Is Self Love a Radical Act?
Moshe Feldenkrais' introduction to 'The Potent Self' is titled Love Thyself as Thy Neighbour.
Moshe knew we treat others with more dignity than we treat ourselves and he knew that loving thyself was Feldenkrais' first lesson. All lessons we teach flow from this and it's a lesson professed by many.
In 2011 the Dali Lama came to Perth. There's 2 things I remember from his visit.
The 1st is the Dali Lama bathes once a week. Glad I remember that! ;) The 2nd was his response to a question about managing self hatred. He said "I do not understand why people in the West hate themselves" My mind halted.
HE DIDN'T UNDERSTAND SELF HATRED?!
Hating the self wasn't a given?
Turns out, it's learnt. Maybe it's become 'normal' in our society but IT'S NOT NORMAL!!
But isn’t it also obvious that getting shitty at myself for feeling shitty is just weird, and quite frankly MEAN! If I'm feeling crappy don't I just need a hug, and some love and kindness?!
People can wrongly assume I don't get anxiety and it's true, I'm mostly a pretty low key happy chappy. I saunter about in flowing relaxed couture, talk to strangers, am first on the dance floor, write poems and share them... even when they're bad!
Friends call my OTT optimism and enthusiasm - my 'Molliness’ (Co-incidence Ecstasy is called Molly? I think not! ha ha)
But of course I'm not immune from all the normal experiences. The difference perhaps is that I've found a growing ease and it's completely engineered. (Decades in the making)
One of my greatest stunts is that I've stopped pilling so much judgement and expectations on myself
I'm not sure I'd say I love myself as self-love in social commentary can be an effortful facade, and I don't see animals, babies and children proclaiming love for themselves. They simply pour their love into the world. But... they definitely don't hate on themselves
Sometimes adults don't hate on themselves either
In 2015, Royal De Luxes, The Giants came to Perth
The CBD streets were blocked as hundreds of thousands of people followed a giant wooden Diver and a smaller giant Girl trying to find each other in the city.
The final climatic moment was when the Diver and the little girl find each other. My family and I had front row spots but it was nearing dinner time. Thinking ingeniously I decided the climatic meeting was the perfect moment to get hot chips. I turned my back on the giants and moved through the crowd toward the food vans. What happened next blew my heart wide open
A sea of the most beautiful humans ever seen were
ALL SMILING AT ME!
Beaming
Radiating
Overflowing with Love
Heart aching
Tears welling
Arms opening
Soft
Tender
Pure unfiltered love
Gazing at ME with Rapture
(of course it was for The Giants, but my nervous system didn't think about that!)
I was swimming in the most insanely potent sea of joy
Walking slowly
I drank it in
I bathed
I soaked myself
I drowned in the love of fifty thousand hearts
And I felt the truth of love
We are the creators of the love
It wells up in us
We might get distracted by 'something' we think is causing it
But it's ours and it radiates from every cell in our body
I bought my chips and floated back to my family
Dripping, laden, swollen
I proceeded to spin
Like a Sufi Whirling
Love spun me round and round
It came pouring out of me like an ocean
That memory lives deep in my cells and psyche
And I draw on it often
It's MY-SELF love
It's not a proclamation of love
Not self-love as a RADICAL ACT against capitalism
Just the most natural normal thing there is
One of the tenants of Feldenkrais is to discover, not what you can't do, but what you can't stop doing
Maybe the way to loving ourselves is to stop hating ourselves. Hating comes after. Love is first. The simplest most ordinary of feelings
Some people worry if they're kind to themselves they'll AMOUNT TO NOTHING! (Another weird and wonderful thought?!) But letting myself be myself. Letting myself be normal doesn't mean I don't love learning and wanting more fabulousness. Like Shunryu Suzuki says “Each of you is perfect the way you are ... and you can use a little improvement.”
And so I sign off my white-board marker sermon ;) with an wondering.
Can we engineer a little more kindness, ease and contentment?
Not by doing something
But by halting something
By giving up - just a little - self judgement, distain or loathing
By letting ourselves be our ordinary, normal, lovely selves
By not getting anxious about our anxiety?
Maybe a quiet human love will come bubbling up from the deep?
Image unknown artist at Arma Museum Ubud, Indonesia