Love Your Self

I recently got an email from my student Brendan, who has been attending my classes for many years. I want to share this with all of you. 

Brendan wrote: 

The following is from a lecture you gave two years ago on the 17th Arcanum, The Star, itself a lesson on the spirit that moves us to freedom and that opens the closed circle of this world. In that context you offered a commentary on the essentials to find the "door" that opens the circle making it a spiral, to ascending to spirit.”

The reference is from the Bible/New Testament (Matthew 22) where Jesus is challenged by a high priest who asks  'what is the greatest commandment (of the law of Moses)?'

Any answer in itself could be a violation of the orthodoxy. But he responds, " 'Love the Lord, your God with all your heart, all your soul and all your mind.' This is the first and greatest commandment and the Second is like it: 'Love your neighbor as yourself. ' " 

But as you insightfully points out there is a hidden "commandment" if you will—unstated in words—yet glaring as a logical inference in the second. I found this to be very liberating. Here is what Dr. Epstein said in his talk: 

Audio 507, Dr. Jerry Epstein on Love Yourself

Loving yourself means:
Don't underestimate or overestimate (vanity) yourself.
Have faith in yourself,
Don't condemn yourself.
Don't judge yourself.
Don't hold yourself to a standard that you made up that you can't possibly meet because it's future-based.
Don't hold yourself to ideals of self-improvement or any other kind of ideals.
Be kind to yourself.
Be easy on yourself.
Be easy on others.
Be open—be accepting without judgment or condemnation or being judgmental —without demands, without ideals that you set up for your self or others.
— This is all part of loving yourself.

All that makes you feel that you are serving the divine. And when you are serving the divine you feel humble and you feel you're in a place where you feel protected and you feel within yourself; you have faith within yourself and hope without feeling depressed or sad or pulled down by the "gravitational forces of the earth that pull you down into the agitated sea of the electrical field of death" — you're working against that.