Human suffering exists in many forms throughout our life. We feel desperation. We often feel that we are not happy. At times, we suddenly feel depressed and feel like we are alone. We feel that we are not being loved. These days, there are many lectures or books about how to love the self. It seems that many methods have come out to show us how to love the self because of chronic illnesses afflicting the modern person, such as depression and stress.
So how can you truly love yourself? Many people already know such methods as looking at the self in a mirror and giving words of affirmation, like ‘I am beautiful. I am great. I can do it,’ planting confidence with warm words, and comforting the self. However, my opinion is very different. The problem is that you cannot maintain happiness or that feeling of being loved in this way. And as time goes by, you just become depressed and trapped in yourself again.
We need to get to the root and find the very fundamental reason for the problem. In order to find the way to love me, we should find out a cause – what prevents me from loving me? People have ego that we call ourselves. Humans fundamentally have selfishness and greed. The reason why human cannot forgive, accept and love himself is because the wrong ‘self’ dwells within. It is the false self that human loves.Unless you get rid of the falseness, that is what we call our self and ego, from within your mind, you will surely become a slave to the illusionary self, resent the self and struggle in void as you get trapped in the sense of inferiority. For instance, a cancer patient suffers from cancer because cancer cells are in the body. If those cancer cells are eliminated with chemotherapy, the patient can recover. Likewise, the reason why your mind is sick is because of the self. Through the method of throwing away the self, you can eliminate the falseness that is an illusion so that you can find the real self, the truth. The true self is the mind of love, acceptance and forgiveness – the positive mind. Then, you do not even need to look at yourself in a mirror and tell yourself that you are good and you can do it. Because there is no self that is an illusion, your mind is peaceful and free. You will be in an energetic state all the time with full of confidence and loving mind. Let’s find the method of throwing away the self that is false, throw away the self, which is just like cancer, and truly live the life full of love.
To conclude, let me introduce a piece of writing by Master Woo Myung, the Great Master of this generation, who has been devoting his whole life with only hope that everyone in the world becomes enlightened to the truth and live happily forever since he became the truth.
Love, Compassion And Virtue
We often use and hear the words, “I love you”; between lovers, married couples, parents and children.
Human love is the fulfillment of one’s demands. In other words, human love is full of expectations; man cannot love unconditionally. Pure love is giving without the mind of having given. This is true love, compassion and virtue.
Man and all of creation are able to exist because the origin, the empty sky, exists. Although the empty sky creates everything and provides man with food, air and the means to live, it does not expect anything in return. Such is the mind of the origin. True compassion, love and virtue do not exist unless man’s mind becomes that of the origin.
The mind that is without the thought that you have done something for someone – the mind of not having done something – is a mind that is only possible when your mind becomes the mind of God. In other words, it is the mind where the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing.
It is possible to live for the world and for others when you chase out your evil, false, self-centered mind and change it to the mind of God.
The human mind that is self-centered does not have love, compassion or virtue; there is only the mind that cares for himself. While it is often said that we must love our enemies with compassion and virtue, we are unable to do so because enemies exist within the deeply rooted minds we have.
Meditation is the practice of changing one’s human mind into the mind of God and becoming reborn as the child of God. Meditation is a place where one can actually become a saint, Buddha, the son of God, the entities that we have only heard of. It is a place where one can achieve human completion.
– From Teacher Woo Myung’s book, <Stop Living In This Land Go To The Everlasting World Of Happiness Live There Forever