You can't love nobody else until...

Is it just me or is the term “Self Love” taboo?
First off there’s the connotation of masturbation. As Woody Allen says in Annie Hall: "Hey, don't knock masturbation! It's sex with someone I love.” **Blush**!
Both the physical act of ‘self-love’ and the psychological version are surrounded by uncertainty—is it ok? If so how much!? It’s embarrassing to ask your parents growing up and our culture doesn’t speak openly about it-- so it becomes this indefinite question mark. Just as one’s relationship to auto-eroticism must be explored and defined privately so too we must uncover/ recover a healthy bed of self-love to lay our worries down in to when the going gets tough. Can we please stop being so hard on ourselves and love the one we’re with? We’re gonna be here for a while longer, so we’ve got to figure out how to make this livable and hopefully lovely.

In “The Art of Happiness” the Dalai Lama has a chapter on Self Love and he reacts with disbelief that someone could actually not love themselves!!

The ego takes many forms, in Hindu Mythology Ego is symbolized by the great transforming Demon Mahesvara that the Goddess Kali epically slays. In our modern Western psyche I feel we have this super critical, perfectionist mutation of Ego that when not sharply judging others, judges ourselves. We can be our worst enemies sometimes, right? In the Yoga practices we begin to see our life situation for what it is and see where we are being to harsh or too lazy—we discover our Sat- our Truth and soften to flow with OM the ever changing current of existence.

In his memoir Bhagavan Das writes that he chants kirtan because he loves to hear his own voice.
Isn’t that great?! Not because of anything esoteric but this simple, organic action of hearing and loving one’s own voice! Can we follow Baba D’s example and just love what we do and the simple pleasure of our lives? One of my beloved teachers Ali Cramer has said: “Let’s fall in love with our lives, and if your not in love with your life what are you doing to change that?” Amen.

So rather than see ourselves as good or bad we have to find a harmonious ground to move through life with. Sure, there is the risk of narcissism and vanity, but for a long time I avoided any sense of self love out of self-consciousness that I was not supposed to just enjoy myself.

We have to remember OM and the inherent ONENESS our Yoga practice is reminding us of! If we feel miserable all the time we should be working to make it better. Sometimes it is just a matter of thinking, we have to remember our problems are not the end of the world, and not WORRY ourselves so much. First we have to see the habits of our mind for what they are—we have to identify what shape the Demon Mahesvara has taken in our own psyche and begin to appease his roaring with the salve of Amrita—the eternal nectar of Love that resides in our own hearts.

I esteem and honor the yoga teachings because they lead me back to that Amrita—maybe not every single time, but I would say every week I receive some understanding that sincerely makes me feel lighter and happier in life. That’s why I keep practicing. Not because my life is becoming perfect because I practice yoga, but because it keeps me warmed up and close to my own Love nectar. Maybe someday I will be so familiar with the source of this feel good stuff I won’t need the practices, but until then I love asana, meditation and especially kirtan.

In my experience kirtan is a way to let the voice and life force flow and be really free and flowing. This has reconnected me more and more with my original feeling of freedom in loving the moment and just letting it flow.

I once asked my friend and teacher Prem Prakash how Bhakti yoga worked. It seems fake to try to make yourself cheer up by smiling but IT ACTUALLY WORKS!?! (Try it sometime). So in the same way, Bhakti practices, and any practice done with Love and Devotion draw us back into familiarity of that origin of action that is prior to the rational mind.

Now instead of getting mad about my faults and mistakes and challenges I see it as an opportunity to start a dialogue with the universe, and to trust that the Universe is at its base LOVING and to let my thoughts be an expression of that. In this way we add love to the world, instead of contributing to conflict and troubles. We have to fight the war within for the positive benefit of all. “Begin Within”. “A House divided among itself cannot stand”. As I get more into yoga I see how my thinking was weakening me, and as I get more into living life with Bhakti, devotion, and surrendering whatever is happening up in life to a cosmic energy, OM, the more I feel Love for myself and others, and things don’t seem so heavy after all....