August 25, 2021. Paris.
i’ve always thought of self-love as being a ladder. i have this belief that the more i get to know myself, the more i heal myself, the more i’ll love myself. that my self-love is supposed to grow and grow with every experience i’ll meet on my journey.
for over a year though, i’ve observed that self-love comes and goes. some days i love myself, love is here, without me having to make any effort. and some other days, i wake up and i don’t, love is not there. which made me reconsider my vision of self-love as being a ladder and see it as being a switch. some days the switch is on and some days it’s off.
i’m wondering though if that’s very accurate, if the love from the ladder and the love from the switch are the same love.
a few years ago, i was having coffee with a friend and she said something that stayed with me until now. she said: “i love you because i’m spiritual and i love everybody, but i really like you too.” the difference she made between love and like made me think. in French, we just have one word to cover what love is and its many manifestations. in some languages, they have plenty. in English, there are these two. what i understood from what she said was: as a spiritual being, i love you as all other spiritual beings. as a human being, i love who you are as another human being. in other words: my soul loves your soul, and my ego loves your ego.
in our society where most people are identified with their egos, with their human identities, loving usually means that your ego loves somebody else’s ego. this is why we have many criteria when it comes to finding a partner. we identify with labels — tall, short, smart, wealthy, sister, father, kind, brave, and so on — and sometimes even with things — bank account, resumes, cars, wardrobe, Instagram account, etc. —, so naturally we look at other people with labels. and in some ways, relationships become transactions, first dates sometimes look like job interviews. we bring our labels and hope to find a good deal with someone else’s labels. my brother is getting a divorce and he just told me last week: “i’m not afraid of finding someone else because i have a lot to bring to the table”.
what is true though is that connecting with someone else, experiencing deeper levels of intimacy, can take you out of your ego for a moment. exactly like seeing a beautiful sunset or getting lost in nature. hugging someone is one of the purest form of connection and can make you reconnect with your true essence, it can pull you out of your labels and make you experience what’s behind it. when that happens in relationships, you feel a deeper sense of love, you experience for a minute what it is to love as a soul. the ego tries to understand that but it can’t. so most times you start believing things like: s/he is the one. creating a deep form of attachment and a longing for possession: she’s my wife, he’s my boyfriend, she’s the love of my life, he’s my son. which doesn’t come from love but rather from the fear that this very special experience of love can be taken away from you.
i’ve been having a few conversations about the virus and the vaccine lately, and i always end up hearing the same argument: “i take the vaccine because i love life, because i respect life too much”. i believe there’s the exact same misunderstanding here. love has nothing to do with possession. a more accurate argument would be: “i take the vaccine because i don’t want life to be taken away from me (and from others), because i’m attached to life too much.” which again doesn’t come from love but from the fear of losing what you have right now, which is the fear of death.
when you connect with your soul, loving life means accepting life in all that life is. death is part of life, life couldn’t exist if it wasn’t for death. life implies death and death implies life. if you love life, if you respect life, you respect death too.
when you love somebody deeply from your soul, you don’t need to possess them, you let them be, and if they need to leave, you let them leave.
being around babies is a magical love experience because babies don’t have ego, not yet. they’re not even identified with a first name yet. since they haven’t created their human identities, they naturally pull you out of yours. a baby doesn’t care if you’ve achieved your dreams, what your plans for the future are, how much you make or even how you’re dressed. a baby only receives you for your degree of presence. how present you can be with him here and now. presence is the soul’s love language.
when i transpose all that to self-love, this is where i arrive: my ego believes self-love is a ladder while my soul knows it is a switch.
my ego constantly wants to have more and be more, my ego wants to arrive somewhere, to reach a destination, to have a purpose. my ego believes that the more i do, the more i get. naturally the more i get to know myself, the more i’ll love myself. which in many ways is true. i need to untangle my mental patterns one by one, unlearn and relearn, to free myself from my labels.
for the past year, identifying with the label yoga teacher while not teaching has been challenging for me. i felt like i was a fraude and liked myself less. not because not teaching made me less of a yoga teacher but because my ego couldn’t keep up. if you’re a yoga teacher and you don’t teach, then you fail. whether i taught yoga or not doesn’t matter, identifying with the label yoga teacher created the glitch in my mind program. i like myself right now because i’m writing this newsletter and because my ego has the belief that it’s what i’m supposed to do in this human life. but the weeks when i don’t write, i dislike myself very much. which again doesn’t come from whether i write this newsletter or not, but from the belief that i should.
the self-love coming from your ego, let’s call it self-like, is conditional. it is conditioned to the labels you identify with, to the beliefs you created for yourself. when you don’t comply with your own labels and beliefs, self-like decreases.
a few days ago, my friend Angel said: “the days when i can’t cope with what’s happening inside of me, i hate myself.” that’s very accurate. when you’re overwhelmed with thoughts, emotions and things your mind doesn’t understand, your ego can’t make sense of who you are anymore and gets confused. the ego tends to reject what it doesn’t understand.
not understanding why you feel how you feel is a very unsettling experience and it asks for blind self-acceptance. self-acceptance can’t come from your ego, it comes from your soul. self-acceptance is your soul looking at your ego and knowing that you’re doing the very best you can every second of every day, you always have and always will. your soul knows that everything you’re living is just another flavor of your human experience.
stepping back from your ego, taking some distance from your thoughts, your emotions and all that happens inside of you, this is the switch. some days the switch is on, you’re connected with your soul, love is here. some days it’s off. the switch is inside of you, you have the power to turn it on anytime. some days you turn it on easily, and some other days it’s more challenging. that’s ok too.
self-like is a ladder and self-love a switch, and you need both. this life is a wonderful experience because you live it as a human, with the identity you created for yourself. the ego is not to be killed or dissolved. you need your ego to survive in this world. you have to remember that it’s not you though. don’t identify with your labels, with your past experiences, your traumas or even your first name. like babies. you didn’t need any of it when you arrive in this world, and you were already you. full of love and full of presence.
i was listening to a podcast this morning, Zach Bush was talking about love and how he worried for a very long time that he didn’t really know what love was. then he simply said: “love is the experience of beauty”.
may you experience the beauty that is in you every day.
i am with you.
Camille
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We’re humans after all! That photo of you, Camille, is priceless! 🥰 and yes for this quote’ Love is the experience of beauty!’ ❤️
Camille, I was feeling my ego rule my thoughts this week, especially in my job, to do more/grind harder, and while I’m approaching burnout, I am simultaneously feeling guilty for not doing even more. I needed this reminder to step back from the narrative and practice non-attachment. Thank you!
Loved this: “and you need your ego to survive in this world. you have to remember that it’s not you though. don’t identify with your labels, with your past experiences, your traumas or even your first name. like babies. you didn’t need any of it when you arrive in this world, and you were already you. full of love and full of presence.”