Self love and self care

Self love and self care is commonly being understood as focusing on making oneself more happy or less unhappy by doing what will make oneself feel good and happy, or avoiding what will make oneself feel bad and unhappy, as well as pampering oneself in all kinds of pleasurable material and sensual enjoyments, or gratifying all one's desires of craving and aversion, empowering selfishness, ignorance, egoism, impurities, and restlessness.

Self love and self care in the teachings and practice of yoga, is not about that, but it's about being able to have the self-initiation and self-effort to be looking after the over-all physical and mental well-being of oneself while still having certain degrees of basic essential awareness and sanity, by working diligently to be freeing one's mind from ignorance, egoism, impurities, and restlessness, to annihilate the idea of 'I', attachment, identification, desires of craving and aversion, expectation, greed, pride, selfishness, possessiveness, separateness, discrimination, fear, anger, and hatred, to be attaining mental and emotional independence, where the selfless perceptive cognitive intellectual emotional thinking mind is no longer being determined by the mind perception towards all kinds of selfless and impermanent names and forms, experiences, ties and connections, relationships, interactions, activities, affairs, events, conditions, or situations, that are pleasant or unpleasant, agreeable or disagreeable, desirable or undesirable, and enjoyable or non-enjoyable, transcending duality, or the sense of goodness and badness, righteousness and wrongfulness, happiness and unhappiness, joyfulness and joylessness, meaningfulness and meaninglessness, positiveness and negativeness, success and failure, pride and shame, deserving and undeserving, pleasurable enjoyment and painful suffering, and etc.

One needs to be able to be kind towards oneself unconditionally (stops hurting oneself/the body and the mind) before one can truly be kind towards all and everyone unconditionally, without discrimination, attachment, or expectation (stops hurting all and everyone out of a disturbed/peaceless/fearful/defensive/violent/confused/ignorant/discontented/ambitious impure restless state of mind).

To be kind towards oneself, is about the selfless mind is being able to accept itself as it is unconditionally, or accepting the condition of the physical body and the state of the modification of the mind, that are selfless and impermanent, as they are, unconditionally.

Only when the mind can accept itself as it is unconditionally, or respecting all the selfless impermanent changes in the body and mind as it is, or accepting the perceived reality in the present moment now as they are, then only it can accept all and everyone as they are, and respecting the world as it is, unconditionally.

Only when the mind is able to look after itself, or is able to be resting in unconditional peace, then only it can have the ability to look after some others.

Inquire the truth of everything.

When the mind is in a state of great disappointment and despair

When the mind is being over-whelmed by the continuous hammering of repeating dissatisfaction, disappointment, frustration, irritation, anger, grief, sorrow, or hurt, it's normal that the mind will be in a state of great disappointment and despair, where it is lost, doesn't know what to do with itself and life existence anymore, where it doesn't care about its own well-being, not to say, to care for the well-being of others, where life, or continuing living seems to be meaningless no matter what, where it is under going a state of exhaustion or burnout dealing with certain prolonged challenging, difficult, disappointing, disturbing, hurtful, sorrowful, unpleasant, undesirable, and disagreeable affairs in its personal life, and/or in the world.

When that is happening, the mind needs to have the initiation of wanting to be free from that state of the mind, and have the basic ability to help itself,  which is by reminding itself, that all these are impermanent. It will pass away eventually, without judgment or expectation.

Then the mind can try to move the attention away from all that, to be focusing on something else. Such as taking a rather long 'leave' from certain worldly duty and responsibility, or from study, or from work, or from family, or from a relationship, or from friends circle, or from the community, or from the social medias, and go travelling somewhere, and learning new things, not for building more new friendships or relationships, or to achieve something and be successful, but merely to be focusing on oneself, alone, for a prolonged period, not just for a short few days or few weeks.

The mind can also try to restore or boost its energy level by engaging in a more 'uplifting' lifestyle, such as engaging in certain gentle form (non-violence/non-aggressive way) of physical and mental fitness training activities, that involve twisting, forward bending, backward bending, side bending, inversion, balancing, and chest opening physical movements, and engaging in critical thinking mental training that involve attention, focus, and reasoning, as well as consuming a diet that can help to uplift the energy level, even if all these physical and mental effects are also impermanent, that can help to energize and uplift the state of mind for some time, but it's not the solution.

When the mind is able to divert its attention onto something else, and have a few moments of quietness and calmness, while regaining certain energy level through engaging in a more 'uplifting' lifestyle, then the mind can start to observe or look into all those challenging, difficult, disappointing, disturbing, hurtful, sorrowful, unpleasant, undesirable and disagreeable affairs/experiences/conditions/situations/events that the mind thinks and believes is the cause of its state of great disappointment and despair, to understand what is really happening in the mind, by standing as a 'third party' looking into its own modification or thought activities, and performs inquiry towards what is the real cause of the despair state of mind.

It requires certain degrees of independence, patience, forbearance, acceptance, determination, non-association, non-identification, non-craving, non-aversion, non-judgment, and non-expectation, for the mind to help itself to recover or come out from the prolonged energy exhaustion or burnout.

If the mind doesn't know how, or reluctant to help itself, and would rather to be continuing drowning in such despair state of mind, where it can't look after its own well-being, can't perform daily tasks for everyday living, can't think properly, can't eat, can't sleep, can't work, or can't enjoy anything, then that is its own freedom and desire.

That's why it's highly important for the minds to be developing certain degrees of independence, patience, forbearance, acceptance, determination, non-association, non-identification, non-craving, non-aversion, non-judgment, and non-expectation, before it comes to the point of 'drowning in great despair' upon dealing with too much over-whelming and hammering life experiences.

