“Learning to love yourself
is the greatest love of all.”

Whitney Houston

Self Love is the full cup you draw from to share with others.

Symbols and Color

• Background Position: When the clouds part, and the endless blue sky of possibility shows through, one can grasp the magnificence of all that is. But it is the clouds, sometimes beautiful in their intricacy and other times ominous in their foreboding; that either distort, or magnificently accent, the vastness of the sky or dim the light behind them. In one’s Soloverse, the skies can be clear or overcast, but it is the view of your life which is reflected within.
• Border Color: Brown – A member of the Augment Group.
• Treasure Chest: There is gold inside each of us. Our connection to the TAO happens in love. We may love or hate parts of ourselves.
• Symbol of the self-obsessed Ego watching its own performance.

Implications of Upright Position or Positive Pole

Amor Primera is a concept channeled by the Consortium meaning “first love and love first.” It is a powerful, yet nuanced word about love Self Love being the wellspring within the individual which both generates and amplifies amity and affinity. When in full, there is no distinction between self and other since the shared experience surrounds all. The man holding the mirror is not fixated on what he sees, but rather sparkles with a smile that who he sees is joyful, alive, and full of gratitude. The act of reflection is to look at what one sees and render a proper conclusion, a discernment, (Card 8 – Discrimination) about the image they behold. When one is in accord with oneself, free of the need to project an image and unshaped by the social conditions which they operate, Essence bubbles forth that right mix of respect, appreciation, gratitude, love, concern, and boundaries, to encapsulate a person in a milieu of nourishing spiritual nutrients. There is no lack, no hoarding just radian’s of shared humanity, and indeed the essence of life force itself (Card 58 – Soul-Spirit).

Card Meaning in the Illuminated Pole

+ Amor Primera

(First Love, Love first, Self Respect, Self Esteem, Nurturing, Amity, Disciplined, Reflective, Self Trusting, Balanced, Self Regard)

1. Care and integrity must be observed in providing oneself the attention that is nurturing but also invigorating. If you are being drained, where are you off balance?
2. The right mix of respect, esteem and compassion for oneself is the Amor Primera. Preserve your life and dignity while being available to others. Find the balance!
3. This card signifies that your dignity is at stake. Make sure to preserve your values not your Ego’s need to be right, proper, or held in social esteem or rank.
4. Amor Primera deepens when your thoughts and actions are congruent with the values you love and the principles you espouse. When these are in alignment, then you live in a state of enlivenment.
5. Love originates in the wellspring of your own soul. When your ‘cup runneth over’ there is more to share and everyone gains. 
6. Self Love is a remarkable thing. All love generates surplus and costs nothing. Only selfishness is interested in extracting an exchange or taking something before it gives. Loving yourself is the practical way to insure that you also have an abundant supply to share with others. 
7. Self Care is invigorating. Nurture yourself in a healthy way and it will strengthen your health and integrity. Experience the joie-de-virve, it is FREE!
8. Arriving at self-love might require a personal regimen to determine the right mix of respect, esteem and compassion for oneself. Preserve your life and dignity while being available to others. (See the Tightrope of Awareness).
9. Doing your best is an expression of your integrity and diligence. But it is also a show of care you have for the other person as well as yourself, because you gave it your all.
10. Amity: an open energy of friendship, goodwill, and invitation to engage, is all you need remember. No show or persona is necessary. Be yourself knowing that you are enough, wanted, and genuinely unique. The alchemy catalyzed by of that vibration will turn lead into gold.
11. When your cup runneth over, you have an abundance to share. There is no such thing as too much love, just too little.
12. “Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are feeling, love yourself for feeling it.” Thaddeus Golas, The Lazy Man’s Guide to Enlightenment. Everyone makes errors; they are only sins if you condemn yourself for them.
13. Old Soul, Walt Whitman, realized the importance of self-appreciation in
    his poem “Leaves of Grass”. He wrote, “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.” It is OK to cheer yourself on. You deprive no one else of their standing, yet, you find a promontory from which to marvel at life.
14. Mae West passionately declared, “I don’t like myself, I’m crazy about myself!” Give yourself your first passion. She also famously said, “Why don’t you come up and see me sometime.” You might as well be your most frequent consort.

