The Way of Self-Love
This diagram of The Way of Self-Love is a precise synthesis of my insights on the nature of self-loving presence. It is a simple enough diagram, but the ideas it points to run deep, and represent an integrated pathway of individual and collective wholeness and wellbeing.
The donut rainbow is a profound symbol of living wholeness. The toroidal form that exists in all living things. For example, your heart is the center of a flowing electrical field in the form of a torus. The earth’s gravitational protective field is a toroidal flow. The galaxy spins within itself in a toroidal flow. The universe is an ever-unfolding emergence of wholenesses within wholenesses.
The five practices are courageous commitments for a beautiful life — one that expands to integrate all “parts” of yourself and all apparent “others” into the wholeness of your being.
Take good care of yourself.
Discover who you really are.
Behold the beauty of your existence.
Stay true to what’s true in you.
End the war within.
Here’s a quick take on it all. Just doing my best to give you a sense of where I’m coming from.
Take good care of yourself: This includes creating the conditions around you that support your physical, emotional, mental, creative, and spiritual wellbeing. As you take care of yourself you discover that other’s wellbeing is intimately intertwined with yours. Thus taking good care of yourself includes taking care of others — and vice versa. You have to include yourself in the equation of care — and vice versa.
Discover who you really are: Who are you, really? This is an intimate, intricate, infinite, interstellar question. “Both anatomy and astronomy describe you,” said Nisargadatta Maharaj. The more we discover who we really are, the more of life is included in our self-loving embrace.
Behold the beauty of your existence: As we discover who we really are, we can’t help but see the miracle of life that has unfolded as “us.” To behold the beauty of our being is to behold the beauty of all. To see a thing as beautiful is to usher beauty into this world — making it real by the very act of our seeing. This is key to cultivating a beautiful world. To perceive beauty and know ourselves as that beauty. (For more exploration on beauty, see my dissertation What Is Beauty: A Living Inquiry for the Mind and Heart.)
Stay true to what’s true in you: I hosted a series of interviews and online course called “The Reality of Self Love.” A year into the project I was finally ready to discover the subtitle. “Staying True to What’s True In You.” After decades of exploration this was the fundamental definition of Self Love I landed on. Self love is staying true to what’s true in you. This has everything to do with integrity “staying true” and knowing who you are “what’s true in you.” Not who you think you are, or criticize yourself to be, but who you actually, fundamentally are. And what your life actually is in its fundamental simplicity and unique complexity. As you stay true to the best true you can muster, you learn more about yourself and become more and more yourself, and more and more true to that. More and more attuned to the you that includes all things.
End the war within: There is always a greater unity that surpasses apparent separations. All wars on planet earth are fought among fellow earthlings. All wars are are ultimately civil wars. Thus, to end the war within yourself, to stop fighting with yourself, is a fractal action that cultivates a pattern of relating called "ending the war within.” If I can’t end the war within myself, how do I expect the countries to be able to stop? This is where inner peace — true inner peace — makes all the difference.
About the rainbow wheel
Also embedded in this diagram is a deep symbolism (or more like fractal reality) of color. Each practice is associated with a primary color of creation, plus black and white. At some point I’ll share my take on colors, but for now I will say that when speaking of pigments, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, plus black and white can make a very full spectrum of colors, shades, and highlights. Here’s at least my Zenn Diagram of the Color Wheel.
Yellow, like the sun, has to do with cultivating and growing things, thus represents taking good care of yourself.
Cyan, or sky blue, is about the infinite possibilities and thus represents the act of discovery, discovering who you really are.
Magenta is the magical color that unifies the opposite ends of the color spectrum and represents communion where consciousness meets matter, the experience of beholding beauty.
White is the combination of all the wavelengths of light/color, where the toroidal flow comes together in the center, staying true to the center of you.
And finally Black is the space of the edge, the primordial ground where it all happens. The toroidal flow returns in on itself to integrate its wholeness. (In this moment I’m not quite remembering why black goes with “ending the war within” but maybe you can figure it out.)
ℤ∈ℕn Diagrams ⊙ 2021-2026 by Maja Apolonia Rode
