The Curious Case of Benjamin Button and Self-Love

Benjamin Button is born old and gets younger as his life goes by. I can relate. I felt like I was born a very old man because I couldn't access my feelings. They were locked deep within me. On the outside I did my best to relate to others, but within I was confused and lost. I felt like my feelings were slipping on ice. I couldn't get a grip on them. 

But with time I came to feel more emotionally grounded. I felt that my feelings crystalized. I didn't like everything I felt, but at least I could name the feeling I was going through. But it took decades to come to know myself from the inside out. And to love myself was something that didn't even occur to me until I hit my fifties.

Then, suddenly, I realized that my purpose in life was to know me. And to know me was to love me. Suddenly I began to grow young too. Although most people are born you and grow old, I was born old and grew young. But I can only say that was the case because I came to love myself. Without my esteem, respect and compassion I was a beggar taking emotional handouts from others. I had no spiritual wealth. The richness of life came when I could celebrate my feelings - all of them.

"Slumdog Millionaire" and Self-Love

The question I came away with from the movie, "Slumdog Millionaire" is whether there's a difference between "fate" and "destiny." Are we locked into a future that we have no control over (fate) or is there a dream in our hearts that can be realized if we can unlock the secret of our heart (destiny). And, of course, I believe the later.

There are billions of people on this planet who suffer through life, unaware of the possibility of making their dreams come true. The main character, Jamal, begins life in this way. He's accosted by injustice, loss and sorrow. And yet, somehow, he doesn't forget what he's been through. The mystery of his past becomes meaningful over time as he uses the information he's gathered to answer the questions on the game show.

The word "mystery" comes from "my story." The mystery of Jamal's life is no different from anyone else's in the sense that there is spiritual meaning in everything we go through. Jamal, however, remains consciously aware of the circumstances he lives through, so that he can use his experience further down the line.

Self-love brings attention to myself so that I'm aware of my thoughts and feelings as I interface with the world. And it's the combination of my experiences in the world around me as well as the world within that creates meaning. Only in this way does mystery (my story) and history (His story) come together like a jigsaw puzzle. Only in this way is it possible for me to see that there are no accidents, only incidents. Everything that happens to me has the potential of being useful to me if I focus on my destiny rather than my fate.

Hope is the important difference between destiny and fate. There is no hope in fate. Hope is the inner knowledge that affirms God's participation in my life. But inspiration is 99% perspiration. I have to do the work within. I have be curious to know myself. I have to explore the mysterious connection between my head and heart.

Jamal's girfriend, Latika, came be internalized as that part of myself that I'm deeply in love with, but that I need to save from the dangers of the world. The feminine side of myself is an aspect of myself I've come to know and identify with. Latika is that part of me that I want to hold, protect and know deeply. All romantic loves are projections of the self that give us the opportunity to know ourselves through another person. The question of how many great loves I get in a lifetime is easy. I get one - myself. All the others are for practice.

Humiliation and Self-Love

Self-love is a feeling about myself. It isn't a thought; it isn't a New Year's resolution I make and break. Self-love is a way life, something that comes from the heart, not the head. And one of the most difficult feelings for the heart to process is the feeling of humiliation. Humiliation, like all feelings, can be triggered by others, but it then moves through me independent of the trigger that caused it.

                   The concept of my book, The Wisdom of Self-Love, is that life is a school in which I'm learning to love myself and, in so doing, feel all the feelings that move through me.  And if life is a school I can’t ask for a refund on the emotional cost of my education just because I don’t like my curriculum. I tried staring out the window, ignoring the lessons at hand; I tried playing hooky; I tried getting bad grades for fear of going on to harder classes; I even tried graduating before I had all my credits. But I discovered I can’t complain to the world that I’ve overpaid on life's tuition. Nobody’s gives a damn...

Self-love, like an education, is a tightrope that's much harder than it looks. I can feel afraid of falling; I can refuse to take the steps necessary toward loving myself; I can fall and swear I can’t get up. But there will always be clowns sent in to this three-ring circus I find myself in. That I've already experienced and now know for a fact.

The clowns around me laugh at me when I fall. Even the clowns within try to distract me from myself when the feelings are deeply uncomfortable. But I know how much pain I'm really in; I know that inside when I'm bleeding.

 The clowns within are the bullies that laugh when I'm down, but they also help me admit that I'm deeply angry with myself. I can’t stop them for trying to distract me from the pain of being me. But what I can do is feel the unintended emotional consequences of their good intentions honestly.

And when I'm through my anger at being me and can feel finally sad; when I can feel sorry for myself at having to experience such pain; when I can admit that I’ve humiliated myself in front of myself; when I can admit that life can sometimes be a humiliating process that makes me feel sorry and small despite my best intentions; when I can cry for that poor soul within bleeding from having lost his balance. Then I can continue on to lifelong spiritual learning about myself without anymore fear.

