“If your compassion does not include yourself, it is incomplete.”
The Buddha
One night I was sitting in the hot tub gazing at the nearly full moon when suddenly I had a very lucid thought about just who and what we truly are. As I was sitting in silence feeling the stillness of the night, the words, “know thy self” came to mind, followed by “love thy self,” and the meaning hit home deeply as I felt a strong sense of compassion for the parts of me that have suffered, and which in turn, became a great teacher.
I have to say, when I had first heard of the idea “love thy self,” I had only an intellectual understanding of what it meant. However, that night while gazing at the sacred moon, I actually FELT compassion for hurt Jeff. Consequently, I now truly get what it means to love thy self. And it is powerful!
“Know thy self.”
One of the main teachings it boils down to is simply living in the eternal now and being of one mind. This differs from the perspective of the split mind, where we have created the identity of “I,” which can be described as the person I want or intend to be vs. “me,” which is the person I want to improve upon. The latter is the one we must develop compassion for, as it is the one who has suffered. And this is the very reason we attempt to improve upon it; because quite simply, we do not want to suffer.
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