156 Loving Your Self - Even If You Don't Feel You Do

This is a very personal story about when I felt so alone.  Depressed and anxious I felt so unloved.  Abandoned by the universe and all in it.  It was around 1978, and I had just escaped from a Christian cult.  I was enrolled in a 4-year Master of Theology program looking for answers.  I was, also, taking refuge.  My life was upside down.  Perhaps you have felt despair, anxiety and depression.  Maybe you feel despair now.  If so, I offer you what I found then.  As I sat still, suddenly, in my despair, I saw that I felt so intensely bad because I cared about myself.  If I didn't care I would not feel so bad.  Yes, feeling bad is not a good way to love oneself.  It was maladaptive but I did love myself.  I wanted better for my life.  That is why I felt so bad about the way it was.  My direct experience that I was loved became a foot hold out of the dark pit.  I baby stepped my way back into health.  Perhaps my plight and what I did can be helpful to you.  Maybe the preceding podcasts as well.  That is why I made them.  If you are really feeling bad, please consider seeing a psychotherapist or minimally reaching out to friends or those that can help.

These podcasts are here to support your personal path of awakening whatever that might be. I feel they are most powerful when listened to in sequence from podcast one forward because each is built on the last. Though they, also, all stand on their own. If anything does not resonate, please disregard it and follow your heart. All my podcasts and website are free. Enjoy!

Though I am a psychotherapist, and these podcasts are offered to be spiritually helpful, they are not psychotherapy. If psychotherapy is ever needed, please reach out to a psychotherapist.

www.williamecooper.wordpress.com for more support. You may, especially, enjoy the short contemplations and the resource page which gives you some supportive material.

