Last week I was having a challenging discussion with a new friend of mine. I told her that I believe that violence is a form of mental illness. She didn't agree and cited self-defense and also the necessity of military intervention in some situations. My orientation about human attitudes and behaviors is about health and sickness. Her orientation is more about strength and weakness. Her brother is an addict and, as far as I can tell, not in recovery. They grew up in a troubled home with a mother who suffered from a psychotic illness and who was violent towards her children. My friend survived that experience and became hard working and self-reliant. Her brother didn't fare as well and became an addict. She believes that her brother is weak whereas she learned and chose to be strong despite adversity.
I think it is a common misconception that addicts who are active in their addiction are morally weak. I think that it is a misconception the addicts who use agree with and that misconception hurts them. Addicts discover that they are addicts when they try to control their addiction and fail to over and over again. The 12 Step program emphasizes that addiction is a disease and not a moral failing. I believe that addicts who use are not weak, but sick with an illness that affects them on all levels, physical, emotional, mental and spiritual. They live with a daily handicap, one that many people won't acknowledge. The illness shows itself most destructively in addicts behavior. Because addicts behave badly, people judge them, but their judgment is truly superficial.
We cannot live each others' lives. People may grow up in the same circumstances and go in opposite directions. When there is abuse in the home, the chances of the children developing addictions goes up. Each child's response to the abuse is unique. Children vary in their sensitivity. One instance of abuse can affect one child just as much as a child who has suffered through repeated abuse. Genetics play a part too. One child may have a predisposition towards addiction while their sibling does not. It's not about strength and weakness.
Addicts in recovery are very strong individuals, but then so are addicts who use, if they survive. Using addicts also vary widely as they try to cope with their illness. Some are highly effective in their work and in using their talents, others struggle to earn a living. Some addicts are highly respected members of their communities, others live on the edge of society and are looked down upon. They both have an untreated illness and they both deserve respect for trying to survive each day. Their greatest failure is to themselves for not loving themselves enough to move into recovery attitudes and behaviors, for not reaching out to others who are in recovery.
After I got home from spending some time with my friend I felt disturbed by this idea of seeing people as strong and weak. That kind of thinking led to the rise of Hitler with people making prejudice into law and condemning, tormenting and murdering those they saw as weak. Today I might see my friend again. I would like to talk more with her about her brother and her family so that I can understand her orientation more deeply. I would like to gently warn her and encourage her to rethink her position.
Showing posts with label Children. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Children. Show all posts
Thursday, June 30, 2016
Monday, September 21, 2015
International Peace Day
I am a pacifist. I believe in and practice non violence. This means that if my life were being threatened, I would choose to be killed rather than to kill. I follow Buddha. I follow Jesus Christ. Jesus, when his life was threatened, did not fight back and did not try to organize his followers to fight for him or protect him. He was a man of peace and he died a man of peace. He said - Love your enemies and pray for those who abuse you. He said - Do not even hold anger in your heart and deal with it immediately. He was a man of all people - man, woman and child, Jews, Romans, Pagans, Samaritans and I think quite likely some Buddhists too and more. He said - If someone hits you, turn the other cheek. Let them yell. Let them hit you. Let them torture you. Let them hang you on a cross, but always, always Love Them. Forgive them, forgive them for they know not what they do. When Jesus rebuked the corrupted Pharisees I believe he did this to reach them, to wake them up to their own hypocrisy, and yes, to love them. And how many of them did he reach? How many turned away from their hypocrisy and became, once again, honorable people? We do not know. But if even one had awakened I know it would have been worth it for Jesus. Jesus died on the cross in part because of the Pharisees and others corrupted by power who did not turn around. He also died for them, to show how far you must be willing to go to reject hypocrisy in yourself. In our world, it takes more courage to not be violent than to attack.
What a crazy world it is here in the United States, a mostly Christian country. If Jesus were alive today, I'm sure he would love every one of us, but how could he look at most of us and say we were his followers? How do we forget his message so easily? He said - Blessed are the peace makers - not blessed are the warmongers. He would say God blesses the whole world, not God blesses just the United States. Jesus would not be a nationalist. If Jesus had children who said they were going to enlist, he would not say they were righteous - he would rebuke them. His practice was to eradicate anger from his heart. How can you go to boot camp and pick up a gun or any weapon with the intention of protecting your life and potentially sacrificing others' lives and also say the you follow Jesus? Who had more courage - Jesus dying on the cross or a soldier who protected his men but sacrificed an entire village in a foreign country? And all those soldiers who have died for their country, would they have been willing to die instead not to keep peace in their country only but to foster peace all over the world by laying down their weapons?
