What is this thread all about?
Just a place for general discussion. A place to unload whats on your mind and talk about anything - personal, health, help needed, achievements, daily highs and daily lows, theories, predictions and what have you.
Does not need to be Q related.
We cannot fix this world, nor change the way our society operates, without changing ourselves. A broken society is created by lots of broken individuals. The problem is that evil found ways to exploit our brokenness, to increase it, to mislead us, but in the end, it's our brokenness they exploited.
None of us received the love, the warmth and the true acceptance we needed when growing up, because our parents were damaged, our families were damaged, and their parents were damaged, and their parents were damaged, and so on and on. Parents and children and families inheriting pain and damage from those who came before.
It started somewhere. It started with the collapse of the first family, where fratricide was the fruit that generated trauma that reverberates down the ages. But where did such violence spring from? How was it possible?Because the first parents came together, not under a blessing of grace, truth and unselfish love, but had already collapsed into selfishness, brokenness.
Much of what has been written may be wrapped in mystery, ideas and subject to wide interpretation, but this profound truth has been offered to us.
When the first couple left the garden, before they began their family, they were already deeply broken, and they never, ever reached their potential to love each other.
Since then, all of history has been a recovery program, starting from a central point of restoring faith. Faith lost in the Creator, and the Creator restoring that in us in which He could also have faith.
Faith? Belief? Love cannot exist without faith, and faith requires truth and true knowledge. Yet, each of us grew up in a society and world where we were taught myriad, potent untruths about ourselves: that we are unloveable, that the world will not respond to our needs, that we cannot trust others, and that there is no real answer to the suffering of our broken hearts. And that our broken selves are all we have.
If these untruths were not taught in words, they were at a minimum taught by experiences. Yet, they are not the truth.
As we search for ourselves, and strive to become the people we are created to be, it's when we find and learn to receive love from the Source that we begin the process or being 'reborn', reborn into a lineage and family that was always our original destiny, but which our very first ancestors lost.
In that family, there are no enemies, except the one that would destroy true, honest, unselfish love. When we can look beyond the surface, and recognize in those that are striking out in lies, in untruth, in false purposes, when we can recognize that they are the saddest, most tragic victims, then we can begin to fight back, fully, truly, but not in anger, not in hurt, and not in fear, but with true love, fusing compassion with truth, accountability with stern desire for justice, not as broken people, but as warriors of the way.
in learning to love and see ourselves as he sees us, and love each other as he loves us, our eyes become less jaded, less distorted by the lies, and our hearts begin to heal. We begin to see others and love others as he sees them, as he loves them.
The healing is not only a life-long process, it is a age-long process, a millennia-long process. But who, we can ask, are the recipients of thousands of years of healing, possibilities being opened up, greater and greater levels of grace being made available? Us. You and I today.
Walking and indeed fighting in love and truth, we dispel the forces of the enemy with true unselfish love, and pioneer liberation for ALL our people. Not all will make it right now, but renewed, healed truer selves, and a renewed, healed, truer society is the destiny that all humanity shares in.
And it might be delayed, but nothing can stop what is coming.
Man this a awesome. And it's all true, I see it in myself
Well said fren. In the modern world the problem you are describing comes about in a very simple manner. It all starts with people, even as kids, unable to be content with oneself. This only happens because people are unable to love themselves.
We have been made to believe that our value is based on what we do, what we achieve. Not simply because who we are.
We are constantly seeking something more, and never happy with who we are, and hence never being able to love ourself. We have become Human Doings, not Human Beings.
This can be traced back to stopping believing in God. If you believe in a universal power, whether you call it God or not, then being a creation of this power automatically makes us worth loving. We dont need to prove anything to anyone, least of all to ourselves.
But once we reject this idea and believe we are just random chances that happens in a chaotic world, we have to prove our existence to be able to love ourselves. And here in lies the true problem.
If a parent cannot love themselves there is a deep void in their heart, and they impart this void to their kids, and they to their kids and so on.
All healing starts from accepting that we are a creation of something infinitely more powerful than us, and that we are worth loving.
I am not too sure of your idea that if we don't love ourselves then how can anyone love us? (if thats what you are saying)
People can love us despite who we are.
Hmmmm. No, that's not what I was attempting to say, and that theme of loving ourselves is not really a big theme in my mind. In fact, the idea of "loving myself" has often been exploited and co-opted by narcissistic tendencies.
If I can simplify what I'm saying, its that historically, and currently, we have been broken people. That brokenness actually began at the point in history that scripture points to, and it has been inherited and amplified down through subsequent history.
The brokenness manifests in how we see ourselves and how we see each other. The cause is a separation from God. Separated from God in our hearts, we become unable to see as God sees, and unable to love as God loves.
The solution begins with first reconnecting with God, and by building a relationship with God, restoring our capacity to see as God sees, and love as God loves.
God sees the truth of who we are, and who others are. However, in our society, we are born to parents in families that are still separated from God on some level, and so we learn to see ourselves not as he sees us, and we cannot therefore love ourselves or anyone else, as God does.
