Source: https://www.bertha-dudde.org/en/proclamation/6749

6749 Self-love - neighbourly love....

January 28, 1957: Book 72

A small measure of self-love is permitted to you because it is necessary for self-preservation and because without this measure you humans would not work on yourselves but would also be completely indifferent towards your spiritual destiny. But this measure of self-love should only be small because only then can love for Me and for the neighbour be properly kindled, or else: A proper love for the neighbour and thus also for Me will always push self-love back to the minimum measure. A being which has completely become love is now also completely absorbed in caring for the beings which are still unhappy, it will only ever want to help and make happy and no longer think of its own happiness but nevertheless be indescribably happy itself because it has become love. But as long as the human being stays on earth he also has to struggle with self-love, and yet he is allowed to have it to a small extent, otherwise I would not have spoken the words: "You shall love your neighbour as yourself...." Man has the right to take care of himself, but he must never forget his neighbour about it..... And if the measure of self-love is still great, then he must also show the same measure towards his neighbour, thus he must perform many works of neighbourly love, and thereby his soul will also attain maturity.... Therefore, greater demands can also be placed on life if suffering fellow human beings are also considered, thus a life of well-being, as it were, obliges the human being to increase his activity of love if he wants to comply with My commandment.... if he also wants to mature spiritually despite physical well-being. You shall love your neighbour as yourself.... Thus I Myself have by no means curtailed the pleasures of earthly life, for as long as you give the same to your fellow human being which seems desirable to you, you are justified before Me, but with increasing maturity of soul these desires in you will always decrease, yet love for your neighbour will increase. For this is the effect of a right love for your neighbour, that it then fills your whole heart and desires less and less for itself.... This is why I was able to apply this standard when I gave you the commandment of neighbourly love, because love then finds the right measure itself, but first a stimulus had to be given which also grants the human being himself what he owes his neighbour. Anyone who has already ignited the spark of love within himself no longer needs this stimulation, for now another urges him.... now I Myself can determine him from within to works of neighbourly love, for I, as the eternal love, am in every person who has kindled love within himself.... Hence it is always a matter of the human being deciding to work with love, that he first gives the same measure to his fellow human being which he also desires for himself, because at the beginning of embodiment self-love is still strong and a limit is now set for this self-love by My commandment of love, but the human being can determine this himself.... Therefore you can also justifiably make demands on life, but just as you also observe My commandment which places love for your fellow human being first and foremost on your heart. But this is why people mostly fail, for they don't observe the measure, their self-love is far stronger than their love for their neighbour, and thus they don't feel love for Me either, for My adversary controls them as long as My commandment leaves them unimpressed....

Amen

Translated by Doris Boekers