Lesson #10 From Rock Bottom

Unconditional love is real.

Ideally, we would all experience the safety and tenderness of unconditional love, acceptance, and positive regard as soon as we are born. However, not everyone is fortunate to have and experience that type of love as children and to have that instilled, fostered, nurtured, nourished, validated within us. But that doesn’t mean one will never experience it. At rock bottom, when everyone and everything is stripped from you, everyone abandons you, it will just be you with yourself. It is when the inessential, the ephemeral, the conditional is stripped away from you that you will learn and be forced to love yourself unconditionally. It was at rock bottom that unconditional love grew within me for the first time in my life. It was the most beautiful and precious and rare flower that blossomed within me. It was a pure and blissful sensation of complete contentment and peace and compassion and acceptance of myself, peace and quiet and warmth and coziness with yourself. Not needing to do anything, be anything, say anything. And this peaceful self-love is not arrogant or delusional or ignorant of flaws and things we need to work on but an acceptance and allowing of all flaws, of places that require improvement and not seeing them as problems but a state of things like any other. There once was a time when you couldn’t walk. Was that a flaw? Did that make you less or not good enough or mean anything about your worth as a person? No, of course not. It was just a temporary state of being, something we hadn’t learned yet. And a lot of our so called flaws are like this. And the ones that are less changeable are usually only painful because we are afraid others will judge us because of it. The magical and amazing thing about unconditional self-love and positive regard is that when you have it and truly feel it and feel the peace with yourself independent of circumstances, other people, the past, all the pain and bullshit you have overcome all becomes (or can become) fertilizer for this beautiful flower that you must protect with your life. Do not let the world or other people poison or destroy this flower. Believe me there are those who will try, who want to rip that flower out of you and stomp it out of existence simply because their insides are barren and some of them might be the ones closest to you who claim to care about you hiding behind the title of mother, father, friend, partner while doing and saying everything to the contrary. Imagine the peace and freedom that comes from loving yourself freely proudly independently of appearance, external circumstances, achievements, money, whether other people approve of or love you, whether you have a career or not, whether you have a job or not. Yes, such a love exists and it is the most freeing and beautiful feeling in the world. It is what will help you weather the storms of life, what will keep you warm when the world is cold and indifferent. How much better would the world be if we all loved ourselves this way? If we all had this peace? This is the strongest foundation and most bountiful fount of creativity and strength and vitality and courage and bravery and beauty and freedom and joy and peace and happiness and contentment. Unconditional love will protect and guard you be your anchor, a steadying force no matter what is happening externally, what circumstances and people do or don’t do. Learning that you exist independently of all of that is the most freeing and peaceful experience. This state of equanimity will constantly be tested by the world, by circumstances. Learning to separate and honor this subjective fact and state of unconditional love and acceptance and treasure it is the most powerful defense and weapon against forces that want you to hate yourself, that want you to doubt yourself, to feel incomplete and not good enough, that want you to be dependent and weak, that want you to seek and crave external validation and approval and give away your power so that you are weaker, easier to control and manipulate and gaslight and push around and feel weak and drained and empty and lacking. Differentiating between fact, opinion, objective and subjective judgments will help you know what is yours and what is not yours. Other people’s subjective experience and perception of you is not your concern nor within your control. It is relevant for them just as your subjective preferences, perceptions, priorities, needs, standards, boundaries and feelings are relevant and important for you and must be honored for and by you. Other people not liking you is about them and them honoring their needs, feelings, preferences, biases though the less self-aware they are the more they will make it about you. Whatever ever happens, be for yourself. Be there for yourself. Assume yourself, love yourself wholeheartedly more than anything anyone. Choose yourself every day, every moment, for richer for poorer, the good the bad the ugly, when you’re doing well, when you could be doing better, through every struggle and failure and disappointment, through every feeling. That is unconditional love. And the most important person you and every version of you especially your inner child can love is yourself. Everything and everyone else is temporary. Those who are fortunate enough may have friends and family there to love them like that but no relationship with other people or situations or circumstances will come close to the one you have with yourself, will ever make up for being at peace and whole and complete with one’s self. Look at life throwing failures, challenges, disappointments, rejections, injustices, unfairness, people who might be doing better than you and say “Fuck you. I love myself. I choose myself. I don’t want to be anybody but me. I am here for myself through every struggle every tear every smile every joy every pain.” Others may have more, be more beautiful, smart, successful, but they are not you. They are not the unique combination of qualities and experiences that you are, they haven’t been with you every step of the way, they haven’t been in your shoes, they haven’t gone through every pain, every milestone, loved you at your best and your worst, seen and embraced you with unconditional acceptance and compassion at your most vulnerable. That is sacred love. Only you know how you want to be loved. Others may or not be able to love you like that. But see to it that you give your love, respect, dignity, devotion to yourself first and foremost. Everything, everyone else is ephemeral, changeable, unreliable. Build your peace within yourself. Your steady and protected inner world will be a most loving refuge and reliable, peaceful, embracing retreat against the cruelties, disappointments, betrayals, vicissitudes, transience of other people and life. Never disrespect your being again. Never disrespect the child that you were again. This world will do nothing but tell you and try to make you feel not good enough as will other people both those inferior and those who might be superior or just more well endowed. Love yourself where you are as you are. Standing up straight, looking life and people boldly in the face and saying I love myself as I am, as imperfect as I am, as the stumbling, wobbling lost beginner that I am and I am striving to learn and be better. Don’t let the world crush you like when you were a child. Push back, hit back, fight for your brazen right to be. Those who need to stand in judgment upon others to call themselves tall are standing on air. Judgment is important for discernment, to discern safety, trustworthiness, compatibility. Apart from that, you have the right to be as you are and others have the right to be as they are. Some you will like, some you won’t. Some will like you, some won’t. The stronger your sense of self, the more nourished your flower, the less you will care and you can enjoy yourself and your being and let others be themselves at the appropriate distance and in the appropriate position in your life.