Quotations Illustrating the Concept in this pole

• “Whatever you are doing, love yourself for doing it. Whatever you are feeling, love yourself for feeling it.” ~Thaddeus Golas
• “The hardest challenge is to be yourself in a world where everyone is trying to make you be somebody else.” ~ E. E. Cummings
• “The privilege of a lifetime is being who you are.” ~ Joseph Campbell
• “Accept everything about yourself – I mean everything, You are you and that is the beginning and the end – no apologies, no regrets. ” Henry A. Kissinger
• “Appreciation and self-love are the most important tools that you could ever nurture. Appreciation of others, and the appreciation of yourself is the closest vibrational match to your Source Energy of anything that we’ve ever witnessed anywhere in the Universe.” ~Abraham
• “I celebrate myself, and sing myself.”~ Walt Whitman

Implications of the Reversed Position or Negative Pole

Appearances and projection of image is one of the ways that the Narcissism of extreme Ego veneration  can bring. This photo is of a historic reenactor at the Palace of Versailles in France (photo by Stephen Cocconi), where “pomp” revealed circumstance in ways that showcased spectacle and hedonism; both aspects of one sort of Ego aggrandizement. The Ego (negative pole of Personality Card 56) is not inherently bad nor evil, but it is always oriented to how it is perceived from the outside which can lead one to may distorted adaptations. Today, this man from 250 years ago, would be considered a “poser” then called a sycophant.  It is difficult to maintain an image if substance is lacking.

Card Meaning in the Shadow Pole

– Narcissism

(Self-Indulgence, enamored, self-absorbed,  selfish, internalized, hiding, dissociative, solipsistic, enamored, unaware, self-conscious, checked-out, myopic, disinterested, sociopaths, neurosis)

1.  Obsessive inward focus is Narcissism. Are you indulging yourself instead of pushing yourself? Has your attention fixated on you instead of the other person or project? Move energy outward making something or someone else the focus of your love. Focus on your performance, not on how you appear when doing it.
2. Are you indulging yourself instead of pushing yourself? Being self-involved does nothing.
3. Most religions cast “self-love” as narcissism, or worse, that caring for yourself somehow robs God of your attention and affection. This is a disservice to any Deity worth worshiping and to the millions of poor souls who sold self care for subservience. What replaces this dearth of necessary worth is the sneaky Chief Feature(s) which desperately try to get needs met while living behind a disguise.
4. It doesn’t take a great deal of effort to care for oneself. But many people think that indulging their desires equates to giving yourself what need.  Often, it is weighing you down materially without feeling fulfillment spiritually.
5. “It’s all about me!” – In a nutshell, wherever this card lands, the issue is with, or about, you!
6. Ok, now you’ve done it! You are posing for the winner’s circle way before you have reached it. Get over yourself! Think about who you owe?
7. Narcissists are myopic and exclusionary. For them, others are a tool to use or to place blame. Someone is targeting another to be the fall-guy.
8. Anyone with true love of their own lives, cannot have it at the expense of another. In this way, the axiom “we are all one” is equated to “we are all connected.” If you require someone to love you so you can feel OK, you are playing a zero-sum game at best, but probably a parasitism at worst. Ego-esteem is not the same as true personal dignity. Acknowledge genuine interdependency but distinguish it from dependency. 
9. It’s all about me! In a nutshell, wherever this card lands…the issue is with, or about, you!
10. Are you indulging yourself instead of pushing yourself? Primping your ego does nothing.
11. This card signifies that your dignity is at stake. Make sure to preserve your values not your position.
12. A narcissist is a person primarily motivated by an indulgent Ego. Other people become mere tools to fulfill their entitlement. The group of which you are part isn’t owning up to some element of this. Are you? To get it out in the open, ask someone else’s opinion on the subject!
13. Neurotics seldom conduct themselves with awareness, respect, or compassion. They can’t see it or find it, because Chief Features rule the day and Maya (– Card 69) is everywhere.
14. Are you indulging yourself instead of pushing yourself?
15. If you are feeling drained, where are you off balance?
16. An indulgent Ego seldom conducts itself with awareness, respect, or compassion for others. It is usually predicated upon the belief that nothing will ever be better than what it can, do, make, or take for itself. Not necessarily selfish, but definitely engrained in solipsism that goes unchallenged.