Only those who have been through life’s classes in the pain of humiliation can move on to the next class: grace. It takes honesty to be graceful, and it takes grace to be honest with myself. This is the essence of the wisdom of self-love.

Becoming: 92 Poems of My Love for Me

Becoming: 92 Poems of My Love for Me is the third book I published with Amazon.com. It looks at the topic of self-love through poetry rather than prose. The spirit of this book is the centering of the self on the self. You can't give to others what you haven't first given yourself. We have to do unto others as we would like others to do unto us, and then we need to do unto ourselves as we've done onto them.

So many, many good people sacrifice themselves for the good of those they love. They learn to give, but aren't very good at receiving. All three books help the reader understand the intimacy and importance of a deep relationship with themselves.

Am I Forbidden Fruit?

The second book I published through Amazon.com is entitled Am I Forbidden Fruit? The Temptation of Picking Me. A New Interpretation of Old Scripture. This book is intended for those with a Western religious tradition in their past. It also offers those who don't come out the the Abrahamic religions to view them through the lens of self-love in a whole new way. This book can help Jews understand Torah in a personal light. It can offer Christians and Moslems a deeper understanding of the influence of the Hebrew Bible on subsequent religious traditions.

The Wisdom of Self-Love

The first book I self-published at Amazon.com was The Wisdom of Self-Love: Life is a school: I am my major. It's an extended metaphor of life as a school of self-love. There are seventy chapters of a few pages each in a book of 228 pages. The chapters are organized into four categories: (1) The Spirituality of Self-Love, (2) The K-12 of Spirituality, (3) A Higher Spiritual Education, and (4) The Post-Graduate Program of Spirituality.

This book is for people who don't have a religious tradition or don't believe in God. The Western religious concept of God is that of the "Father" with humanity as His children. This metaphor is outdated. Most secular people have come to the conclusion on their own that if God is the "Father" than humanity is a disfunctional family.

In The Wisdom of Self-Love the metaphor that's used is God, the Teacher, with humanity as his students. This affords us the respect of viewing ourselves as adults rather than children. It sees us as growing, learning disciples of self-love rather than victims of the love of one another.

Romantic Love Verses Self-Love

The boundary between romantic love with another person and the ability to love myself is worth discussion. The number one question to my mind is where I need to draw the line between receiving love from others verses receiving it from myself. To what extent do I rely on others when I should be relying on myself, and when should I be relying on others instead of on me?

The answer to this question is easier than it appears. The boundary between the two isn’t based on behavior, but on feeling. Whether I give to others or to myself doesn’t matter. What matters is the spirit in which I give. There are some levels of learning in which I need to receive love from others. There are others that I’ve graduated to receiving them from myself. But it’s the warmth and regard with which I give that determines the success of my endeavors.

Granted I’ve given my love to others only to have it spurned. And then in retrospect I’ve seen that I would have been better off had I relied on myself instead. The pain of rejection and the bitterness of disappointment can’t always be avoided. But in a larger sense, my lack of romantic success can be an impetus to hold myself with more regard. What was more common in the past was that the rejection I suffered at the hands of others instigated similar thoughts and feelings. I used their rejection of me to do the same to myself.

It’s so much harder to love myself all the more when the world doesn’t. This is the great challenge of my life. So long as I’m able to pick myself up, kiss myself where it hurts and encourage me to keep going, it doesn’t really matter why I fell or who pushed me. The lesson lies in the loving kindness I make sure I receive from me.

I don’t feel responsible for other people’s cruelty. It’s not my job to punish them for hurting me. It’s my job to make sure I don’t punish me for them having punished me. This is an important axiom of sex-love.

Feelings of being victimized come up for me when I don't get what I want. I find it difficult for my self-esteem to grow if I feel that I’ve been hurt by others. Getting what I want makes me feel good; not getting what I want makes me feel victimized.

What's important for me to remember is that I'm a student of self-love and life is my classroom. Not getting what I want is the result of an assignment not properly completed, a test not passed with flying colors. It requires that I go back and study. 

Feeling like a victim is the feeling that alerts me to the fact that I've got more studying to do to pass the class I'm in. It's an uncomfortable feeling that becomes more manageable when I understand what the message is that comes from it.

Self-love can be enhanced through romantic love. I can feel like I'm floating on air when I'm in love with another person. But I can't rely on them to love me in place of me loving myself. And if they don't hold me as I'd like to be held, I have to remember that the feelings I'm going through indicate that an issue of self-love is really what's being stressed in my curriculum.