Self Love Manifesto - Prologue

1100 words — a twenty-five year return

Self Love Manifesto - Prologue
A Twenty-Five Year Return

❋

by Maja Apolonia Rode

The spacious living room in the Santa Cruz mountains was packed. But a palpable quietude pervaded the space. Fifty-five of us sat on cushions and chairs, listening with rapt attention, following every turn of his stream of consciousness. I raised my hand, not knowing the gravity of what was about to unfold. 

My housemates and I had opened our home to a monthly series of day-long "Embodiment Intensives" with a thirty-something teacher of enlightenment. My own fundamental awakening of consciousness came a few years before I met him, but I needed guidance. I thought I needed a teacher and I thought he was the one. I also needed and wanted to be in the company of people who saw the nature of reality the way I did. And I longed for mutual recognition.

The teacher called on me and I asked him a question about self-love as it relates to nondual awareness. He talked, as I'd heard him talk many times before, about how his sense of self had fallen away and said with his signature tone of self confidence:

"The idea of self-love doesn't make sense to me."

In the context of his “no-self” teachings and the collective presumption that he was farther along the path than the rest of us in the room, I got the message that my inquiry was not on target — and definitely not something that would merit my full, devoted attention.

I don't quite have words to describe what transpired there. Maybe it was like an ultra-sharp knife cut. I didn’t quite feel it at first — and there was a long gap in time before I felt the pain of what really happened. 

A very long gap. 

It took about two decades for me to realize what happened. The best I can describe it is to say the deep yet delicate tendrils of my embodied source connection were severed and uprooted in that moment.

As fateful as it was, that moment likely went by unnoticed by the other people in the room. If anything, it might have been viewed as a clean cut from this fellow's “sharp sword.” But all these years later I can say with time-tested confidence: 

The cut severed what it should have been cultivating.

I don’t know if I actually had a choice, but in that moment I chose belonging over being true to myself. I chose to buy into someone else's stream of certainty instead of following the uncertain steps of my uniquely real and relevant path. In the face of his non-support of my inquiry, I didn't have it in me to stay true to what was true in me.

But it’s clear to me now. He was likely not aware of how fundamental my inquiry was. I felt the importance of it, but I couldn't stand behind my knowing with the degree of confidence it would have taken to counter his. 

Back in 1999, that young, western, Zen-trained teacher truly did not, and perhaps could not, recognize what I meant by "self" or relate to what I meant by "love." And the whole invisible context — societal norms of domination and extraction, patriarchal lineages of Christianity and Buddhism, and the projection of his inflated-ego developmental path onto mine — compelled him to maintain his position. I'm not sure he ultimately had a choice either. And, if he was compelled to enact those patterns — well, so much for the "liberation” he espoused.

"The idea of self-love doesn't make sense to me."

His words were literally true. But the implications weren’t — that my use of the word “self” signaled an inferior, less-advanced perception of “Truth,” and that “love” could be relegated to a nice side-benefit on the journey of enlightenment. Instead of opening to discover the depth of my inquiry, he chose to double down on his "no-self" teaching.

Meanwhile, I remained open and vulnerable in the teacher-student relationship. In my search for connection and support, I dove deeper into the idea that I must be missing something and that I should follow his lead. 

Little did I know how long it would take for me to return and pick up the golden threads of my inquiry that day. What looked to him like a weed in the garden, was actually the sprouting of the Mother Tree of my unfolding, just peeking up above the soil, seeking sunlight and mycelial connection. 

Instead of nurturing the sprout, he pulled the weed. 

Still, I needed company. Except for this fundamental yet easy-to-overlook misalignment, I felt a great deal of resonance with him and many of the people around him. The sublime and spacious silence pervading his retreats was just what I needed — spiritually and creatively. As a volunteer and then the first employee of his organization, I cultivated his garden for another seventeen years, directing the stream of my time, attention, brain power, heart power, and creative life energy to support him and his community. Wholeheartedly at first, but then less and less so.

Over those years, my sense of spiritual and creative aliveness dwindled. Toward the end, I remember feeling like a shriveled raisin inside. Something just wasn't right, so I started to trust myself instead of giving him the benefit of the doubt. On retreats, I started witnessing him make the same teaching error with others that he made with me. And I saw those people deferring to him as I had. At some point, I just couldn’t bear it anymore.

I stopped attending retreats and eventually left the organization. As I started regathering my creative energies, I was able to pick up the golden threads of my self-love inquiry. At the Science and Nonduality (SAND) conference in 2019, I hosted a panel discussion called "The Reality of Self-Love." I was taking a public stand for what I knew was true twenty years earlier. I wanted to legitimize the inquiry and reality of self-love for anyone steered away from it in a context of nondual teachings.

A few years later, blindsided by an incident of fierce external criticism, I fell into a vortex of debilitating self-doubt. I needed to find the stable ground in myself, so I wrote a Self Love Manifesto — articulating my fundamental stand on the nature of reality. This upcoming blog series is that manifesto, revised four years later with a recent insight that brings it all together.

I have finally become someone who can clearly and skillfully answer the question of my past self. She didn't get the answer she needed in 1999, but I can give it to her now. This manifesto will reflect what she already knew, reveal what she didn’t yet realize, and offer guidance for her unfolding.

Let’s not waste another moment.

❤ 2026 | Maja Apolonia Rodé

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