True Love Begins Within: The Power of Falling in Love with Your Higher Self

“Merry Mana”: Musings of a spirit in search of paradise

By Marya Mann, PhD

“…thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” – Leviticus 19:18

We’re sometimes so busy looking outward, to find ways, means and mana, we can forget to look inward.

The Golden Rule says to love others as we love ourselves, but how do we love ourselves?

Of all the kinds of love that breed goodness in the world—the romantic tryst, Platonic affection, the child’s worship for life that begins with his first tiny grasp of a parent’s finger, or loving service to a higher cause—they all rest on the shoulders of how we love and care for ourselves.

Celebrated Kona author and energy therapist Peri Coeurtney Enkin is something of a prophet in the field of loving ourselves—our higher selves, actually.

The higher self, described by psychologist Carl Jung as the “central unifying archetype around which all other archetypes are grouped and ordered,” is also known as the soul, spirit, muse, aumakua, or daimon.

The higher self is the center point, the inner power that naturally motivates us to create and become the most ideal form, person, or psychic pattern we can imagine.

Like Dr. Jung, Ms. Enkin embarked on a personal quest to find her own higher self. Out of her quest came a book that may mightily lighten your heart: Love Letters from Your Higher Self; and a workbook, Dancing with the Universe.

“Sometimes the higher self speaks in poetry or metaphor,” she says, “or the eloquent expression of visions and pictures, but the tone is always kind and full of appreciation and acceptance.”

“Conditioned values are not always right,” she said. “Instead, we take the inner journey of self-revelation and truth-telling to get to the core inside.”

One prevalent philosophy holds that we must first care for others to learn compassion, but Ms. Enkin feels that loving the self comes first, akin to being on an airplane when the steward says you need to put the oxygen mask over your own face before putting a mask on your child. Take care of your inner self first. From a state of balance and inner ease, you naturally contribute to a healthy world.

“When we are not in love with ourselves,” she said, “we lose energy, we lose mana, we feel depleted and we’re going through life on half-steam. We don’t have all our resources, the full fountain of well-being. When we generate self-love, we’re tapping into the universal source of mana. Self-love is the doorway to mana.”

“What’s your definition of love?” I asked.

“Nobody ever stops to think about it. Love is four letters, and one way to bring it alive is to look at each of the letters as meaning something: Living Our Visions and Values Expressed. Through a process of self-inquiry, we find there’s a core, a natural aliveness, an emotional experience, a resonance, a knowing of what matters to us and what doesn’t. What’s aligned and what’s not. The movement of love into action in our lives has an active, expressive quality.”

We ought to have as many words for love, I thought, as the Hawaiian language has for water, or the Eskimos have for snow. One’s love for coconut milk curry or a new boogie board isn’t the same kind of love one has for yoga, your mother, or your higher self, is it?

“When we fall in love with self, we’re content, we take care of own inner needs. We can love and help better because we’re not coming from a needy place. There’s a natural rising of desire to contribute to a greater self for others.”

“How do you love yourself?” I asked.

“First, by understanding the value of it. It’s not just for me, but for all my relationships. In loving myself, I’m gifting all the people in my life. When it’s for all my relations, it removes my need for people to be any particular way.”

I checked in with my muse, my higher self, and heard. “Yes, by loving ourselves, we naturally care for others around us. Now, take care of yourself. Go outside in the sunshine.”

How could I resist? I took my muse for a stroll through Kona and decided to inquire what other West Hawaiians thought about falling in love with the higher self. Was it some kind of new-age, psycho-hocus-pocus, or deep wisdom that would connect me more deeply to my muse? As I ambled down Alii Drive, I thought perhaps other gods and goddesses could be trying to communicate with me, in the here and now, if I would only look closely enough, and listen. I stopped at the Royal Kona Resort, where Matesh Banthia, yogi and owner/operator of The Lotus Center, agreed with Ms. Enkin: “If people would only take care of themselves, the world would be fine.”

I asked if he was doing anything special for Valentine’s Day, the most important day of the year for love.

“Every day is the most important time for love,” he said. “365 days a year.”

As I searched and asked people what loving their Higher Selves meant, they referred to something unchangeable that connects us all.

Near a flowering poinsettia tree by the sea, I asked Barbara Moore what she was doing at Dragonfly Ranch for Valentine’s Day. She said they’re holding a “Be Your Own Valentine” contest for written vows to your Inner Self. As people write these vows, they can heal, she said. “We have to marry the immortal parts of ourselves, the part of us that lasts forever, after we die.” Written, possibly even sung or danced, these vows to love your Higher Self always, witnessed by a loving community, could uplift a person forever, I thought.

So Loving Your Self could bring not only peace and health, but authenticity, poetic beauty, humor.

Higher Self Art!

My spine tingled. Chicken skin spread down my arms as I felt an unconditional wisdom and comfort available to us when we slow down enough to listen.

I felt the warm sun on my face as I walked north to the Kona Inn Shopping Village, where Bosco, the One-Man-Band, has played his eclectic music for two decades. He spoke with me in between Elton John and Beatles love songs. “You run into your self everywhere you go,” he said. “It’s all self-love, unconditional love for everything.”

A near-death experience led him to uncover acute, visceral knowledge about love. Facing the danger of losing everything, a deeper love for life blossomed.

He is not alone. Ms. Enkin also uncovered many of her deepest truths about love after a near-death experience. “It was a spiritual crisis where I actually left my body,” she said. “I met my higher self and had an experience of what it was like to be fully loved, so [the process of] living was changed.”

Don’t wait to die to know about this kind of love. The love we can share begins right now, with the thoughts we have, and what we choose to pay attention to. Thinking I love myself and others with joy and ease can bring a lot more traction to the consciousness quest than thinking it’s hard to love myself.

“The shift to self-love is about becoming internally based rather than externally reactive,” said Ms. Enkin. In the grand adventure of life, she says, some days will be rainy and we’ll be tramping through the mud. Some days will be sunny and blissful. “It’s all about how I’m internally seeing my experience,” she said.

If you love who you really are, not what someone else has said you should love, this changeless, loving core of being will develop and grow. Do it now. Getting to know your higher self may be the most significant step you can take to fully enjoy the rest of your life, and like higher consciousness, it’s certain to bring you higher love — 365 days a year. ❖