Artist. Author. Creator & Philosopher.

What if you could never experience the love external to yourself that you so greatly want because you have never taught your subconscious what that love looks like? You know, we manifest everything that we experience. Every person, every word, and everything that we see is a manifestation. As within, so without. Every person and every experience is just our subconscious being expressed outwardly.

So, I'm thinking, why do I want a relationship? Why do I want to experience love? Why is that such a desire inside of me? I think about when I wanted to have children. All my life, I wanted my own family. I wanted to have kids. I wanted to be a dad, and I wanted to be a better dad than my own father. I wanted to show the world, show my family, and show myself that I could be a good father. I wanted to love someone outside of myself so wonderfully that they become something great.

And now I ask myself again, why do we want a relationship so desperately? More specifically, there is a certain person that I desire. But in that case, it is irrelevant, because ultimately, I'm open to anyone coming into my life and giving me the relationship that I desire. But as I was stating earlier, what does that mean? What does that look like?

Then you get into the idea that everything you are experiencing is your subconscious being expressed outwardly. If you want a specific type of relationship, that is your conscious mind speaking. But if you're not getting that, it's because subconsciously, you have blocks. Subconsciously, you may not believe you deserve it. You may be scared or frightened. So, how do you fix that? Well, you need to teach your subconscious what that love looks like. What does the love that you so desperately desire actually look like?

This leads right into self-love. What does loving yourself look like? It's not just pampering yourself. It's not just combing your hair, brushing your teeth, doing your makeup, putting on nice clothes, or having a good job. That isn't what it's about. It's about keeping your word. It's about building your body, maintaining it, and treating it with love, respect, and dignity. It's about holding your boundaries. It's about always putting your needs and desires above anyone and everyone else's. It's about respecting the fact that you are ultimately not just an individual, but a part of something greater and bigger than yourself. You are a fragment of God experiencing Himself.

Self-love is so much more than what they say. It is a very deep and complex thing to do and experience. But I think when we start to really love ourselves—really give ourselves the attention, the love, the respect, the dignity, and the honor that we deserve, want, and need—that's when a love external to us can come and express that back to us in an outward fashion. Remember, everything starts inward. Everything starts with how you feel and think about yourself.

How you feel and think about yourself in the beginning is a product of your external life. It is a product of your parents, your friends, school, and society. But the older you get, the more you live, experience, and learn, the more you begin to realize that how you feel about yourself is completely up to you.

For example, say I hate the way my body looks. Alright, well, what am I doing about it? Nothing. I don't feel like exercising. I don't see the results fast enough, so I give up. I don't want to stop eating junk food because it feels good. All these things are you talking to yourself. It's you teaching your subconscious and telling yourself exactly how you feel about yourself. Your inner self—your higher being—is telling you, "I don't feel good. I don't like this body. This is not the body that I'm supposed to have. I feel like you're disrespecting me." And you, as the lower self, are saying to your higher self, "I don't care what you want or how you feel. I want to do what I want to do right now."

Another example: Your higher self is telling you, "I don't want to sleep around. I don't want to have sex with multiple people. I want a monogamous relationship. I don't want to be somebody's side piece or be with someone who is cheating on me." But you are so frightened of being alone, so frightened of not being chosen by the person you desire, that you just continue doing what you're doing, ignoring and hurting your higher self.

You can never experience the love that you've been giving to others because you have not been giving it to yourself. And that's the part that hurts the most. Because you've been giving that love to other people, your subconscious knows that you are capable of giving that love. It's saying to your smaller self, "I know you can love the way I want to be loved, but you're not loving me that way. You just keep giving it to other people. Not cool."

This disconnect is where the self-hatred, the self-anger, the depression, the sadness, and the self-loathing come from. It creates the victim mentality, the "woe is me," and the thought that other people always get the life you want to live. The jealousy and envy come from the fact that your subconscious knows it could have this. It knows it could be this because it sees you giving it to others. It wonders, "Why don't you give it to me?"

That's why I believe the only way to ever experience the external love that you want so badly is to literally give that love to yourself first. By doing so, you teach your subconscious that you deserve this love because you are giving it to yourself. You show it what that love looks like and how you want to be loved. You also prove that this love is safe. It's not going anywhere, and it will never leave, because you have been giving it to yourself consistently and you will not stop. And even when someone external to you begins to give you the love you deserve, you will keep giving it to yourself. So now, you're getting it from two separate places: internally from yourself, and externally from them.