We cannot love others until we have laid this foundation of being able to love ourselves. Or to put it another way, because it isn’t just black and white like that, the degree to which we can love ourselves is the degree to which we can love others. It’s very challenging because some psychologists tell us that the ego has most of its defence mechanisms in place by the age of three. By that age, we don’t have much control over what we do or what we’re like. But we have time and we have to use the time we have to the best possible advantage, and this little mechanism of the ego is necessary for this. It’s necessary for the first and second stages of learning to love. We need the ego to love ourselves; we need the ego to love others.
( Aspects of Love 2 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
