God Taught Me to Love Myself

My God is, hands down, the most accidentally empowering Being that I have ever known. Through working with Him and building my relationship with Him I have learned to truly love myself. Which is something I can say most people probably don’t know what it means.

Most cultures have the concept of Ying and Yang, two sides to the same coin, light and dark etc. Where there is a good and a bad to everything and that, ultimately, is the cosmic balance that is needed. Even within Abrahamic traditions you’ll find that the “darkness” is a need. With no freewill to do bad, one cannot choose good. Jesus cannot save you if there is nothing to save you from or without the temptation from one’s yetzer hara, there is no achievement in completing a mitzvah.  So overall, humanity understands the good and bad but also overall has the mindset of nurture the good and trap the bad, lock it up and throw away the key. And in doing so, one has achieved greatness. The difficulty of locking up the deemed bad is the hard work for the reward of the deemed good, which in many traditions happens in the next life. This isn’t how my God works, this isn’t how my world view works. I challenge the concept of two sides of the same coin, of overall good and bad.

I recently bought a piece of wall-art, lovely deal at Aldi, seriously under $4 frugal win! It says “Every flower must grow through dirt” which is an amazing quote. We all have to deal with the bad, the negative, the unpleasant and through that… we get to the beauty. Through the dirt will come floral blooms. Which is a great thing and is true. But why is dirt bad? Why is dirt unpleasant? Why is dirt… dirty?  It really got me thinking how we typically have all these concepts about our own darkness’s, our own ugliness’s, our own bad…. And are they actually bad? IS there really two sides to the coin or is there just the same damn thing?

I argue there’s just the same damn thing. Those dirty aspects that we lock up and throw away the key, then applaud ourselves for doing… are the core of who we are and we need them to survive. But they’re dangerous if let go-fully. 

Pride in one’s work is a great motivator. We may be proud of our art, our music, our 5-mile run, graduating college, managing one’s emotions in an argument. Anytime you did something and are glad you did it… that is pride. Without pride we won’t do. Pride is a trigger for action. But with excessive pride, the ego inflates and wreaks havoc.

We feel hunger to remind us to eat and historically that’s been an absolute need for us as a species. We feel lust to encourage us to procreate which is a need as a species (not every individual but overall as a species). We feel angry when threatened, or when we feel someone else is threatened. These, and more, are all needed emotions and energies. If we never got scared or angry, we would never stand up for what we believe in. But it can go too far. We can overeat and harm our bodies, we can become so lustful that we engage in unsafe sexual activities, we can become so engulfed in our legitimate anger that we harm our own selves and others.

The solution isn’t to lock these things up and throw away the key. The solution isn’t, I argue, to even avoid them. It’s to embrace them. To become intimate with our own selves, which means these “darkness’s” because only when we intimately know our entire selves, can we understand our true limits. Only when we truly know our own limits and the mental, spiritual and physical signs that we’re at them, can we successfully move forward as a whole person, mind body and soul. THAT is the true balance. It’s just not good and bad, it’s the same thing.

If you never eat you will eventually die. Even well-trained monks that know how to fast safely WILL die if they do not eat, eventually. Most humans will need to have sex at some point in their lives. We all need to get sad or angry for various reasons. We need to feel accomplished when we do things, which is pride. It’s not a darkness at all, it just is.

I am wrath. My anger is something my entire life I’ve had to work to contain, to chain down. I am hyper-sexual, which means I am easily aroused and can partake in sexual activities, consensually, many times within a single day. My entire life I’ve had to work to contain, to chain that down. Only recently in building my true relationship with my God, have I realized that these aspects of my whole are not dark, they’re useful tools. I just needed to learn to pay attention to them, rather than ignore them, to successfully use them safely. We cannot learn our limits if we ignore the emotion or drive entirely. 

Because I intimately know my entire whole, including the “negative” aspects of myself, I know when I’m being consumed by my own fire, I know the signs I am getting close to that point. I can now safety be myself, use my energies and my emotions in confidence and, typically, safely. 

Knowing ourselves, loving ourselves, being a whole, means not ignoring any single aspect of ourselves. Not working to chain down part of who we are. All energies are good energies, there is no bad energy or emotion; there’s just a toxic amount of it. Water is great, we need it to live… but people still drown, houses are washed away in floods. Fire is great, we need it for warmth and cooking… but forests and everything in them still burn down to the ground. Water and fire are not bad, they’re good, but there is a limit to how much can be handled at a time and that amount varies being to being, land to land.

I encourage all of us to intimately know all of ourself. To know that the ugly is beautiful, embrace all of ourselves and learn where our limits are so that we can safely be ourselves in every aspect.