Love for Self is a Gift to Other

Mary H/ August 9, 2019/ Paul Brenner, MD, PhD

Perhaps the greatest gift that we can offer another is the love that we
discover within ourselves. Self-love has a beginning, but no end. One of
the many games of life is to learn alchemy: the transmutation of
emotional pain into love. Physical pain, on the other hand, is meant to
be remembered. It tells us where to tread lightly. Physical pain is a
form of love, telling us where not to go.

However, our gift to life is found within our childhood emotional pain. It
is within childhood discomfort that we can find the ideal substrate of love
to be transmuted. Emotional pain, the emotional unmet needs, are the
‘stuff’ that is within us, initiated from outside of ourselves; projected
onto us by the trans-generational past (epigenetically). Ancestral
emotional pain dwells in our unconscious; only to arise periodically into
conscious emotional pain, in the form of feelings of abandon,
abusiveness, or both. It is here that emotional pain masks the truth of
who we are: Love Made Visible.

This aspect of the game of life is to uncover our true nature by meeting
our own unmet emotional needs. This is how Self-love is realized. Self-
love imbues others with that same love of self. We each carry different
aspects of love. We cannot give another what does not dwell within
ourselves. We are here to make our unique form of love visible…for self
and other. Imbue all whom you touch with love, asking nothing in return.