When I Started Loving Myself

“When I started loving myself” apparently by Charlie Chaplin written on his 70th birthday on April 16, 1959:

When I started loving myself

I’ve understood that I’m always and at any given opportunity

in the right place at the right time.

And I’ve understood that all that happens is right –

from then on I could be calm.

Today I know: It’s called TRUST.

When I started to love myself I understood how much it can offend somebody

When I try to force my desires on this person,

even though I knew the time was not right and the person was not ready for it,

and even though this person was me.

Today I know: It’s called “RESPECT”.

When I started loving myself

I could recognize that emotional pain and grief

are just warnings for me to not live against my own truth.

Today I know: It’s called AUTHENTICALLY BEING.

When I started loving myself

I have stopped longing for another life

and could see that everything around me was a request to grow.

Today I know: It’s called MATURITY.

When I started loving myself

I’ve stopped depriving myself of my free time

and I’ve stopped sketching further magnificent projects for the future.

Today I only do what’s fun and joy for me,

what I love and what makes my heart laugh,

in my own way and in my tempo.

Today I know: it’s called HONESTY.

When I started loving myself

I’ve escaped from all what wasn’t healthy for me,

from dishes, people, things, situations

and from everyhting pulling me down and away from myself.

In the beginning I called it the “healthy egoism”,

but today I know: it’s called SELF-LOVE.

When I started loving myself

I’ve stopped wanting to be always right

thus I’ve been less wrong.

Today I’ve recognized: it’s called HUMBLENESS.

When I started loving myself

I’ve refused to live further in the past

and to worry about my future.

Now I live only at this moment where EVERYTHING takes place,

like this I live every day and I call it CONSCIOUSNESS.

When I started loving myself

I recognized, that my thinking

can make me miserable and sick.

When I though requested for my heart forces,

my mind got an important partner.

I call this connection today HEART WISDOM.

We do not need to fear further discussions,

conflicts and problems with ourselves and others

since even stars sometimes bang on each other

and create new worlds.

Today I know: THIS IS THIS LIFE!

Charlie Chaplin

Mastering the Self by Shoghi Effendi

Conquering yourself

Inspiering, Conquer yourserlf, Conquer your Lower Nature
and master the self.
So that you are the one who decides where to go.


“Shoghi Effendi was a very remarkable young man, and of course
he just worshipped ‘Abdu’l-Bahá. And when ‘Abdu’l-Bahá passed
away, the whole world became dark for him. All light had gone
out. When he returned to the Holy Land, he had in mind, from the
things which ‘Abdu’l-Bahá had said to him—and I am now telling
you what he said—he said ‘I had in mind that ‘Abdu’l-Bahá would
give me the honor of . . . calling together the great conclave which
would elect the Universal House of Justice. And I thought in His
Will and Testament that that was probably what He was instructing
be done.’
“‘But,’ he said, ‘instead of that I found that I was appointed the
Guardian of the Cause of God. . . . I didn’t want to be the Guardian
of the Cause. [In the] first place, I didn’t think that I was worthy.
Next place, I didn’t want to face these responsibilities. . . . I didn’t
want to be the Guardian. I knew what it meant. I knew that my life
as a human being was over.’ He said ‘I didn’t want it and I didn’t
want to face it.’
“‘So . . . remember I left the Holy Land, and I went up into the
mountains of Switzerland, and I fought with myself until I conquered
myself. Then I came back and I turned myself over to God
and I was the Guardian.’ ‘Now,’ he said, ‘every Bahá’í in the
world, every person in the world has to do exactly that same thing.
Whether you are a Hand of the Cause, whether you are a Knight of
Bahá’u’lláh, whether you are a member of a National Assembly,
whether you are a teacher, whether you are a pioneer, whether you
are an administrator, regardless of what you are, whatever you are
doing in the Cause, every Bahá’í must fight with himself and conquer
himself. And when he has conquered himself, then he becomes a
true instrument for the service of the Cause of God—and not until
that. And he will not achieve as great a success until he has done it.
And this is what every Bahá’í in the world should know.’
“And this is one of the main things I want you to get out of this
talk tonight and bear out of this talk: the Guardian’s instructions
that every individual must fight with himself, must conquer himself,
must overcome his lower nature, must overcome himself, and turn
himself over to God so that the Holy Spirit can function through
you. And when the Holy Spirit functions through you then you will
gain victory after victory. Because the Holy Spirit is the creative
aspect of God and it cannot do other than win victories and make
successes for the Cause.”
—from a talk given by Hand of the Cause of God Leroy Ioas, In the Days of the Guardian