We don't really need to make an effort to love ourselves. What we really need to discover is HOW God loves us. How God sees us. Once we begin to see ourselves as he sees us, then our hearts can begin to heal, and love will flow automatically.
If we love ourselves but NOT from God's viewpoint, that's narcissism. But if we learn to see as God sees, we love ourselves, not from our own selfish perspective, but as he does, and in that, we move across the barrier of brokenness, and our capacity to love - others, as well as ourselves, begins to be restored.
Likewise, if others love us but NOT from God's perspective, then that love is on some level dysfunctional.
Learning to see ourselves and others as God does is the key starting point. From an energetic level, you could say that this allows us to resonate with God's love.
I'm not really talking about what happens if we don't do X. I'm talking about what the situation is, the causes, and how it can be improved or resolved.
hope that helps.
No, the idea is that if we dont love ourselves, we are broken and we will break others around us. Its got nothing to do with being loved by others.
Very simplistic examples:
Parent who doesn't love themselves will push their kids to achieve what they perceive they should have achieved, in the process teaching those kids that they are not lovable as they are.
Person who does not love themselves seeks extreme validation from their spouse creating a toxic relationship.
Most narcissistic / co-dependant toxic relationships are the direct result of people not being able to love themselves as they are.
I am not to keen on who I am but I am not broken or even fractured, as you say, its just an idea. As for breaking others around us if we don't love ourselves, not true.
They might try to mend you out of love for you and quite possibly succeed. Why do you discount other peoples love? It not an abstract intellectual exercise or idea, it is real.
Yes no where in the Bible does it tell us to love ourselves. I found that very interesting when I learned it when I was being discipled by some very close friends of mine.
However it does say to let the Lord your God, and to love your neighbor. I cannot think of one scripture where it says to love yourself. Very intriguing.
However from a psychological perspective, I do believe that excepting who you are in Christ, plays a huge part in how others perceive us, and what type of energy were putting out there.
But 58 I’m finally getting it. But it’s taking me a lifetime. My only wish is that I would have surrender to God sooner. I could’ve avoided so much misery.
I wrote the above without direct references to scripture in order to offer a broader perspective that speaks in less dogmatic terms. However, I believe everything I've written is borne out by scripture.
In regards to your comment, a very noteworthy point - You remembered, but not completely:
e.g Mark 12:30-31
So, there you have it. If you do not love yourself, can you love your neighbor as yourself? Obviously not.
How to love God? With all your heart, soul, mind and strength.
How to love your neighbor? As yourself.
Now, you can interpret this in a number of ways, all valid (imo).
Firstly, you must love yourself and then likewise love your neighbor in the same way.
Secondly, you can love your neighbor AS IF that neighbor is in fact you.
In other words, look at your neighbor (friend, colleague, random person in the street, any person) and see; "Gee. There goes me!" And then love that person. In doing so, you'll be loving yourself!
But either way, the scripture is to "love your neighbor as yourself". You cannot simply delete the "as yourself" part because you don't like it!!! I think the clear implication is "as (you love) yourself".
Read what I wrote again. Think about this point: We have been taught or learned all manner of untruths since we were born. Some, because those around us knew no better. Some, because our society is flooded with such untruths. But the real truth is this: that there is a true us inside, a true me that is a reflection of, and an expression of, God's own love.
Anyway, here are a few more to ponder:
Proverbs 19:8 Whoever gets sense loves his own soul; he who keeps understanding will discover good.
1 Corinthians 16:14 Let all that you do be done in love.
(so, should you think of yourself or deal with yourself or treat yourself WITHOUT love? If so, you'd be contradicting this exhortation from Paul.)
1 John 4:8 Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love.
(So, again, how do you see yourself, treat yourself, value yourself? Surely, it must be with love.)
But I think it MUST be emphasized: there are two types of love. God's love (original love) and fallen, corrupted love. Love separated from God is not love, but decadence. Therefore, in loving oneself, just as in loving others, or loving creation, or loving God even, the key point is to learn to SEE with God's eyes and God's heart, from God's perspective. Loving oneself but not from God's perspective leads to narcissism and corruption. Just like 'loving' others, but not from God's perspective, leads to the same.
"Oh, darling, please abandon your husband, your family everything, because I love you!!!!" ~ What a lie. That's NOT love. It's something else.
Imo religions emphasis on sin..unworthy...going to hell...not going to heaven as you don't say the right words..guilty of sin before you were born.....dont .believe the same stuff I do..inferior to me..you won't go to heaven blah blah blah
Are the most unloving and damaging words and coming from anyone professing to be a religious person never mind a Christian who is supposed to love everyone regardless of who or what they believe and as for turning the other cheek and give up your worldly goods etc..forget it ..it doesn't happen
Millions of evangelicals in USA...all saying they are followers of a man who told everyone to love one another .....And yet America constantly at war for profit against their neighbours
You make straw arguments....
You make assumptions about a first couple based on an untrue rendition of the facts
Who is the he you speak of?
Do you refer to source as a masculine energy?