Kathy gave a description of how we can drive ourselves mad, and how we can live healthily.

There is but one thing which to me seems not yet enough mentioned:
   "Self Love" implies that each of us is dissociated into at least two parts: One that loves, the other which is loved. This is nothing special, we can pat ourselves on our shoulders, and we can even accuse ourselves, as if we were two persons in one. This means, we are not like a thing, which we can point at, and it is it and that was it. The demand to love ourself insofar should make us think about what all these terms do mean alltogether.

Less theoretically, and more practically, I say about "Self Love":
-- Don't take yourself too seriously
-- After that, take the rests of yourself very seriously and analyze them, what they are
-- After that, focus on the in-between of your viewpoint and what you see as others' viewpoints.
-- After that, drop the past, drop the future, and appreciate the present. At that point, "self love" is something you can smile about. As this self has melted into the ocean of acceptance and necessity.
-- Finally, "Self-Love" turns out to be the same as "Love For Others".

  There is either love or no love: When you direct love to someone or something, you are yourself loved, when you don't love someone or something, you are, at that moment, yourself not loved, as you block it off. This is the trouble with our consciousness.


Spooky

I'd prefer just to stick with the idea expressed in the Moorjani interview, the idea of being love. If someone wants to call that self-love that may be the best they understand.

Crossbow,

Absolutely love is about as you say "concern for others, love for others, working for others, helping others."  What you appear to not understand is that the best thing anyone can do to help others and to grow spiritually... become, be love as Spooky, Lucy and others have mentioned, is to change the quality of your own being, change the quality of your own consciousness.  One does that by releasing, letting go of fear and ego.  Self-improvement is what everyone's job is.  The only one you can change is yourself.  That is why each of us is here.  By changing the quality of our self, we thereby, change the quality of the whole.  It's not about what you DO, it is about what you ARE.

Regardless of what you DO... serving your country, digging ditches, guarding prisoners, fighting fires, performing surgery, counseling patients, mopping floors, running a bank, donating food, providing shelter, etc., etc., etc... If your intent is not coming from a place of love, you are not love.  It isn't about doing, it is about the intent from which the action comes that changes our being either for better or worse.

Kathy

Thanks for debate Ladies and Gents. Your comments reveal what I should say. I hadn't said it above because I thought the above post on the function of heart and blood had made it clear. Also I didn't want to repeat myself from old posts, such as the one on the Forgiveness thread and others, but I will anyway. This will be rushed and messy typing as I have not much time. Please excuse mess/sloppy layout.

Definitions:
Love is the hearfelt wish that others learn and grow with minimum suffering.

Forgiveness is love regardless.

Help is what we do in light of love.

Descriptions:
Love has nothing to do with loving oneself. Accepting oneself, coming to terms with oneself, being thankful for what one is and has, respecting the equipment/tools/layers/bodies that have been given to us to work through, are all good and right to do. But these things are not love. We must discern.
Love originates in God.
Love is the wish of God for life.
Love flows from the heart of God, and outward to all life. 

We tune ourselves with love. We do this by aligning our will with will of love, our heartfelt wish with the wish of love, which is God's wish for life, that suffering be minimal as life proceeds with its purpose.
Man and woman's purpose is to learn and grow and find our truest self. And suffering is inevitable along the way.
God sends forth man to find himself but not into suffering with no way out, or with no comfort, or with no light. God sends his wish, which is the light and warmth of love.

We can tune ourself with love, by wishing in our heart a heartfelt wish for others to learn and grow with minimum of suffering, and love will flow into our tuned heart from in the top and rear, then flow forth out the front.
But love only flows through the heart when we open up the heart to give love forth to others.
Like the ancient symbolic arrow through the heart, love moves in only one direction.

Love flows only outward from the heart, not back upon itself.
And when the heart is opened up and love flows out to others, its radiance fills our self as well.
But that radiance of love cannot be in us before we give love forth, for love must be in flow for it to be active, otherwise it is inactive.

Our soul is like a tap, and love is like water that may flow out of the tap.
Water only flows through the tap after the tap has opened itself to give forth flow.
Before the tap has open up to give forth flow, there is no flow.
Love is a current; when love moves it exists, when it doesn't move, there is nothing there.

Liking yourself is one thing, love is another. Love is not like or dislike. These things are irrelevant to love.

Acceptance is facing something as it is; and self acceptance is facing our self as we are, is coming to terms with our self. Acceptance enables us to come to terms with things and rightly deal with them. To see them as they are, without exaggeration or diminishment. Acceptance enables us to deal with reality, not with illusions. acceptance sees the truth.
Acceptance is necessary and good, but acceptance is not love.
We must discern differences.

Love is not a human thing. It is Divine; is of God. We tune with it, we enable it to come through us, we make it move, only by giving it away. When we give love forth then love has motion, it has current, it comes to life, and from its motion comes its radiance.

Love is a living thing, not dead, not stationary. It lives and moves and has its own consciousness, its own will, its own intelligence, its own purpose. Our heart must tune accordingly if we would have love flow through our heart.

Love's flow is only ever outward. From its beginning in the heart of God, its flow has only ever been outward. God does not love himself. He does not wish well for himself. He wishes well for life; his wish, his love, flows out to others, not himself.

We can face our self just as we are, accept we are just what we are, and take our self in prayer to God. And we can present our self to God just as we. This is repentance. Repentance is taking our self-honesty to God. And with our self-honesty we take our request for love from God; for love regardless. God's love is love regardless, he will forgives. and our honesty before him is transparency before him, makes us transparent and receptive to his love regardless. We can breathe in his love, his forgiveness, we can breath it into our soul and into our heart. But we must breathe it out again, not back to God, but breathe it out to others. Just like the tap with water flowing in and through and out, so too love flows from God through us to others.

God does not send his love down dead end channels. Only opened hearts recieve and give forth love.

When we stop giving love to others, then love is not in us. Full stop.
"Loving self before you can love others", is a false teaching; a counterfeit; is a deluded trendy fantasy; it is not love. 

Love is not stationary and does not flow back upon itself.

Love is in flow, and flows only outward.

Love is not a still pool, like a pool of water; it is a current, like a stream.

To receive it, to be in love's stream, we must attune with it, attune with its will, its wish for others, its purpose, its nature. Open up and provide our self as access for love to flow to others. Then love flows through su to others and fills us as it passes through.