The confusion between loving oneself and loving others stems from the misuse of the word "love". There is a love that comes from the heart and the essence, and there is also a "love" that comes from our ego. Humanity has fallen into traps created by the sentimentality, expectations, and pleasures of satisfaction that ego has built upon, and has named them ‘love’.
In societies, loving oneself is often taught as a bad thing while loving others is taught as a good thing. However, no one really explains what it means to love oneself or to love others. Unfortunately, this wrong definition has trapped us into concepts like selfishness or virtue.
Love is not formed by conventional behavior patterns, nor is it something that can be obtained or understood by trying to shape it with rules or definitions. In fact, it is not a complicated thing. We cannot teach it with certain methods, rules, or games.
Love emerges from within. Love speaks where the ego is silent. If love emerges from within, you start by loving yourself first, and it flows to every human being, animal, nature, in short, to every particle of existence.
If there is love, you care about yourself, your body, your health, your emotions. You feel responsible for yourself, but this responsibility comes out of love, not by force. Just like a mother feels responsibility towards and bestows upon her child willingly and lovingly without any complaints.
First, you should become your own parent. You should love yourself, take care of yourself, learn to accept yourself as you are without any criticism or judgment. A person who cannot achieve these within themselves can never achieve them in others. Otherwise, it would be a superficial, artificial love. They would fall into the trap set by their ego, saying, "I love him as long as he satisfies my needs, my ego."
Someone who cannot find love within himself cannot give it to others, nor can they find it in others. They cannot even see the love of someone who truly loves them. The eyes and hearts of those who don’t have those virtues are blind. One who cannot see love within cannot see it from outside. He gets confused with definitions. He believes suffering, excessive desire, and passion are love. In short, in order to see love from outside, one must first bring forth love within. Just as in everything else, one must start with oneself.
