being in love with yourself (as a practice of power)
I’m convinced that out of all the great practices we can inhabit and master — the mother of all practices, the ultimate practice of power — is the art of knowing how to be completely, deeply, in love with yourself.
I’m talking about the extremity of true love — the kind of romance you could die for — not a passing infatuation, or a weak flame. I mean a love which knows no limits, and is wholly unshakable — independent of all conditions; independent of all circumstance.
this is the kind of love that cannot be measured nor “earned” by achievement, nor given as reward, or as consolation. it is a love so essential and elemental — like air, like water — that once you have it, you wonder how you ever managed to live without it. how did you ever breathe?
because the art of being truly in love with oneself, in the end, is the art of being in love with life. what are we, but vessels for life force — life energy — to move through us?
can you feel what that kind of energy feels like in your body? can you gather it in your core, and inside your heart chambers? what does ultimate loyalty and devotion to yourself feel like?
I mean both the ordinary, day-to-day practice of self-love, as well as the full-blown glory of an intense love affair — this one, which, for sure, can last an entire lifetime.
how does it feel to be truly in love with yourself? how does it feel to be truly in love? I think that’s a question only we can answer to ourselves.
I felt it suddenly, intensely, last week — like a blinding ray of sun - walking to the park to picnic alone, on the first day of spring. for me, it was a feeling of lightness, an expansive freedom, and an exquisite sense of beauty. beauty which comes not from needing to be seen, but in the act of seeing.
I’m seeing how being in love with myself is — the practice of power. it is seeing my own beauty and brilliance — a beauty and brilliance that time cannot fade. true beauty and brilliance do not ask to be seen. they can simply *be*.
love is power — because love is a feeling of absolute certainty. and power is in truly knowing all that you have, and all that you are — with the certainty that you can never lose it.
power is being connected to that core part of you which is unshakeable and untouchable.
power is in having nothing to defend. nothing to protect.
for me, seeing beauty is the practice of power.
and being in love is the act of seeing beauty.