“Learning to love yourself
is the greatest love of all.”

Card Meaning in the Illuminated Pole

+ Amor Primera

(Self Respect, Self Esteem, Nurturing, Amity, Disciplined, Reflective, Self Trusting)

1. Care and integrity must be observed in providing oneself the attention that is nurturing but also invigorating. If you are being drained, where are you off balance?
2. The right mix of respect, esteem and compassion for oneself is the Amour Propre. Preserve your life and dignity while being available to others. Find the balance!
3. This card signifies that your dignity is at stake. Make sure to preserve your values not your Ego.

Quotations Illustrating the Concept in this pole

• “Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are feeling, love yourself for feeling it.” ~Thaddeus Golas
• “The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.” ~ E. E. Cummings
• “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” ~ Joseph Campbell
• “Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets. ” Henry A. Kissinger
• “Appreciation and self-love are the most important tools that you could ever nurture. Appreciation of others, and the appreciation of yourself is the closest vibrational match to your Source Energy of anything that we’ve ever witnessed anywhere in the Universe.” ~Abraham
• “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.”~ Walt Whitman

Card Meaning in the Shadow Pole

– Narcissism

(Self-Indulgence, enamored, self-absorbed,  selfish,  myopic, disinterested)

1.  Obsessive inward focus is Narcissism. Are you indulging yourself instead of pushing yourself? Has your attention fixated on you instead of the other person or project? Move energy outward making something or someone else the focus of your love. Focus on your performance, not on how you appear when doing it.
2. “It’s all about me!” – In a nutshell, wherever this card lands…the issue is with you!

Quotations Illustrating the Concept in this pole

• “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.” ~ W.C. Fields
• “I don’t like myself, I’m crazy about myself”~  Mae West
• “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance” ~ Oscar Wilde
• “Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers”~ François de la Rochefoucauld
• “We are wont to condemn self-love; but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves.”~ Paul Valery

 Relevance in the Michael Teaching

Self-love does not require loving others less. In fact, the more love that fills the cistern of your being, of yourself and by yourself, its abundance makes a supply more available for everyone!

Michael’s emphasis on Self Love connects this proposition to the fact that the experience of love occurs first within one’s own psyche, not as a phenomenon outside the Self. People may give, receive, reject or withhold love, but the supply one can offer originates within each person and the alchemy between the two persons either increases or reduces the overall vibration of it in the space between them. Thus, Michael’s intent to help us increase AGAPE, must therefore be advanced on a per person basis, each allowing the creation and exchange of love in themselves as the forerunner of a group affiliation built upon fealty, or philo, of familia.

The Overleaves and Soul Age conceptual framework and descriptions are meant to illuminate that many characteristics that one is born with are indeed fundamental to them and innate in their nature. The hope is that knowledge of these underlying native qualities will initially relieve a person of feelings of inadequacy believing that they might lack something which fits into a certain cultural or familial mold. With the result being a reduced tendency to condemn oneself and thus gain more understanding, acceptance and compassion for oneself; and by extension others who struggle with the same issues.

But there is more than relief and acceptance promised in this arrangement of descriptions. Second, and for more vital than relief to one’s well being, is the significant signposts for personal optimization and self actualization that this knowledge can bring, elevating your awareness of both content and function of who you are.  And when you know your potential, how it operates, and the up-sides and down-sides of the control panel; it makes you a more viable entity when striving to make headway in achieving the life you desire.

And, if Self Love is given, not with a blanket malaise of self indulgence nor obsessive self involvement, but with an attitude of awe, appreciation, reverence for the vast multitude of experiences that people have had and the knowledge they can then pass-on; a self perpetuating cycle of refreshment is established and maintained.

 Cultural Meaning

The celebration and enjoyment of one’s own life, talents, and appreciation for these gifts is the foundation for Self Love.  Amour Propre is the concept where their is an integral balance between the respecting one’s own needs and thus the boundaries or limits one must set to insure their fulfillment. Behaviors that achieve this state with a recognition that you are the first person you rely upon and yet your relationships refresh you as well, this esteem for self and others supports a healthy psychological and emotional environment within one’s Soloverse.  When the body is charged with vitality to sustain itself and ensure endurance when times are stressful,  Self Love becomes actions that show realistic assessment of one’s state of well being and proper nurturing of genuine needs.

When self involvement becomes obsessive, then you are captured like Narcissus with enchantment and exclusively absorbed in one’s own drama. Narcissistic tendencies may not always appear as overt vanity or arrogance, but an inability to transfer out of your own experience and empathize with another.

The phrase “oh, its always about you” is appropriately applied to anyone caught in the negative pole.  Solipsism is the view that everything starts and ends with oneself. In such a case, care for another is virtually non-existent or it is acted out in order to approve of oneself or gain the favor of another for your own selfish gain.  These motives and actions are based solely upon the inner drive to validate some insatiable desire. Compassion for another is virtually impossible.

It is high time to be aware that only the esteem and love gained from healthy appreciation of and reverence for the value of one’s own life can create the kind of strength, willingness, courage and compassion necessary for challenges as a culture and even a race we face. Only love is greater that the forces of competition that come from scarcity. When love is in abundance then nothing is insurmountable.

Love is an inside job!

by Stephen Cocconi © 2012

For a Tarot Session or Channeled Consultation call: 209.768-4956 or email Stephen at channeling@themichaelteaching.com