Typically, I will become infatuated with a person that I fall in love with. While being in love dictates some of this infatuation as normal, I can now see how I can get hurt when my focus on others is out of balance. As I look back in my life, I have seen this focus on another be out of bounds and out of balance. This isn’t a focus on ideas or things like a obsessive compulsive disorder. It is always about a woman I fall for. She will be all I can think about. Every decision tends to have her involved somehow. I’m not sure if this is from the lack of touch, attention and love as a child. I surely wanted closeness to a mother or family my whole life. I think it is a nurturing or lack of that I experienced when young and I was taught by a person with no idea about balance that I must love others more than myself.
I remember a specific situation where I won the opportunity to choose any instrument to play when the elementary school band started in fifth grade. I had the second highest score on the music test. I could choose any instrument to play and I chose the drums. As I have this empathetic streak in my bones, a friend begged me to let him have my drum spot. My mother told me to give him the opportunity rather than satisfy my desires. This haunted me until I understood the Divine Wisdom of how everything is purposeful and meant to bring us to this point of who we are now. This reminds me of how we can choose to be brand new in this present moment and not allow our history to affect who we are now. I was angry and resentful of this situation for a long time until I understood the present moment and our relationship to historical events.
All I know is that my entire life I’ve been trying to seek love and acceptance from others. I haven’t had much of a support system growing up adopted and not close to either my bio or adopted family. I keep my friend circle pretty small these days. This is by choice in regard to friends. I enjoy my time alone, however I surely need to stay connected as we are all one. So, I think that my role here in this lifetime is to understand how to love myself since I have been seeking connection and acceptance my whole life. I am to be balanced. I am to love my neighbor as myself. I have spoken of this Bible verse in past writings. How can I love anyone without loving myself first … this is what this verse is speaking of. I need the balance to love myself and in turn, I will bring goodness to others. Not love myself more than others or love others more than myself.
What I realized, is that I need to have the focus on myself that I have on a lover or partner. I tend to give more than I receive. Maybe that is a subconscious move that if I give then they should be reciprocal and give back. Typically, our culture says that is selfish and wrong to focus on ourselves. Remember selfish is when someone tells you the way that you’re supposed to do it. Not you doing what you want to do the way you want to do it. So if we were to give ourselves a focus so that we can fill our cup, then we need to even claim infatuation with ourselves. We are all the center of our own universes and that’s okay until it becomes out of balance. Unfortunately, out of balance is me focusing on others more than myself and so sort of an opposite of a narcissist. It seems the definition of selfish is the problem with so many people not focusing on loving and giving to themselves. Infatuated with yourself sounds crazy, but it one half of the balance of Love.
The opposite of a narcissist is often considered to be an altruist or a selfless person. This may be provocative, but I say that being an altruist is completely out of balance as well. It is actually wrong to be an altruist if this is an excessive focus on others and an out of balance attention to yourself. 50/50 is the balance. Keep in mind that when you are doing for others and you are receiving love and gratification, then you are doing for yourself first. When you do for others and resent it, then you are out of balance and not giving to yourself. This obviously requires work and an undoing of what we have been taught. We must be concerned about the well-being of others, but we must let all people choose for themselves their Path and daily decisions. We can have empathy for ourselves and others. We can have humility while being “infatuated” with ourselves. Of course, having a genuine desire to help others without expecting anything in return is beautiful and perfect and part of the balance. I desire to learn how to form genuine, reciprocal relationships that are balanced and equal in attention.
There is going to be a lot of falling down and scraping my knee as I practice this reciprocal infatuation. I believe in daily practice to be excellent at anything. I must learn how to reprogram the past dogma I adopted in my life. Affirmations or verbal cues will help reprogram me. I have to claim what I do well. Saying that I am good at something is factual and true, not egotistical. Allowing compliments and listening to an outside perspective helps as well. Those of us that went through harsh criticism as a child tend to internalize and use those words against ourselves as adults.
I will learn how to have balance and view myself fairly without self-criticism and I will have to be patient with my growth. I am so thankful for relearning and deprogramming based on the Divine Wisdom given to us all. Redefine the words selfishness and infatuation. Go beyond language. We are to Love ourselves as we Love God.
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