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Meditation with true depth is an impulse to see reality as it really is, and it is not to reinforce a superficial social identity that wants to imagine itself as an inflation. If one is looking for a type of salvation through the basic craving of status then one will get sucked out of the universe into a human world of pleasing to be liked. Self-understanding is of seeing ones conditioned reality. This is the only real meditation and all else is hot air to inflate ones balloon. Real meditation is to pop the balloon and outshine superficial societal fancies. Life, or the universe, is not interested in socially constructed Pimm’s and nibbles. It is a principle to deepen ones awareness of the totality of “I,” the totality of your existence beyond a social identity. In so doing, it allows yourself to be transformed in all your relations and beyond the pretence of trivial entertainment supplied by the culture industry.

The spiritual statement of loving who you are has two sides. Unfortunately due to the huge unconscious and collective arrogance of the western middle class it has distorted this view of loving oneself.

The development of postmodernity has moved from the competitive individualism and status of the affluent to an almost self-absorbed pathology to reinforce ones sense if self-importance. Whether we like it or not we are all one among seven billion people who are living on this tiny rock in a vast and infinite universe.

So how can we see genuine ‘self-worth’ and ‘self-love’ out of this inherent truism? Firstly, while the rise of the civil rights movement, feminism, ecological sensitivity, health care, and awareness of marginalisation, etc., have led to great advancement in the west, there is the emergence of this postmodern cultural elitism that dominates academia and the liberal arts. It uses the depth of thousands of years of spirituality to reinforce a superficial self-satisfaction. It is centred on being a subjective and personal centre of the universe.

This self-obsession uses that which came from genuine humility over those thousands of years (by seeing ones intrinsic and genuine uniqueness) to a subjective self-importance, entitlement and ego-investment. It distorts this genuine insight into who you are into an ego-investment. The significance of all forms of liberalism are lost. These are genuine movements were built up by compassionate people working for the whole of humanity. Since this time the means for the so-called postmodern middle classes have ironically used this tireless campaign to dehumanise the so-called working class.

These superior and inferior dynamics have nothing to do with real ‘self-love’. To truly love oneself is to see beyond ones conditioned and subjective self (and to not cover it with fashionable affirmations). It is to see that you are part of life itself. It is to genuinely see that you are part of the world and the universe as a unique expression of it just like everyone else.

It is beyond self-entitlement and is to be grateful of waking up as life itself, and to simply breathe as a genuine expression of it.

“We'll both forget the breeze”

To be already are what you are and with or without others is love. It is pervading the other in a a way that is beyond superficial distraction. It is to be one-pointed and with a commitment to life, which cannot be bent by the whims of others. Feeling that which is beyond oneself is the vastness of love as oneself. It is a freedom of both the hugeness of love and the freedom in you that is embracing a surrender. It is a celebration of love.

www.amazon.co.uk/International-Humanitarian-Organisation-United-Nations/dp/1443851973