“How do we love ourselves in our darkness?”

How Do We Love Ourselves in Our Darkness?

This question arose from someone in response to the above image I posted. I believe it’s an insightful inquiry as this is indeed the work, isn’t it? 

First, let’s be honest. Self-love, even during the good times, can be challenging for many of us. Thus, it’s really important that we don’t eviscerate ourselves during life’s inevitable face plants when we forget to do so.

The fortunate news is that self-love is a state of being that can be learned. We can literally foster “muscle memory” and consciously make it our go-to choice. (The Buddha did this in part by consciously adopting his beatific grin.) With practice, it will eventually happen on its own accord unconsciously.

Since it’s much easier to be kind to ourselves when we’re feeling happy and strong (the preferred time to create new, loving, neural pathways, by the way), we must accept that climbing the self-love mountain in the darkness is a harder climb. BUT, it is absolutely doable.  Working with great healers and positive affirmations and meditation did wonders for me. After a serious brush with death, I literally clawed my way out of despair and rewrote my inner critic’s self-assessments with thoughts of loving kindness. And now, I'm happy to report, the dark spears rarely surface.  

As self-love becomes habituated, a newly empowered mental fortitude helps us develop resilience which is well suited for dips into despair. We begin to demonstrate a heightened capacity to experience and own our shadows. 

Living—and loving—in the darkness can actually start to become habit forming. For some of us, the darkness can even become a space where we derive a sense of awe and comfort while still being gentle with ourselves.

To get here, I strongly recommend the objective viewing of our minds’ functional choices. This is where meditation helps. 

As we learn to notice and resist attachment to mental formations of self-judgement and other dark thoughts—as they arise in the moment—we start to see our stories for what they are—simply stories—and we can then disarm them quickly and lovingly. 

With more resilience, we can now replace spiking jabs of self-judgement with self-love in a space of true equanimity. 

Through meditation, we learn that darkness is impermanent, akin to a storm cloud passing overhead.

For me, knowing that change is our only constant was a game changer. All phenomena, including our thoughts, will arise and eventually fade away. We come to realize that awareness of impermanence is a source of great solace and refuge. We literally learn to ride it out knowing the darkness will not last forever.

Ultimately we see that light and dark are two sides of the same coin. The only way to experience true lightness is to embrace our darkness—and vice versa. Repress one and we miss out on the magic of the other. 

I like to think that the lower we bounce on the trampoline, the higher we can ascend. 

In many ways, it comes down to how much of our life are we willing to feel.

How high do you wish to jump on your trampoline?