Self-love is a big word. You hear it everywhere these days. It sounds so important, you feel like you have to figure it out, otherwise, you cannot expect to be happy and live a good life.

But self-love is not something to be figured out. Nor can you become happy by expecting to be happy. Self-love is a practice. It emerges when you stop judging yourself and others. Self-love is the love of being, the love of experiencing.

When you experience the unfiltered reality of life, you experience yourself as the person you are designed to be. Life’s clarity is your clarity. Just like you see reality clearly when you don’t judge it, so you see yourself clearly when you don’t judge yourself.

Judging makes you think you’re separate from the rest of life. It’s hard to love something from a distance. It’s hard to feel like one when you don’t see yourself as a part of it. If you don’t love life, how can you love yourself?

Self-love is required to realize yourself. As you peel away each layer of self-judgment, you are asked to love what you find. If you don’t love what you find, you cannot proceed to the next layer. Little by little, judgment by judgment, you learn to be who you are, by loving who you are.

All the impressions of the material world are doing you a huge disservice. They are asking you to judge yourself. They are telling you to seek yourself in ways you cannot find yourself. When you judge yourself, you get stuck with the energy of your judgments.

Your judging habit robs you of experiencing the freshness of life. You wind up making choices that are not in your favor. But most of all, your self-judgments block you from loving yourself. At its core, judging is the absence of love.

The person you’re looking for is amazing and unique and intentional. When you meet yourself, you cannot help but fall in love.

How much do you love yourself?