Being able to transcend ourselves

The first aspect of love is love of self – coming to a true selfacceptance, a true self-knowledge and then therefore being able to transcend ourselves. We can talk about this, and theologise and psychologise about it, but we need to know how to do it. I think the great gift of meditation is that it shows us, in very real personal experience, that to learn to love ourselves we have only to learn to be still, to come to stillness. As we face this mystery of love, we come to the understanding that love of self is the necessary condition enabling us to obey that commandment of Jesus: to love others, to love one another.