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Self-love versus loving yourself

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  • #8460
    JPalmer
    Participant

    13. 242
    Self-love is more opaque than a solid body. In patient obedience to a patient God, let us labor to dissolve with the universal solvent of Love the adamant of error, — self-will, self-justification, and self-love, — which wars against spirituality and is the law of sin and death.

    It was said at a recent Roundtable, essentially, “If you can’t love yourself, you can’t truly love others.” Today I realized the need to understand the difference between loving yourself versus self-love.

    Herbert Eustace, on page 897 of Clear, Correct Teaching:
    …consider Mrs. Eddy’s statement in her original work, Science of Man: “Matter held as shadow is the idea of God, but matter held as substance is a belief and error.”
    You know that a shadow, followed back, always leads you to what it is shadowing forth and brings you to its own original substance. It can never appear without an origin. It can not be present through any inherent quality of its own.

    Mrs. Eddy’s words from Miscellany, page 233:
    The Scriptures say, “They have healed also the hurt of the daughter of my people slightly, saying, Peace, peace; when there is no peace” (Jeremiah 6: 14), thus taking the name of God in vain.

    This has me seeing that “Self, self where there is no Self” is taking the name of God in vain. Correctly loving myself therefore begins with the recognition that my individuality is in God, as there is no self apart from Him. Love for myself and others comes naturally at that point, as we are all indivisible from divine Love, and not only is there no other self there, this is no other Love.

    Christ Jesus (John 5:30):
    I can of mine own self do nothing: as I hear, I judge: and my judgment is just; because I seek not mine own will, but the will of the Father which hath sent me.

    Thank you!

    #8465
    JPalmer
    Participant

    Here are a few other quotes which helped me to find peace with this question:

    The above from Miscellany, page 233, has this as the very next sentence:
    Ignorance of self is the most stubborn belief to overcome, for apathy, dishonesty, sin, follow in its train.

    “The Ego”, from Unity of Good, by Mary Baker Eddy, page 27:
    …we shall find that evil is egotistic, — boastful, but fleeing like a shadow at daybreak; while God is egoistic, knowing only His own all-presence, all-knowledge, all-power.

    Parthens’ Forum Post from February 21st, 2019 on the subtraction of self.

    From Mary Baker Eddy, Her Spiritual Precepts by Gilbert Carpenter:
    Once Mrs. Eddy told Laura Sargent and Clara Shannon, that she thought she had discovered the way to eternal Life, and that was, whenever she wanted to do something for herself, to put self aside, and do something for others; just to learn to be unselfed.

    From page 304 of Addresses by Martha Wilcox:
    Within our individual self is the battlefield, and there, too, is found the victory. We need to watch our thought that it does not become confused with the issues of the day. We need to be spiritually keen and alert in our thinking. We need to be “undisturbed amid the jarring testimony of the material senses” and prove that “Science (is) still enthroned.” (S&H 306:25, 26)

    Finally, Mrs. Eddy’s words from page 77 of Collectanea:
    If you but knew the infinite capacities of your being, the sublimity of your hope, the grandeur of your outlook, you would let error kill itself. It comes to you to give it life and you give it all the life it has.

    #8467
    MaryBeth
    Participant

    Self-love is always selfish – me, myself and I!! Everything is seen from the outlook of how will this effect me, what’s in it for me and yes, self-justification, self-will etc. There is no end to “me”! While loving oneself as a child of God is completely different and “self”-liberating. It is no longer selfishly about me – but instead recognizing there is no self-hood apart from God and so naturally loving God and your neighbor also as God’s child becomes the new norm. You begin to look “out”-instead of “in”!

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Love is the liberator.