Twenty two veterans commit suicide every day in the USA, approximately one every hour. What message does that send? Is anybody listening? What would Jesus say? What would Jesus do for these men and women who have suffered so and for those who are suffering so with Post Traumatic Stress right this second, every second? Which is the path of maturity? The path of war or that of peace? Children can be cruel, often following the example of immature adults. Must we stay cemented into global immaturity? Soldiers are not big, badass and tough - they are just as fragile as any of us. Their collective response to war is perfectly normal. War is insane. And so they return wounded so deeply in their spirits. That is what violence does to both the aggressor and the victim. And how are our veterans treated once back home? So very poorly. And how many of these poor, suffering human beings are homeless, addicted, insane, in prison?
How many of you here in the US who say you are Christian realize that Jesus was one of the most famous PACIFISTS on this planet? If we were truly a Christian country, our nation would be a nation of pacifists, pure and simple. It's as if we as a nation have some kind of amnesia about who Jesus was and what he stood and died for. It as if the words "Love your enemies" were never spoken by him. His core teaching was about love. I have heard people say, oh, it's too hard to love my enemies and so they don't even try. But Jesus never said it was going to be easy. Following a strong spiritual path is never easy. And who in their right mind would say that being a soldier trained to kill, killing others and watching others die is easy and yet people are enlisting every day. Love is about sacrifice, not for your country, but for peace and goodwill amongst ALL people.
We are one people contributing greatly to the vast decline of this planet. How much time do you think we really have before natural and man made disasters extremely degrade the quality of life for not just some of us, but all of us? Our resources are dwindling. How much time and effort and money do we invest in perpetuating wars across the earth? Do we really need to get to the point of some global disaster so huge that all our warring over the years will seem petty in comparison? Quite simply we need peace on earth starting now. We need to transform our hearts and all turn towards pacifism making it the rule and not the exception starting with the children of this generation. The basic rule must become crystal clear: DO NOT HURT YOURSELF OR ANY OTHER PERSON UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. Let's teach the children to grow up healthy by finally growing up ourselves. That's courage in action. That's what Jesus died for.
Monday, June 30, 2014
Sexuality: Denying The Truth
We all know and accept that our sexuality is the instinctual way we continue our species. Sex is for making babies. But most of us also know that it can be much more than that. If we are very fortunate our sexual expression can be a direct and intense way to love ourselves and another person. If we are not fortunate, often due to having been abused sexually when young, our sexuality can quickly change into an addiction. I truly believe that sex addicts begin by believing that they are expressing love for another person when they have sex with them. This hooks in with romance and relationship addiction. Our culture continually reinforces the idea that sex and romance and relationships are all about love. We read about it in books, watch it in films and listen to it in popular music. The great irony is that those who become addicted are not trying to develop intimacy, they are trying to escape intimacy with themselves and others.
Despite the fact that our culture is sex/romance/relationship obsessed, despite that we sell it over and over again in this capitalistic country, open discussions about the nature of sexuality are taboo. The first myth that we promote is that children are not sexual beings until they reach puberty. It is taboo to acknowledge that we are born into this world with not only sensual feelings and responses, but sexual ones, too. That is just the nature of being animals. Children are taught very young to deny this necessary part of their spirit. The way they are taught is through the practice of shaming. Shaming is a pernicious, common practice. Shame instructs that not only what the child may be doing is “wrong”, but that something is essentially wrong with the child in his or her being. How often have you heard the expression, “What’s wrong with you?!”
Society and adults say it is “okay” to promote the idea of “romance” in children. Stories of princesses and princes or heroines and heros abound. These fantasies make the assumption that these stories are depictions of “true” love without ever bothering to go into what basic love is all about. The children eat up these shallow fantasies. And, of course, sexuality is left out entirely. Can you see what a great distortion of reality this is? “Romance” is okay. Sexuality is shameful. Puppy love crushes are “okay”. No, they are more than okay, they are encouraged, they are “normal” and “natural” and a part of every child’s experience. The truth is that without addressing sexuality except to label it shameful is to make the natural laws of attraction in children something perverse. It is to deny a healthy link between sexuality and romantic love.
