Having compassion for yourself

Is important to one's survival at each and every point in life.

For a long time I wondered why I wanted to take my own life from about 18 to 23 to 25 years of age.

After thinking about this the last 50 years since I was 21 I've come to the conclusion that it was caused by my parents thinking that their religion and church was more important than I was.

Religion after all is the opiate of the people worldwide but then again so is fascism and communism where you either worship a charismatic person as he murders million of people like Hitler did or you watch Stalin and Mao murder millions of people too. So, the Godless religion of Communism also murders millions in addition to charismatic leaders like Hitler did too. and Trump is just getting started in this Fascism thing too with even the same psychological designation as Hitler had of Narcissistic Personality disorder which completely lacks empathy for anyone.

With the world as crazy as it is now learning to have compassion for yourself and others will also keep you from murdering yourself or others.

If you study the psychological profile of mass murderers like all the ones in the last 20 years including Hitler and Stalin and Mao it all starts with self hate and this self hate growing up gets twisted and turned against others so killing others is a vicarious way of killing yourself because you are not brave enough to kill yourself you kill others instead.

Understanding that self hate kills you and all the people you love around you, this is a very good place to start.

When I first studied Tibetan Buddhism in the early 1980s I was taught that Tibetan monks were taught to see all life forms as once having been their mothers. Since Tibetans believe we have millions or billions of lifetimes as humans and other things this is one way to develop compassion for all living things in the entire universe.

However, if you don't believe in Reincarnation this might not work for you.

So, my thought is that if you want to live you need to love yourself and others.

If you want to die soon then hating yourself and all others will turn you soon into another mass murderer.

It's all a choice.

Which choice will you make?