Transcript

William: 0:00

Hello, this is William Cooper. Welcome to Awakening Together, Relaxing into Happiness. I trust you're doing well. Many of you have really suffered. Perhaps you've felt great anxiety, depression, hurt, abandonment, panic attacks. There's so many things that we all experience in our daily life. Today I'd like to share a time that was particularly difficult for me and what it showed me. Something very unusual was revealed to me. It was 1978 and I had just escaped from a Christian cult and with some help of friends, I ended up in a four -year theological program to straighten myself out. At the time, I was in deep despair. I felt depressed. I felt anxious. I wasn't sure if there was a God. I didn't know what I believed. I didn't know if it was a safe universe. I felt anxiety as well as my depression and I had lots of personal problems as well. My personal history was difficult as well as what I had been through in the cult. So I was in deep despair and it wasn't the first time. My life wasn't so happy in general, though if I kept moving and did interesting things, I could enjoy myself. But now at theological school, I was in deep, deep despair. It was black. I was there because I desperately wanted to find answers and I found many, but I couldn't get my hands on that despair. I didn't know how to solve it. When I sat still, I felt so alone in the universe. I felt so unloved and alone. Perhaps you felt that way at times. I really did and I didn't have a solution. I was studying hard. I was looking for answers and looking, but I felt so bad. So though we were quite busy in seminary, it was an incredibly intense program for four years and I gained so much from it. But though I was so deeply busy, underneath it all, I was very depressed. I kept moving. I kept doing things. I still had hope, but when I would stop and slow down, I felt bad. I felt depressed and anxious. So in the moments that I had that were free, I would just sit quietly by myself and feel what I felt and just look at it and look at it and look for a solution. I couldn't find any until I remember I was sitting on a bench outside the law school at a neighboring university and I was sitting there and sitting there like I had done for days. How can I find love? I'm alone in the universe. I don't even know if there's a God and even if there is a God, how do I know that God loves me? You go back through history, you have a lot of gods that can be pretty mean. You look at some of the Greek gods or some of the Hindu gods. Sometimes the Christian gods seemed pretty horrible. They could be pretty mean and just because there was a God didn't mean that God loved you. It might be after you and it might be quite evil. Maybe there's only evil in the world or maybe there is no God. Maybe it's all matter. There's nothing. I'm alone. So, I sat there and sat there until suddenly it was like a light went off and everything simplified and it was, well, why are you so upset? Why are you so depressed? Unless you love yourself. You're so concerned because you care. You want better for yourself. Why do you get anxious about all the things in life unless you really care about yourself? You care. You feel bad because you love yourself. You want better for yourself. You want a better life. Look at all that energy in your pain. That's how much you love yourself. If you didn't care, why would you be expending that much energy? All that energy is because you care so much, because you're so deeply loved by yourself. So, that gave me a place to start in my despair, in my blackness, in my darkness, in my great anxiety. All of that energy did not feel good, but it was how much I cared for myself. I love myself and I thought about it for months. Is this possible that I love myself that much to express all of this energy? And as I looked at it and looked at it and looked at it, I could come up with no other conclusion except I love myself. And oddly, because I recognize that loving yourself by being depressed or anxious or panicked or feeling despair is very maladaptive. It doesn't feel good. It hurts. I realized that I was not being productive in expressing my love, but it was love, maladaptive as it might be. So, I started saying to myself, because I wanted to change the maladaptive aspects, I didn't want to stay depressed. I started to say, I feel good that I feel so bad. That's odd, right? And I'm not promoting continuing to feel bad, but that's where I was. I felt so bad and there wasn't much I could do. So, I started with where I was and I said to myself, I feel good that I feel bad because it means that I love myself, even though it's really maladaptive and it hurts. At least I do love myself and that's good. I can work with that. I can build on that. And then I would hug myself because I thought, well, let me add at least an adaptive expression of love to all of this maladaptive way of expressing love. So, I would hug myself and I say, I feel good that I feel bad. And then baby step by baby step by baby step, I inched my way out of that deep black hole. I slowly stopped treating myself in maladaptive ways and started to love myself in good ways. I started to let my love flow. It took a long time and I don't know what that might take for you if you're suffering, but it is good to know that in this universe, you can't help but love yourself. I remember asking myself questions and noticing, well, why would you treat yourself in a bad way? And I thought of examples. Well, let's say if you're in a family, hypothetically, and somebody says, you're stupid. Somebody that you love in your family, they say, you're not very intelligent. You might agree with them. Why would you do that? Because you love them and you're afraid you will lose their love unless you agree with them. You think, wrongly probably, but you think, if I agree with them on everything, then they'll really like me. So, I'll agree with them. Perhaps you're a little kid, you don't know better. So, you can extrapolate. Perhaps that's not in your family, but perhaps it's with friends. They don't let you play with them as a little kid unless you do what they want to do. And maybe some of those things aren't good for you, but you don't want to lose their friendship. You don't want to lose their company. So, you do things that aren't good for you. And you may begin to see yourself in that light. Maybe you're in a culture that expresses itself in toxic ways, but it's your culture, it's your country, it's your friends, and you don't want to be the odd ball out, so you agree with them. But maybe that's not so good for your deep inner spirit to be living in a way that's so incongruent. So, all these actions we do because we love ourselves. We don't want to lose the love of others, so we might treat ourselves poorly. We don't want to lose the love of our culture, so we treat ourselves poorly. Now, I know it's totally odd, and it is totally maladaptive. But when you go to the core of it, the things that we do, we do for love. Everything. If you really think about it, everything we do, we do because we love ourselves. Now, fast forward to today. When I sit outside, I feel one with nature all around me. I feel like a bright light inside. The other day when I did a podcast, I said, I feel like a light. How do I experience myself like a light? I also experience myself beyond that as infinite, quiet, silence, and I can feel like a rainbow, the different parts of me, and I can feel myself coming into existence as a bright light, and then part of me slowing down into a low pitched and a high pitched sound, and that's slowing down into love and peace, well-being, happiness, all the qualities of being. And then that's slowing down into atoms and then into molecules and then to objects, trees, birds, cats, people. The point is, everything is made of the infinite. And this is not a philosophy, it's what I experience. Nicely, it's what's in all of the ancient scriptures, but it's also my direct experience. If I had to choose one, my direct experience or what other people say, I always go with my direct experience. But I do listen to deep spiritual scriptures, because that guides me when I can't see so clearly. But I do experience everything as the infinite, as well as light, as well as love. Everything is love. All of the building blocks of creation are love. Everything, every substance is love. The love slows down and turns into atoms and molecules and then dogs and cats. So the atoms are made of love, the love is made of silence, the infinite. It's all love. So it makes sense that I can't help but be love. Even my actions, when I express love in maladaptive ways, even that is love. So this was groundbreaking for me. It gave me a foothold where I could stabilize and put things back together to see clearly. In the Tao Te Ching, it says when you're cloudy, sit still and let the mud settle. Sit still long enough until the mud settles and you can see clearly enough. It asks, do you have the patience to do that? If you do, you can see. I'm passing on my experience, not to make it yours, but just to say that's what I found. And if it makes sense, sit still and look for yourself. Is this not true of you too? I think so. Well, I believe it is. So even if you're in a very dark place, you're not unloved and it doesn't need to stay dark. Once you know that you're loved, you can begin to express your love adaptively rather than maladaptively. You don't have to stay in a dark space. It took me lots of baby steps. This did not happen overnight, but at least I knew the truth of it and I knew that I really wasn't in a dark place. I had just made a dark place because it was the only way that I knew how to express my love to myself based on the history that I had. Perhaps you're in a similar situation and I say this as a way of hope, as a way of well-being. Now if you'd like a little bit more support on how to baby step yourself forward out of that deep hole, that's why I made these podcasts. I made these podcasts because around that same time in 1978, I remember sitting in my dorm room on my bed and even after I discovered that I do love myself, I had a long way to go. And back then there wasn't so much available as there is today. So I was so grateful every time either I realized something or somebody helped me along the way. And I've put all of those things that I have found most helpful over the last 50 years in these podcasts. Some will apply to you, some won't, they're not perfect, but they're pretty good. They're the best I can do for right now. So if you'll find them helpful, they're all free, they're all here and I would start with podcast number one and work your way forward step by step, baby step by baby step. Use what's helpful, what doesn't resonate, disregard and move out of that dark hole step by step. You will integrate bliss, joy and happiness, which is where I am today. So I could speak from experience. Everything in these podcasts is my direct experience. I realize that often it's reflected in deep scriptures as well. But these deep scriptures are just simply expressions of clarity about who we already are. Our direct experience confirms this. Okay. Blessings. I'm so glad we had a chance to talk. I look forward to talking to you again next time. Take care. Bye.