The whole issue of what exactly healthy sexuality is, is ignored. And why? Because the majority of adults do not know what healthy sexuality is. And why? Because they were taught the same shame based sickness when they were children. The sickest of these adults were sexually abused as children and teenagers and what do they do when they have children? They sexually abuse their children. And why do so many get away with it? Because discussion of sexuality is taboo. The children, even before they are abused, are taught that being sexual is shameful. Then their abusers use that lesson to bind the child into silence. They exploit the child’s extreme vulnerability on all levels. Many of the children who have the courage to tell someone are shamed into denying what they know is true.
These children especially, but all children, learn to deny the truth. It becomes their way of life, just as it is obviously the way of all the adults they meet. This denial is the beginning of the dual living of the addictive life. We develop socially acceptable personas, but behind closed doors we behave differently. We lose our precious sense of personal integrity. We teach ourselves, each other and the children sickness instead of health. By labeling discussion of sexuality as taboo, we shirk our responsibility to the children most of all. One of the first rules of recovery from addiction is: Get Honest! Break the cycle. Stop denying the truth. Stop living a dual life. Regain your personal integrity. Ask for help. Learn to be responsible to yourself and others. Learn what the word love really means.
Despite the fact that our culture is sex/romance/relationship obsessed, despite that we sell it over and over again in this capitalistic country, open discussions about the nature of sexuality are taboo. The first myth that we promote is that children are not sexual beings until they reach puberty. It is taboo to acknowledge that we are born into this world with not only sensual feelings and responses, but sexual ones, too. That is just the nature of being animals. Children are taught very young to deny this necessary part of their spirit. The way they are taught is through the practice of shaming. Shaming is a pernicious, common practice. Shame instructs that not only what the child may be doing is “wrong”, but that something is essentially wrong with the child in his or her being. How often have you heard the expression, “What’s wrong with you?!”
Society and adults say it is “okay” to promote the idea of “romance” in children. Stories of princesses and princes or heroines and heros abound. These fantasies make the assumption that these stories are depictions of “true” love without ever bothering to go into what basic love is all about. The children eat up these shallow fantasies. And, of course, sexuality is left out entirely. Can you see what a great distortion of reality this is? “Romance” is okay. Sexuality is shameful. Puppy love crushes are “okay”. No, they are more than okay, they are encouraged, they are “normal” and “natural” and a part of every child’s experience. The truth is that without addressing sexuality except to label it shameful is to make the natural laws of attraction in children something perverse. It is to deny a healthy link between sexuality and romantic love.
The whole issue of what exactly healthy sexuality is, is ignored. And why? Because the majority of adults do not know what healthy sexuality is. And why? Because they were taught the same shame based sickness when they were children. The sickest of these adults were sexually abused as children and teenagers and what do they do when they have children? They sexually abuse their children. And why do so many get away with it? Because discussion of sexuality is taboo. The children, even before they are abused, are taught that being sexual is shameful. Then their abusers use that lesson to bind the child into silence. They exploit the child’s extreme vulnerability on all levels. Many of the children who have the courage to tell someone are shamed into denying what they know is true.
These children especially, but all children, learn to deny the truth. It becomes their way of life, just as it is obviously the way of all the adults they meet. This denial is the beginning of the dual living of the addictive life. We develop socially acceptable personas, but behind closed doors we behave differently. We lose our precious sense of personal integrity. We teach ourselves, each other and the children sickness instead of health. By labeling discussion of sexuality as taboo, we shirk our responsibility to the children most of all. One of the first rules of recovery from addiction is: Get Honest! Break the cycle. Stop denying the truth. Stop living a dual life. Regain your personal integrity. Ask for help. Learn to be responsible to yourself and others. Learn what the word love really means.
Sunday, June 22, 2014
Practicing Peace
There can be no lasting peace on earth until each of us makes peace with ourselves. Steps 8 and 9 of the 12 Steps are about making amends for the harm we have caused while being actively addicted. The most important amend we have to make is to ourselves for losing faith in our essential goodness as living beings on this planet. We are all born innocent, open and receptive. This is our birthright, the basis of our essential goodness. How we are taught and treated after we enter into this world will often determine whether we embrace this essence or reject it.
