and a bit hard to separate, we know we're really on the right track. When we get to this point, we get to the point of beginning to heal.

When you're working on getting better after a diagnosis of Celiac Disease, or some other Autoimmune Disease, it's important to put yourself first. And that starts with loving yourself. Your path to healing and recovery will be smoother when you give yourself the love you need, and deserve.

Tell us below in the comments what areas you succeeded with and how you got there, so we can all learn by example.

Cheers!

Thora