Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself…We have all heard of this advice, right? And we try our best to do it, right?
As I’ve gone through the decades of my life, I’ve asked many questions of myself about this statement. Does it mean ‘turn the other cheek’, even if ‘my neighbor’ is being rude? Does it mean ‘love thy neighbor’ only when they are behaving the way I think is acceptable? After all, we don’t want to encourage bad behavior by being nice, even though ‘my neighbor’ is misbehaving. It’s hard to love, even on good days and especially when we don’t feel like it because we can hardly stand ourselves today!
And that for me was the answer. Sure, we can ‘fake it ’til you make it’. You know, pretend until the real thing comes in. That will work for a while. People will eventually feel it, though.
I believe the prerequisite for loving thy neighbor is loving yourself.
I’m not talking about self-care. Although a lot of us could use self-care, i.e., alone time, meditation to be in touch with our Higher Power, spa day, mani/pedi. Self-care is a part of loving yourself. And I’ve seen a lot of people through my life who have practiced regular self-care who did not love themselves. Welcome to the human race! If it were easy, everyone would be doing it!
Real love for yourself starts with talking to yourself the same way you would talk to someone you are encouraging to succeed. Let’s stop abusing ourselves! Real love for yourself looks like you deciding how you feel, instead of allowing what others say and do to determine how you feel.
Venus, the planet of love is in Virgo right now. That is a tough place for Venus to be when you want to start loving yourself because Virgo energy can be nit-picky and perfectionistic. It sees all the imperfections. It is its strength and its challenge. Virgo is also healing energy. So, we can see all the things we want to change in preparation for Venus moving into Libra on September 30 when we can be aware of not judging ourselves and lock into all the beauty and balance in the world. Libra loves peace and beauty and is at home in Libra.
Sometimes I think we attempt to treat everyone else better than we treat ourselves even though we cannot give what we don’t have.
Love Thyself so you can Love Thy Neighbor.
With Much Love To Me and To You!
Michal Donna
Michal Donna Astrology 