=> Osho Quotes on Loving Oneself, Accepting Oneself

1. Even towards yourself you have to be tremendously loving, because you too are god’s form. One has to love oneself, one has to love all. Love is prayer. And the more you love, the more you will feel your consciousness expanding, becoming bigger — because whomsoever we love becomes part of our being, we include him. Mm? a bird on the wing, and we look at the bird with great love — suddenly we are not two: the bird is inside us and we are inside the bird.
2. Whatsoever you are with yourself you are with others. Let that be a basic dictum. If you hate yourself you will hate others — and you have been taught to hate yourself. Nobody has ever said to you, “Love yourself!” The very idea seems absurd — loving oneself? The very idea makes no sense — loving oneself? We always think that to love one needs somebody else. But if you don’t learn it with yourself you will not be able to practise it with others.
3. My sannyasins have to be simply one. You are not to be an imitation of anybody, you just have to be yourself. To accept oneself as one is the first step in growing, in becoming adult. To love oneself is the first step in loving god — because this is the way he has made you — To love his creation is to love the creator — and we are his creation. It is against god to be somebody else. Just be yourself.
4. Love and respect yourself and never compromise for anything. And then you will be surprised how much growth starts happening of its own accord… as if rocks have been removed and the river has started flowing.
5. Try to understand the meaning of love. And you will not be able to understand the meaning of love by your so-called love affairs. Strangely enough, you will understand the meaning of love by going deep into meditation, by becoming more silent, more together, more at ease. You will start radiating a certain energy. You will become loving, and you will know the beautiful qualities of love.
6. Why this obsession with perfection? Then you will be tense, anxious, nervous, always uneasy, troubled, in conflict. The English word ‘agony’ comes from a root which means: to be in conflict. To be constantly wrestling with oneself — that is the meaning of agony. You will be in agony if you are not at ease with yourself. Don’t demand the impossible, be natural, at ease, loving yourself, loving others.
7. Learning to love oneself is not difficult, it is natural. If you have been able to do something which is unnatural, if you have learned how to love others without loving yourself, then the other thing is very simple. You have done the almost impossible. It is only a question of understanding, a simple understanding, that “I am to love myself; otherwise I will miss the meaning of life. I will never grow up, I will simply grow old. I will not have any individuality. I will not be truly human, dignified, integrated.”
8. One has to begin not by loving oneself, because you don’t know who you are. Who are you going to love? If you start by loving yourself, you will love only your ego, which is not your self, which is your false personality. Almost everybody loves his personality; everybody loves his ego. Even the ugliest woman, if you say to her, “How beautiful you are,” will not refuse to accept it.