" Love starts with self-love. Dont be selfish but be self-full--and they are two different things. Dont be a Narcissus, dont be obsessed with yourself. But a natural self-love is a must, a basic phenomenon. Only then out of it can you love someone else. " (p.105)
" ...Otherwise society succeeds in destorying your roots, in destorying your trust in yourself. And once that is done, you will never be able to trust anybody. Once you are incapable of loving yourself, you will never be able to love anybody. That is an absolute truth, there is no exception to it. You can love others only if you are able to love yourself. But society condemns self-love. It says it is selfishness, it says it is narcissistic.
Yes, self-love can become narcissistic, but it is not necessarily so. it can become narcissistic if it never moves beyond itself, it can become a kind of selfishness if it becomes confined to oneself. Otherwise, self-love is the beginning of all other loves.
A person who loves himself sooner or later starts overflowing with love. A person who trusts himself cannot distrust anybody, even those who are going to deceive him, even those who are already deceived him. Yes, he cannot even distrust them because now he knows trust is far more valuable than anything else.
You can cheat a person-but of what can you cheat him? You can take some money or something else from him. But the man who knows the beauty of trust will not be distracted by these small things. He will still love you, he will still trust you. And then a miracle happens: If a person really trusts you, it is impossible to cheat him, almost impossible.
It happens everyday in your life, too. Whenever you trust somebody, it becomes impossible for him to cheat you, to deceive you. Sitting on the platform in a railway station, you dont know the person who is sitting by your side- he is a stranger, a complete stranger-and you say to him, "Please just watch my luggage. I have to go to purchase a ticket." And you go. You trust an absolute stranger. But it almost never happens that the stranger deceives you. He could have deceived you if you had not trusted him.
Trust has a magic in it. How can he deceive you now that you have trusted him? How can he fall so low? He will never be able to forgive himself if he deceives you.
There is an intrinsic quality in human consciousness to trust and to be trusted. Everybody enjoys being trusted. It is respect from the other person-and when you trust a stranger it is more so. There is no reason to trust him, and still you trust him. You raise the man to such a high perdestal, you value the man so much, it is almost impossible for him to fall from that height. And if he falls, he will never be able to forgive himself, he will have to carry the weight of guilt his whole life.
A man who trusts himself comes to know the beauty of it comes to know that the more you trust yourself, the more you bloom, the more you are in a state of let-go and relaxation, the more you settled and serene, the more you are calm, cool, and quiet. And it is so beautiful that you start trusting more and more people because the more you trust, the more your clamness deepens; your coolness goes deeper and deeper to the very core of your being, And the more you trust, the more your soar high. A man who can trust will sooner or later know the logic of trust. And then one day he is bound to try to trust the unknown.
Start trusting yourself- that is the fundamental lesson, the first lesson. Start loving yourself, If you dont love yourself, who else is going to love you? But remember, if you ONLY love yourself, your love will be very poor. " (p.29-31)
Labels: 修行
