"I love you!", I giggled as I tickled my little girl, and we played on the bed.

"I love me too!", she yelled. I thought this was a good moment to connect.

"Great! What do you love about you?", I asked while snuggling her on a big pillow.

"Everything! I am kind and funny. And I am open. I even try to be open to loving people I don't like!" A few minutes later, she was asleep. I thought about her spontaneous reaction.

"Do not let anything that happens in life be important enough that you’re willing to close your heart over it." - Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

The words of an enlightened soul were fed back to me by my little guru. And why wouldn't that be the case?

"You naturally begin to center more and more on the spiritual part of your being. You do this not by reaching for the Spirit, but by letting go of the rest." Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

My child is practicing this point, from her 8 year old perspective. She is intuitively letting go of the egoic structures that are not love. Is this what happens when you love yourself?

"How do you react when you think you need people's love? Do you become a slave for their approval? Do you live an inauthentic life because you can't bear the thought that they might disapprove of you? Do you try to figure out how they would like you to be, and then try to become that, like a chameleon? In fact, you never really get their love. You turn into someone you aren't, and then when they say "I love you," you can't believe it, because they're loving a facade. They're loving someone who doesn't even exist, the person you're pretending to be. It's difficult to seek other people's love. It's deadly. In seeking it, you lose what is genuine. This is the prison we create for ourselves as we seek what we already have." - Byron Katie

When you love yourself, you don't seek other people's love. You seek the flow of your own love. And even a child knows that.

Gail Matheson PhD is a Tantrika, business leader, a mom and walking the path of awakening.