Learning About Love

When people arrive in this world, their first experience of love comes from their caretakers. Sometimes a child has enough positive love from one or more caretakers so that he or she has some frame of reference for the confident, wise, compassionate, giving kind of love.

However, since people are influenced more strongly by negativity, this positive love still might not be enough to counter the vain, illusionary, unthinking, selfish kind of love or more likely a mix of the two that most people receive. And when no beneficial example of love is available, then people are really miserable and lost.

No matter what the age, when a person sheds the childhood beliefs that makes one unhappy, a new understanding of love follows. The first person one will learn how to love on the journey to inner peace is him or herself.

Self love is believed to be bad because it is so often mistaken for the vain, ego-driven, selfish, low-self-esteem type of love, which is not love at all. Real self love is confident, accepting, giving, compassionate, genuine, wise and forgiving.

Loving occurs as a consequence of gaining inner peace. When people become their real selves, they no longer hold on to the negative emotions or behave heartlessly out of ignorance.

They have the skills to make beneficial, kind decisions. Then this ability for compassion and love can be extended to everyone, even their enemies.