Can we love ourselves? – HOPE acronym
Any other questions I spoke today on this topic of can we love ourselves so I talked started by talking about how some people may misunderstand humility to hating oneself or looking down at oneself but I talked about the whole background in H was humility so humility is not so much looking down at ourselves as looking up at something bigger than ourselves so humility means that we don't let our ego come in the way of our purpose we don't we understand that there are bigger things in life than we and as we grow we start thinking more and more of those bigger things a baby is always self-centered it doesn't even know about others existence but as the baby grows we are expected to think about others similarly as we evolve we in humility that means not that we beat ourselves down and look down at ourselves but that we look at something bigger than ourselves and focus on that as a center as a center of our life and what is that bigger thing that the needs to be covered all was what optimism optimism doesn't mean simply everything is good everything is good optimism means that each of us are a part of the divine so even if I have any bad things around me at my core there is a divine spark there is spiritual potential that we have the potential to become better than what we are right now and optimism also means that with us there is God who is there to help us when we try to become better so just think of a parent loves their child as they are right now and the parent also looks forward to manifesting the child's potential so similar to self-love means we accept ourselves right now but we also look forward to what we can become how we can unfold our potential so that each of us can make a difference that our life comes that we no matter how small we may be we have the potential to make a difference that is optimism and P is purpose so I talked about how pleasure is too cheap and too fragile a purpose to sustain us through life we could just watch comedies for the rest of our life we can bore more zombies to meet I have too much troubles come in our life there's no pleasure we feel what is the point of it but purpose comes by taking up responsibility for something bigger than ourselves and when we think of the responsibility and pleasure comes as a by-product not as a product and when we look for pleasure we get troubles the search for happiness is often the cause of greatest unhappiness so the purpose as the Bhagavad Gita tells us to evolve spiritually evolve evolve in our capacity for wisdom and our capacity for emotion and that means that every one of us can become a channel for God to act through us that brought us to the last part e was enthusiasm enthusiasm means to have God within us and to be on fire with God's within us and that God can act even through us that is something which can energize us no matter how much darkness there might be around us and my ultimate adventure is to discover how much good we can do when we strive to live in harmony with God when we get out of God's way within our heart is from being an insulator or a conductor when you become a conductor we know we all can do bad but how much good can we do discovering that is life's ultimate adventure and opening ourselves to that adventure is the healthy way to show self-respect not by demanding that others respect me but by respecting myself as a vehicle by which something bigger than me can act through me and readying myself to become that vehicle that is the healthy way to respect ourselves to love ourselves and we can go with Prabhupada's example of how he in an old age when most people would be jaded with repeated reversals in life he was on fire and he did miracles in the last 20 years of his life infusing millions and trillions with higher consciousness and he is an example of a healthy self-regard by which each one of us can become a vehicle for the divine to make positive efforts in the world thank you very much Hare Krishna.