Do you love yourself?

Do you love yourself?

People feel lonely; they need somebody to fill their loneliness. They call it love. They show love because that is the only way to hook the other. The other also calls it love because that is the only way to hook you. But who knows whether there is love or not? Love is just a game Real love is possible, but that happens only when you don't need anybody!

If you go to a bank and you need money, they will not give you any. If you don't need money, you have enough, they will come to you and they will always be ready to give you.

When you don't need a person at all, when you are totally sufficient unto yourself, when you can be alone and tremendously happy and ecstatic, then love is possible. But then too you can be certain about only one thing: whether your love is real. How can you be certain about the other? But then there is no need.

This continuous anxiety -- whether the other's love is real or not -- simply shows one thing: that your love is not real Why be worried about it? Enjoy it while it lasts! Be together while you can be together! It is a fiction, but you need fiction.

Behind declarations of love there is nothing but need. You want your lover to be with you to fill your emptiness and so too is the case with her. You are both trying to use each other as a means. That's why lovers, so-called lovers, are always in conflict -- because nobody wants to be used, because when you use a person the person becomes a thing, you have reduced him to a commodity. One day when you are really awake you will be able to love -- but then you will be certain about your love only. But that's enough! Do you love yourself? You have not even asked the question.

When you are really blissful on your own, you don't want to use anybody. You simply want to share it. And you will feel thankful that somebody was ready to receive. That is the full point. There is no way to be certain about the other -- first be certain about you. And a person who is certain about himself is certain about the whole world. Settled, centered, grounded, in yourself, you never worry about such things. You accept if somebody loves you, you accept it because you love yourself. You are happy with yourself; somebody else is happy -- good! It does not get in your head; it does not make you madly egoistic.

You simply enjoy yourself; somebody else also finds you enjoyable -- good! While it lasts, live the fiction as beautifully as possible -- it will not last forever. When a love is finished, you start thinking it was false -- that's why it has come to an end. No, not necessarily. It may have had some glimmer of truth in it, but you were both unable to keep and hold that truth. You needed love, but you were not capable of it. When you are aware, a totally different kind of love will arise in your heart -- which is absolutely true, which is part of eternity.