Do I love myself?

As recorded in notebook, today has been mostly a really sweet and soft contentment, with little flecks of busy-mind and working with that. I’ve been able to, most of the times negative stuff has come up, work with it in one way or another. Had a fair amount of aversion to retreat and practice this morning during a walk - I was just thinking how nice it would be to have it over tomorrow instead of in two weeks - I’ve had enough. Went into the story for a while, whoops. Then, sort of recognized where I was and brought it back to today’s basic touchstone: back to basics, the four noble truths. Desire being the cause of my suffering. I was clearly desiring various off-retreat things: getting things done, doing some real writing, getting a move on w/r/to the house and hopefully the car, etc. Food, too. All these were just desires, with some fears mixed in (anxiety about the stuff to do, fear I’ll ‘lose it’, etc). So, you know, I did some practice. Acknowledging them, making space for them, not denying them or pushing them away, but then using some skillful means to not identify with them and thus lessen their potency. Okay, desires. Breath, walk, looking around, getting quieter, slower, more present.

On retreat it is comparatively so easy. Just now, I did some of the same stuff, and there is a quality in being itself that I tap into. That stillness and silence.

Anyway, the reason I’m writing is something Sharon said offhand in the morning q&a today. With metta practice, the hope is to cultivate love for all beings, including of course, oneself. Sharon was saying how you don’t always get a euphoric, eureka “I love myself” moment; sometimes the effect comes gradually and is only seen much later.

So on the post-sunset walk, I asked: do I love myself?

I’ll do the end first. At the very end, recentering, ending the walk, becoming present again – which means, basically, stopping thinking and not a whole lot more than that – I experienced love, in general, which included “myself.” When I’m present, and not in thought, I love myself.

Amazing insight.

I went through a whole mess of thought to get there, which I’ll only briefly summarize. First, there are problems with the question. Do “I” love “myself” – what are these entities? At this point in the retreat, I really am more in the space of absolute truth, i.e. nonself, than relative. So the whole question is befuddling. The way I see it, lots of voices in me love lots of other voices, and lots really don’t. At times, “I” love my body - which really means, there’s a faculty or thought arising of love of my body that is dominant over other voices. At other times, other voices are dominant. Rarely is a voice of “I love my anger” dominant, but there are many times when I have had equanimity around it – “I am ok with my anger.”

That led to another question, which is - what is love, anyway? I am hardly the first person to ask. But what is it, really? I don’t think we mean “really like” - like, I love root beer floats, do we? Maybe that’s all we do mean. In which case, I love a lot of things about myself - my writing, my religious soul, etc. And I don’t love other things - my desirous ego, my persistent sense of failure. But it seems like we mean something else. I think it refers more to metta, more to a sort of way in which we hold things. No one loves sadness, or a foul smell, or something like that – but we can love it in the sense of, we hold it with caring, compassion, love in that sense. Love feels like an adverb that modifies how we relate to the object of love.

Maybe that’s why tone of voice is so important, as teachers have observed. Just in the mental note, the same words can be loving or.. not.

In that sense of the word love, I do experience love of myself – a kind of holding, or cradling, or cherishing. A desire to be gentle to.

I think interpersonal love includes that but is also about love, attraction, and something about how we become when we are with the beloved. I really like being with you, that sort of thing. I feel very warm towards you.

That last part - feeling very warm - seems close, but still not quite the same as metta love.

It occurred to me, on the relative level, where there are people and all the rest, do I love myself? Then the answer was no, which brought me sadness. I modified it to sometimes no, sometimes yes, since that is more truthful. Many times in purely katnut mind, I have loved myself – often with the poetry, or songs, or other creative stuff I do. I love that I can create that, that my soul has this within me. I do sometimes find my body lovable, most of it really, a bigger penis would’ve been nice, and more hair and less of this kind of flabby face I’m developing as I grow older. Oy, and the spine. But I love my metabolism, my hands and feet, my eyes. All this on the relative level, where there’s an I and my body is mine, all that. As far as my mind and soul on that level - I do love my mind, creative and analytical. I don’t love my heart, sometimes too cold and often very acquisitive and egocentric.

But really, where I began this entry is where I ended the thoughts and the discourse. This relative stuff really seems inadequate when we’re talking about love. Because it reduces to preference and self-interest, it seems, and desire. I find aspects of my body and mind desirable. They please me. Obviously, that is part of interpersonal love, and it’s not nothing. But it hardly seems like the best part, no?

The best part seems to arise when we get beyond reasons for loving.

We just feel love, we become love, and God willing, the other person does too. In this way, deep intimate love with a partner is ‘just’ a deeper, more intimate form of love you can have for a friend or even an animal or plant. Well, the animal and plant don’t really reciprocate. But the friend can - just not as deeply and intimately as the lover.

So, yes, I think I do feel lovingly toward myself. By which I mean, there arises an experience of love within me when I regard myself, especially when I’m present and not in thought. When I’m involved in thoughts, desires, and evaluations, then it depends - sometimes yes, sometimes no.

Ok.