What is self love and why do so many of us mistakenly associate it with selfishness? I think it is because we don’t really understand the meaning of love. Love is a verb; it is an action and a way of being. Love is love because it sets no conditions for itself. Love is vast, healthy, balanced, healing. Love gives with no thought of getting. Love is the most perfect thing we can think of which is why many people identify their Higher Power with love. But the adults of our species must confront their own imperfections daily and the greatest imperfection of all is this shocking lack of self love. Yet it is mostly the adult population that breed and bring children into this world. And these adults teach what they have learned from their parents, caretakers and teachers; they teach the great lie that love is conditional.
When Buddha and Jesus tried to teach us to love our enemies, they were trying to teach us that love must be unconditional towards ourselves and all others. This world we have set up of reward and punishment is not a world based on love. We live in a world of rules. Follow the rule or “moral law” and you will be rewarded, break it and you will be punished. And yet we break these rules all the time. Love has only one rule: do no harm to yourself or others. That’s it. When you beak that one rule, all you have to do is to return to love once again, that’s how we are able to make the amends we all have to make.
Do no harm to yourself and others. What would our world turn into if every parent in every culture across the planet taught their children this one golden rule? It would turn into a place of peace. Love is peace and harmony amongst us all. As it stands we are a planet of using addicts. Addiction is about war and disharmony within ourselves and with each other. Addiction at its core is about self hatred. Addiction is about reward and punishment. Addiction is about following and breaking “rules”. Addiction is about being caught in a cycle we cannot willingly stop. This is the world we teach our children to enter into and to adapt to and they do.
The seeds of self hatred are planted in each of us when we are so very young and vulnerable to attack. We are told as soon as we are able to understand that if we are “good” and follow the rules, we will receive the reward of love and attention, and if we are “bad” and don’t follow the rules, we will be punished and the affection we need for our soul’s health will be withdrawn or worse we will be verbally attacked or worse than that physically and/or sexually abused. Most of us choose as children to follow the rules because we wanted to survive. How quickly we as adults forget that children are dependent on us for their physical, emotional and mental survival. When we teach the children that love is a thing, a reward, and not an action and way of being, we stop practicing and teaching love.
Addicts who choose to enter into recovery, choose to practice love as a way of being and acting. They finally take on the responsibility of caring for themselves and loving themselves in a way that their parents, caretakers and teachers did not. They take the child that they once were and become a true parent to that child. They give love with no thought of a return and continually teach themselves and that child about unconditional love, how to nurture it and extend it out to all others. This is called practicing peace.
What is self love and why do so many of us mistakenly associate it with selfishness? I think it is because we don’t really understand the meaning of love. Love is a verb; it is an action and a way of being. Love is love because it sets no conditions for itself. Love is vast, healthy, balanced, healing. Love gives with no thought of getting. Love is the most perfect thing we can think of which is why many people identify their Higher Power with love. But the adults of our species must confront their own imperfections daily and the greatest imperfection of all is this shocking lack of self love. Yet it is mostly the adult population that breed and bring children into this world. And these adults teach what they have learned from their parents, caretakers and teachers; they teach the great lie that love is conditional.
When Buddha and Jesus tried to teach us to love our enemies, they were trying to teach us that love must be unconditional towards ourselves and all others. This world we have set up of reward and punishment is not a world based on love. We live in a world of rules. Follow the rule or “moral law” and you will be rewarded, break it and you will be punished. And yet we break these rules all the time. Love has only one rule: do no harm to yourself or others. That’s it. When you beak that one rule, all you have to do is to return to love once again, that’s how we are able to make the amends we all have to make.
Do no harm to yourself and others. What would our world turn into if every parent in every culture across the planet taught their children this one golden rule? It would turn into a place of peace. Love is peace and harmony amongst us all. As it stands we are a planet of using addicts. Addiction is about war and disharmony within ourselves and with each other. Addiction at its core is about self hatred. Addiction is about reward and punishment. Addiction is about following and breaking “rules”. Addiction is about being caught in a cycle we cannot willingly stop. This is the world we teach our children to enter into and to adapt to and they do.
The seeds of self hatred are planted in each of us when we are so very young and vulnerable to attack. We are told as soon as we are able to understand that if we are “good” and follow the rules, we will receive the reward of love and attention, and if we are “bad” and don’t follow the rules, we will be punished and the affection we need for our soul’s health will be withdrawn or worse we will be verbally attacked or worse than that physically and/or sexually abused. Most of us choose as children to follow the rules because we wanted to survive. How quickly we as adults forget that children are dependent on us for their physical, emotional and mental survival. When we teach the children that love is a thing, a reward, and not an action and way of being, we stop practicing and teaching love.
