The glory of God is within you. If you feel separation, it is separation from yourself that you feel. There is a part of you that desires to be separate, and so you hold yourself aloof from yourself. You keep a distance. Sometimes you are not even on a first-name basis with yourself. You have withheld intimacy from yourself. There is a part of you that desires complete wholeness and yet fears it, fears that you might lose something if you don’t hang on to separation. You might even love something more than yourself. Even though loving more than yourself is gaining, certainly not losing, beloveds, you fear it. You fear joining in on the joys of life, for what would become of you then? You might be found.
It would be easy for you to love something more than yourself because, your love for yourself, ego aside, has been deserted somewhere, left by the wayside. Sometimes you love yourself least of all and admire everyone else more. Sometimes, if you could run away from yourself, you would. You would dispense with yourself. You would drop yourself off in the woods somewhere. Is it so hard to love yourself in your own eyes? Think what this would mean when you love yourself. You would no longer demand that others’ eyes sanction and validate you. Your heart would burst wide open, and the whole world would enter.
I, God, placed my seal of approval on you before you were born, at your birth, and I continue to do so now every minute of your life. Why isn’t my voucher for you good enough? You would want everyone to bend their knee to you. You would want the sheaves of wheat to bow down before you. But even then you would feel the lack of honor because you do not honor yourself enough to fill a child’s tea cup. What would it take for you to bend your own knee to yourself? To love yourself – that would be true humility. To give yourself your due, that would be noble. When you feel empty inside, what amount of honor from the outside can assuage the emptiness?
If there is no least to My children, how can you consider yourself less? What habit of mind is this? What could you do, beloveds, to get back in your own good graces? If everyone loved himself, what a glorious world this would be. It would not be a selfish world. Quite the contrary. When you love yourself, you can begin to see others in the same light. Selfishness would become a thing of the past. In fact, the little self would be gone. Only lack of love feeds the little self, makes it sniffle and stay centered on itself.
But when love takes its rightful place, the Self appears resplendent, and you really and truly begin to love everyone as yourself. You could not do otherwise.
Love yourself first, beloveds. Recognize your worth. Do you believe in giving to God what is due God? Well then, you will love yourself, for I am due your love for yourself. Your love for yourself is overdue, and I am calling in the marker. Start to love yourself so that you leave doubt and fear behind you. My Will is that you love yourself. Love yourself first, and then you will love every man, woman, and child, and every creature on Earth, and every thing, God-made and man-made. You will love. You will love without objection, for you will already love yourself, and so you will love Oneness.