Quotations Illustrating the Concept in this pole

• “It ain’t what they call you, it’s what you answer to.” ~ W.C. Fields
• “I don’t like myself, I’m crazy about myself”~  Mae West
• “To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance” ~ Oscar Wilde
• “Self-love is the greatest of all flatterers”~ François de la Rochefoucauld
• “We are wont to condemn self-love; but what we really mean to condemn is contrary to self-love. It is that mixture of selfishness and self-hate that permanently pursues us, that prevents us from loving others, and that prohibits us from losing ourselves.”~ Paul Valery

 Relevance in the Michael Teaching

Self-love does not require loving others less. In fact, the more love that fills the cistern of your being, of yourself and by yourself, its abundance makes a supply more available for everyone!

Michael’s emphasis on Self Love connects this proposition to the fact that the experience of love occurs first within one’s own psyche, not as a phenomenon outside the Self. People may give, receive, reject or withhold love, but the supply one can offer originates within each pers

on and the alchemy between the two persons either increases or reduces the overall vibration of it in the space between them. Thus, Michael’s intent to help us increase AGAPE, must therefore be advanced on a per person basis, each allowing the creation and exchange of love in themselves as the forerunner of a group affiliation built upon fealty, or philo, of familia.

The Overleaves and Soul Age conceptual framework and descriptions are meant to illuminate that many characteristics that one is born with are indeed fundamental to them and innate in their nature. The hope is that knowledge of these underlying native qualities will initially relieve a person of feelings of inadequacy believing that they might lack something which fits into a certain cultural or familial mold. With the result being a reduced tendency to condemn oneself and thus gain more understanding, acceptance and compassion for oneself; and by extension others who struggle with the same issues.

But there is more than relief and acceptance promised in this arrangement of descriptions. Second, and for more vital than relief to one’s well being, is the significant signposts for personal optimization and self actualization that this knowledge can bring, elevating your awareness of both content and function of who you are.  And when you know your potential, how it operates, and the up-sides and down-sides of the control panel; it makes you a more viable entity when striving to make headway in achieving the life you desire.

And, if Self Love is given, not with a blanket malaise of self indulgence nor obsessive self involvement, but with an attitude of awe, appreciation, reverence for the vast multitude of experiences that people have had and the knowledge they can then pass-on; a self perpetuating cycle of refreshment is established and maintained.

 Cultural Meaning

The celebration and enjoyment of one’s own life, talents, and appreciation for these gifts is the foundation for Self Love.  Amour Propre is the concept where their is an integral balance between the respecting one’s own needs and thus the boundaries or limits one must set to insure their fulfillment. Behaviors that achieve this state with a recognition that you are the first person you rely upon and yet your relationships refresh you as well, this esteem for self and others supports a healthy psychological and emotional environment within one’s Soloverse.  When the body is charged with vitality to sustain itself and ensure endurance when times are stressful,  Self Love becomes actions that show realistic assessment of one’s state of well being and proper nurturing of genuine needs.

When self involvement becomes obsessive, then you are captured like Narcissus with enchantment and exclusively absorbed in one’s own drama. Narcissistic tendencies may not always appear as overt vanity or arrogance, but an inability to transfer out of your own experience and empathize with another.

The phrase “oh, its always about you” is appropriately applied to anyone caught in the negative pole.  Solipsism is the view that everything starts and ends with oneself. In such a case, care for another is virtually non-existent or it is acted out in order to approve of oneself or gain the favor of another for your own selfish gain.  These motives and actions are based solely upon the inner drive to validate some insatiable desire. Compassion for another is virtually impossible.

It is high time to be aware that only the esteem and love gained from healthy appreciation of and reverence for the value of one’s own life can create the kind of strength, willingness, courage and compassion necessary for challenges as a culture and even a race we face. Only love is greater that the forces of competition that come from scarcity. When love is in abundance then nothing is insurmountable.

Love is an inside job!

by Stephen Cocconi © 2011, Updated, 2024

For a Motivation Cards Readings or Channeled Consultation call: 209.768-4956 or email Stephen at channeling@themichaelteaching.com