Addicts who choose to enter into recovery, choose to practice love as a way of being and acting. They finally take on the responsibility of caring for themselves and loving themselves in a way that their parents, caretakers and teachers did not. They take the child that they once were and become a true parent to that child. They give love with no thought of a return and continually teach themselves and that child about unconditional love, how to nurture it and extend it out to all others. This is called practicing peace.
Saturday, June 7, 2014
What Is Love?
“4 Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. 5 It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 6 Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. 7 It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.” (The New Testament - Corinthians 13:4-7)
Because I see God as Love, this quote is for me a good description of God. Just replace the word Love with God and see if it broadens your perspective. God can be so unconditionally loving because God is not sick, but we human animals are very sick and in our sickness we distort our conceptions of love. The most distorted conception of love that we have conceived and compulsively promote is romantic love. Conventionally the height of romantic love is marriage and our first example of it is with our parents. Most of the marriage partners I’ve encountered through my friends and lovers have been dysfunctional. It does not surprise me that in the US 40 to 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce. The dysfunction within these marriages teaches dysfunctional patterns of interrelating to the children who in turn grow up and seek out what is familiar to them: another dysfunctional relationship. And the cycle continues.
Meanwhile the myth of ideal romantic love is fed to the children in the form of stories, particularly in fairy tales, found in books, TV, films and music. The archetypes of the princess and the prince were in my experience always white, heterosexual, presented as physically “beautiful”, personally flawless. The storyline was one of discovering each other and instantly “falling in love” followed by separation due to an almost insurmountable external threat that primarily the prince has to overcome thus proving his worthiness to union in marriage and living happily ever after in some now ideal world. And in this world full of “ideal” romance there is no expression of sexuality except for a kiss or two.
The reality that each child confronts in their daily lives is that there are no princesses or princes, no Queens and Kings to be found. We live in a multicultural world with couples who have different sexual orientations. Most of us are not stereotypically “beautiful” and every single person encountered has personal flaws. Children are very perceptive. They know what kind of world they are living in. Perhaps that is why they are taught over and over to seek out fantasy as an escape from the problems and pains of real life. What’s worse is that the fantasies that are chosen for them are very shallow, very unchallenging, counter to the deepening awareness of personal growth. Counter to the very thing that parents say they want for their children: to be grounded in reality, to grow up healthy, able to work through the challenges of life.
As a culture made up of so many individuals, we don’t only teach our children poorly, we teach them to be sick. We teach them to adapt to the dysfunction in society. It is depressing to me that so many artists not only reflect our collective illness, but promote it and feed their own individual sicknesses, thus continuing the cycle yet again. It is an addictive cycle. What fuels any kind of addiction is at first the need to avoid pain and then the compulsion to always look outside oneself for fulfillment. Romance addiction is not about love and intimacy and growth; it is about trying to use another person to avoid facing oneself.
I think the very first lesson children should be taught is to love themselves unconditionally. But how can a child learn that if they are being taught by adults who have adapted to the dysfunctional, addictive society they live in? These are adults who continue to love themselves and others conditionally, which I believe is not true loving. The answer is these children can’t, unless they are blessed by having regular contact with some self loving healthy adult that agrees to take them under their wing from time to time. This doesn’t mean that these children don’t have contact with examples of healthy love growing up, but these examples are short in duration and can get overwhelmed by the many more examples set by self rejecting adults and peers. And so as these children grow up they cobble together a mixture of health and sickness in their relationships with others.
I think we all really do want health and happiness in our lives, but all too often we are blinded by our own sickness, which is so deeply rooted as to be passed on from generation to generation. Adolescents and adults feed on conflict in romantic relationships in their lives and in the stories they read, watch, listen to which includes intrigues, infidelity, lies, manipulation, mistrust, misrepresentation, all of which seem put in place to sabotage self love and love of the other and neatly avoids the necessary inclusion of any positive spiritual orientation.
The essence of love is spiritual, not physical. Learning to love yourself is a spiritual process. If the Higher Power is Unconditional Love, then when you reach out to love and care for yourself, you are reaching out to God in and around you. The usual pattern is to reach out to love and care for someone else, but if you skip over the most important step, that of committing to loving yourself first, you will never find the love you seek. More likely you will encounter conflict and pain. Without unconditionally loving yourself, in essence removing the Higher Power from the picture, you are left with a lot of sickness.
