- If you want to learn about
not having a mental self image, watch your dog or your cat. They don't have an opinion
about who they are. They just are who they are. (music dinging) How can I love myself? What is this? I don't remember ever saying
that you should love yourself. So is it bad to love yourself? No, of course not. Is it better than to hate yourself? Yes, of course. Let's start with, many
people are uncomfortable with themselves, they
dislike who they are. Perhaps they dislike
their body, how they look. Perhaps they dislike who
they are as a person, don't feel they are good enough
or are self-critical a lot. Many people live with
a negative self image which of course, all
consists of certain types of mind activity, and that's not pleasant. And it may be for some of
those people, once they realize that they live with a mind pattern that continually criticizes them and says negative things about them, they begin to realize
that it's a mind pattern. This self-hatred is a mind
pattern and that it's harmful, it's not pleasant, and they
can go beyond it and begin to replace it with more negative thoughts, more positive thoughts about themselves And having positive
thoughts about yourself, that kind of thing, which perhaps usually be called
beginning to love yourself, to feel good about yourself. But it's not easy, that
shift from feeling bad about yourself to feeling good about. Sometimes it requires a lot of convincing. I would regard loving yourself as perhaps an intermediate
stage in ones' awakening. But the essence of the
awakened consciousness is that you go beyond
having a particular idea in your mind that represents yourself as a mental self image that you relate to. Because basically it's
ego, a mental self-image of who you think this is what I am. This is who I am. If you want to learn about
not having a mental image, watch your dog or your cat. They don't have an opinion
about who they are. They just are who they are. So that removes an enormous amount of problems from their lives. Of course, they don't
have the mind activity that creates a self image in their head. They are pre mind, and
therefore their life is far less problematic than human life. You can see how wonderful it
is not to have a self image. You can even, you can look at
an ugly dog or an ugly cat. They don't have a problem with that. (person laughing) Even an overweight dog or
cat, okay, no self image or a dog that has lost its sexual powers. It doesn't become part
of the dog's self-image. The dog and says, oh my God, I can't father puppies anymore. I've lost my male power, how dreadful. It's not part, the dog
doesn't have a self image. If there's no sexual desire,
there's no sexual desire. It's no thinking around
that, nothing to do with me. There's no problem. Or the cat suddenly can't
jump up the fence anymore. It's getting too old. The cat doesn't say, oh,
I've become useless now, what's the point in, it just is, it doesn't
detract from the self-image of the cat because it
doesn't have a self image. So how wonderful to live without an image of who you are because
you are the presence. you're not the form that's a
temporary expression of you but you are the underlying presence. And when you feel yourself
as the underlying presence, you don't need to live through some mental image of who you are. And that's where you go
beyond hating yourself but you also go beyond loving yourself. It's just being yourself,
similar to the dog, but it's not a regressive step. It's a step forward for humans. You go beyond the mind made sense of self. You don't fall back to the
pre mind made sense of self. You don't need to live through
a self image of who you are. The more presence it
comes in into your life, the more you feel yourself
to be the presence, not some mental construct. (person laughing) Of course, somewhere on the periphery of your mind there, there may still be some little bit of a mental construct but it does not provide the basis for your sense of identity anymore. Of course, yes, your
body's too thin or too fat says the mind but that's just how it is
or this or that lacking. Yes, there's some vague
self image still there but it is not the foundation
for your sense of who you are. The foundation for your sense of who you are is the you are awareness. You are presence. And that's a liberation
from the self-image. And that's wonderful. So it's not go beyond hating yourself and then also go beyond loving yourself. If you need to go through the stage of loving yourself, because you cannot go directly from hating yourself to presence, then do go through stage of loving and then step beyond that. (water flowing)
š
Iām in the love phase