It's not about trying to help the world to be a better place. It's not about trying to be a good person. It's not about trying to be perfect or exceptional. It's not about running away from difficulties, duties and responsibilities. It's merely about do one's best to be looking after oneself.

When the mind is well or fit enough to be looking after its own well-being, then only it can look after its worldly duties and responsibilities, its family, its relationships, its friendships, its community, its study, its work, or the surrounding environment, properly.

Inquire the truth of everything.

Learn how to love oneself selflessly before anything else

Love that comes with attachment, craving and expectation will only bring pain to oneself and those whom one thinks one loves very much, but not really.

Love that is free from attachment, craving and expectation will bring peace to oneself, regardless of whether others love oneself, or not.

Only those who know how to love oneself selflessly, know how to love others selflessly.

Only those who are free from attachment, craving and expectation towards oneself, know how to love others without attachment, craving and expectation.

Those who love oneself and others selflessly don't need to receive love, acceptance, acknowledgement, appreciation and companionship from others to feel good and meaningful about oneself and everything. They don't need others to love them for them to love others.

They love themselves and others as they are.

Those who don't know how to love oneself will try to do many things in order to please others, with craving and expectation towards giving and receiving love, acceptance, acknowledgement, appreciation and companionship to and from others, in order to feel good and meaningful about oneself and everything. But then one will feel bad and meaningless about oneself and everything when all these names and forms are absent.

Those who know how to love oneself and others selflessly maybe doing many things for oneself and others, but it's not about pleasing oneself and others, so that oneself and others will feel good and meaningful through giving and receiving love, acceptance, acknowledgement, appreciation and companionship among one another.

This is the yoga practice, to realize selfless loving kindness beyond chemistry influenced conditional passionate sensual feelings of love.

Those who know this, are free.

Open mind under the presence of wisdom and compassion

Open-mind that exists along under the presence of compassion and wisdom is void of ignorance and the consequences of ignorance.

Open-mind born out of compassion and wisdom reflects awareness towards ignorant situation and knowing how not to get into unnecessary ignorant situations and the consequence of that, being free from ignorant thinking/action and the consequences of ignorant thinking/action.

 

There are many passionate minds have misunderstanding towards what is open-mindedness, where they would think and believe that open-mindedness is about 'being optimistically trusting the universe will look after my well-being where I should think and believe in everyone that I come in contact with are all pure, good and kind people without any selfish intention and desire, where I shouldn't have any doubtful/distrusting thinking/feeling towards anyone in order to look after myself and my well-being, by myself, because I think that it's 'bad', 'wrong', 'closed-mind', 'unfriendly', 'ill-thinking' and 'being selfish to look after myself by protecting myself from mistreatment/harm', and I don't want to have 'ill-thinking' towards anyone or 'being selfish to look after myself by protecting myself from mistreatment/harm'. I strongly believe that I myself, am a pure, positive, generous, kind and loving being, that I only will be loved by everyone and will be void of any mistreatment or harm, as I love the universe/God and the universe/God loves me', and thus, ignorantly coming in contact and dealing with ignorant beings with impure intention and desire, and getting involve in ignorant situations/events that give rise to mistreatment/harm to oneself. This is actually ignorantly 'encouraging' mistreatment/harm or crimes to be happening.

Keeping the hand away from close contact with fire to avoid getting injured/burnt is not 'bad', 'wrong', 'ill-thinking', or 'being selfish'. By not keeping the hand away from close contact with fire, but deliberately keeping the hand in close contact with fire, thinking that it's 'bad', 'wrong', 'ill-thinking' or 'being selfish' to keep the hand away from fire, and I want to be 'open-mind' where I should believe in the universe or God will protect me from any harm, is ignorance, or mere stupidity.

Being compassionate, friendly and open mind towards all beings doesn't mean that one should be ignorantly and wittingly letting oneself to be taken for granted/advantage by those with selfish intention/desire, or giving the opportunity for others to misbehave and endangering oneself to be mistreated/hurt by the ignorance of others.

Open mind towards all without judgment is more about being opened towards everyone could be kind or unkind, depending on the current state of their minds, without judgment of 'This is a kind person' or 'This is an unkind person'. One doesn't need to trust, or distrust, or mistrust anyone for anything.

This is similar to where the teaching of 'surrendering' in Yoga is also being misunderstood by many passionate minds in the same way. 'Surrendering' in Yoga is about surrendering the ego and egoism of attachment, identification, desire of craving and aversion, performing all our duties and actions without attachment, renouncing the fruit of actions, being dispassionate and desireless. It doesn't mean that one doesn't need to be responsible for one's actions and the consequences of actions, or doesn't need to be responsible to be looking after the well-being of oneself and those under one's care. Such like, driving on the road. One needs to be attentive and stay alert while driving, and be responsible to follow the traffic rules, and watching out for 'reckless drivers' or 'other road users'. 'Surrendering' doesn't mean "Ah, I surrender to God completely. Everything is God's will. Whatever will be, will be. I must not have 'ill-thinking' towards anyone that some of the drivers might be driving recklessly. I shouldn't have 'negative thinking' about there could be 'unexpected objects/animals' might be on the road that I need to watch out for. I don't need to drive carefully with attentiveness or stop at any traffic lights and junctions, and without watching out for the other road users or any unexpected objects/animals on the road, and I will arrive safely at my destination without any problem." That is ignorance, or mere stupidity.