Though we try to convince ourselves otherwise, love and hate do not mix. Love is health; there is absolutely no sickness in love. Hate, in all its guises, is all sickness; there is no health in hatred. That we can recognize genuine love at all in a world so full of distortions of it, is a miracle in itself. That’s God’s grace at work in everyone, everywhere.
Because I see God as Love, this quote is for me a good description of God. Just replace the word Love with God and see if it broadens your perspective. God can be so unconditionally loving because God is not sick, but we human animals are very sick and in our sickness we distort our conceptions of love. The most distorted conception of love that we have conceived and compulsively promote is romantic love. Conventionally the height of romantic love is marriage and our first example of it is with our parents. Most of the marriage partners I’ve encountered through my friends and lovers have been dysfunctional. It does not surprise me that in the US 40 to 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce. The dysfunction within these marriages teaches dysfunctional patterns of interrelating to the children who in turn grow up and seek out what is familiar to them: another dysfunctional relationship. And the cycle continues.
Meanwhile the myth of ideal romantic love is fed to the children in the form of stories, particularly in fairy tales, found in books, TV, films and music. The archetypes of the princess and the prince were in my experience always white, heterosexual, presented as physically “beautiful”, personally flawless. The storyline was one of discovering each other and instantly “falling in love” followed by separation due to an almost insurmountable external threat that primarily the prince has to overcome thus proving his worthiness to union in marriage and living happily ever after in some now ideal world. And in this world full of “ideal” romance there is no expression of sexuality except for a kiss or two.
The reality that each child confronts in their daily lives is that there are no princesses or princes, no Queens and Kings to be found. We live in a multicultural world with couples who have different sexual orientations. Most of us are not stereotypically “beautiful” and every single person encountered has personal flaws. Children are very perceptive. They know what kind of world they are living in. Perhaps that is why they are taught over and over to seek out fantasy as an escape from the problems and pains of real life. What’s worse is that the fantasies that are chosen for them are very shallow, very unchallenging, counter to the deepening awareness of personal growth. Counter to the very thing that parents say they want for their children: to be grounded in reality, to grow up healthy, able to work through the challenges of life.
As a culture made up of so many individuals, we don’t only teach our children poorly, we teach them to be sick. We teach them to adapt to the dysfunction in society. It is depressing to me that so many artists not only reflect our collective illness, but promote it and feed their own individual sicknesses, thus continuing the cycle yet again. It is an addictive cycle. What fuels any kind of addiction is at first the need to avoid pain and then the compulsion to always look outside oneself for fulfillment. Romance addiction is not about love and intimacy and growth; it is about trying to use another person to avoid facing oneself.
I think the very first lesson children should be taught is to love themselves unconditionally. But how can a child learn that if they are being taught by adults who have adapted to the dysfunctional, addictive society they live in? These are adults who continue to love themselves and others conditionally, which I believe is not true loving. The answer is these children can’t, unless they are blessed by having regular contact with some self loving healthy adult that agrees to take them under their wing from time to time. This doesn’t mean that these children don’t have contact with examples of healthy love growing up, but these examples are short in duration and can get overwhelmed by the many more examples set by self rejecting adults and peers. And so as these children grow up they cobble together a mixture of health and sickness in their relationships with others.
I think we all really do want health and happiness in our lives, but all too often we are blinded by our own sickness, which is so deeply rooted as to be passed on from generation to generation. Adolescents and adults feed on conflict in romantic relationships in their lives and in the stories they read, watch, listen to which includes intrigues, infidelity, lies, manipulation, mistrust, misrepresentation, all of which seem put in place to sabotage self love and love of the other and neatly avoids the necessary inclusion of any positive spiritual orientation.
The essence of love is spiritual, not physical. Learning to love yourself is a spiritual process. If the Higher Power is Unconditional Love, then when you reach out to love and care for yourself, you are reaching out to God in and around you. The usual pattern is to reach out to love and care for someone else, but if you skip over the most important step, that of committing to loving yourself first, you will never find the love you seek. More likely you will encounter conflict and pain. Without unconditionally loving yourself, in essence removing the Higher Power from the picture, you are left with a lot of sickness.
Though we try to convince ourselves otherwise, love and hate do not mix. Love is health; there is absolutely no sickness in love. Hate, in all its guises, is all sickness; there is no health in hatred. That we can recognize genuine love at all in a world so full of distortions of it, is a miracle in itself. That’s God’s grace at work in everyone, everywhere.
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