Even though love is innate and we are born with it in our hearts, we need to be taught how to love one another and ourselves.
I loved myself when I was a young child, but that love was quickly distorted by the sick adults raising me. This world is full of them, wounded people who in turn hurt others. How are we to learn to love when everyone is so wounded?
The Old Testament says God gave Moses the Ten Commandments so that people would have a very simple guide as to how to live their lives, how to comport themselves, how to treat one another. It’s hard being human. We have so many wild impulses. At times we want to hurt, to harm. Why is that? Because we hurt. And so, the cycle continues, on and on.
We must find a teacher and learn to love ourselves and break that cycle.
When I was a homeless teenager, I thought sex was the most important sign of love. So, that’s what I engaged in, and guess what? I suffered. Help was out there, but where? I didn’t know how to find it, and I tried. Does God mean for us to suffer? Maybe we are doing penance for the sins of our past lives. I don’t know. It’s a mystery. Maybe that’s why our lives are so long, so we have a chance, God willing, to make the journey to self-realization.
They say the right teacher comes along when we are ready. Maybe I wasn’t ready when I was a teenager. Maybe I had to suffer and engage in survival sex to work off bad karma. I knew no other way to survive, had no idea how to care for myself, and was not taught by my parents how to do so. They were damaged babies raising more damaged babies.
I was fortunate to find a spiritual teacher, imperfect though she was, but healthy enough to teach me how to love myself, or at least get me started on that path. I surrendered to her completely. Until I didn’t. I surpassed my teacher and became my own person. That is my role now—to be a spiritual teacher, to impart to others what I have learned about loving myself.
And let me tell you, I was at the bottom, wallowing in the dregs of my humanity. But I had not given up on myself entirely. I still had hope that there was some spark of good in me.
With my teacher’s help, I blew on those dying embers and they sparked into life. I have been blowing on them ever since and now they blaze to the heavens in all their magnificence. I am alive and well and praise God with all my heart for the mystery and majesty of living and learning. There is hope. There is always hope. For you, for me, for all of us.
“Love is a great opportunity. If it happens that you can touch the truth, beauty, and goodness in someone you love, you will be able to go back and touch the same within yourself. A true lover always helps his or her beloved do this. The same is true in the teacher-student relationship…..
“....Teachers and students need to be 'associate lovers,' helping each other and all living beings touch the goodness, beauty, and truth in themselves. This is the Path of Awakening." From a talk titled ‘The Path of Awakening‘ given at Plum Village on November 20, 1997. It was translated from the Vietnamese by Sister Annabel Laity and edited for publication by Arnie Kotler. You can find the full transcript here.