What heals the wounds of division is love. Love unites, unifies and heals the wound of the divided self. It overcomes the deep wounds of our alienation. It simplifies us. This is the real meaning of love of self, and why, as Fr John taught us, we have to begin with ourselves. In saying this, in a sense, he was saying nothing new. It is the very teaching of the Christian contemplative spiritual tradition, that our knowledge of God must begin with our knowledge of ourselves, that to know God we must know ourselves. As St Augustine said, we must first of all be restored to ourselves, so that we can then become a “stepping stone” and transcend ourselves and rise to God. What meditation teaches us is that we can only love ourselves if we can accept ourselves as we are; if we can recognise and see our wholeness, and put the dark side into the picture and accept that dark side as part of it.
(Aspects of Love 2 by Laurence Freeman OSB )
