Would you like to know what is love and read about a personal story because if today you are in pain and alone, this will be useful for you?
"What is love? Baby don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more."
That song just came on in the gym and there's a little story I'm going to tell you right now. If you're okay with me telling you a real personal story, then you want to keep watching. If not, definitely you want to bail right now.
"What is love?" every time that song comes on I remember 14 or 13 years ago. "What is love?" I used to listen to the song with my girlfriend in college. She dumped me and I was in major pain. I was lonely. I was at home.
Yes, don't hurt me!
I'll sit in at home alone and I'm thinking, "I can't take this pain anymore. I can't take this suffering anymore." So I put on the song, "What is love?" and I said, "I'm going to end it. That's it. That's the end in my life. I'm going to play this song and bam it's over with."
Thank God I didn't end my life there because I wanted to. I wanted to get out of that pain. I wanted to get out of that suffering. Every time that song comes on today, I remember sitting at the computer thinking, "I'm taking, this is it."
And every time today, I remind me how grateful I am, because when I was in that place, where all I could see was that getting out of this life might stop the pain I was in. What I couldn't imagine was all the good things that were going to happen to me. I couldn't imagine meeting my wife. I couldn't imagine having my children. I couldn't imagine being out of that pain, loneliness and suffering.
All I had was faith. That's all I had that, you know what? Someday this pain I'm in is going to go away, and it hurts so bad. She had dumped me and cheated on me and left me all of a sudden.
Now I'm so grateful today that she did do that. I'm so grateful. I love my ex-girlfriend from college. I'm so glad she left that relationship that we were in because I'm so much better off today, but I nearly ended my life over it.
That gets me to the question: What is love? What is love?
I listened to a book by Anita Moorjani called, "What if this is heaven?"
"Sing the song, please," says a comment.
Hey, what's up?
All right, I'll sing it for you.
"What is love, baby? Don't hurt me. Don't hurt me. No more. Dit, Dit, Dit, Dit, Dit, Dit."
Alright, there you go. I sang a little bit for you and that gets me thinking what is real love? What is true love?
I can tell you today.
True love is the love of God or love the Universe. The divine who I am, my highest self, that's true love and romantic love can barely get close to that.
Oh my God, TK is watching. So my friend TK, actually the story that I'm telling, I went out to TK with a movie. I went to see a movie with TK right after I had nearly ended my life over being in pain.
I knew I could have talked to him about it, but I didn't say anything because I was ashamed. I was in a place in my life where I was thinking about ending it all. I was afraid to tell anybody about it because I thought if I tell anybody I'm in this much pain and I'm thinking of not living anymore, then somebody's going to tell on me and I'm going to get stuck in a mental institution and be given a bunch of pills, I'm going to lose control over my life.
So TK, thank you on one of the toughest nights of my life right after my college girlfriend had broken up with me. You called and asked to go to a movie right on the same night that I was in massive pain, and I was thinking about ending it. I didn't say anything to you, but going to that movie lifted me up a lot with you.
So thank you for that.
That's so cool how TK came here today and you've got me thinking, what is real love? Real love is the love of God and what does that look like?
It means no matter what I could do, I'm loved. No matter what I've done, I'm loved. No matter what I will do, I'm loved.
The real love, the love of God is like the sun shining. The sun shines on everything. The sun shines all day every day. Now, sometimes the earth is rotated so we can't see the sun is shining, but it's shining all day every day.
Gaboo says, "Real love is unlike fish love."
Yes, "Love can be a painkiller or it can be a poison."
David Smith, what's up? Good to see you today.
Alif says, "There is no love on this earth."
There is love and it's within. I have the love of God within my heart, unconditional love for myself, that I love this body, I love it and I will never hurt it. I will never do anything because I am love and I love myself. It's important to love myself because no one outside of me is going to love me more than I can love myself.
My girlfriend from college loved me, but I didn't love myself that much and she couldn't love me. I couldn't accept any more love from her than I could be prepared to receive. When I didn't love myself, how am I going to accept her love?
That's divine love, which is unconditional. It means the people who've done the worst things in our opinion on earth are going to go into the afterlife and can experience it now, will experience the same love.
Yes, now that can be tough for some people to comprehend.
Jonathan, yes, I did quit gaming.
That can be tough for some of us to comprehend that real love doesn't matter what you do. It's important for me to know real love in my heart and for me to know real love for myself.
The love for myself, the ideal I'm aiming for is to love myself when I'm upset, to love myself when I'm happy, to love myself when I've done something mean to someone, to love myself when I don't get it right, to love myself, no matter what, because that's how God loves us.
And if you don't like the word God, put a word you do like in, some kind of higher power or higher self, spirit, whatever.
I've felt very keenly God's love. The love that no matter what I could do in this life, if I became the worst person on earth and did the worst things to other people on earth, I would still get to experience that unconditional love whenever I wanted to receive it.
I had a revelation in the shower one day where I was doing a death meditation, and I felt the pain and suffering of dying and thinking, "You know how horrible it is that people have to die," and then I felt that unconditional love, like, "You know what? No matter what I can do, I am loved now, and I will always be loved."
So what is love?
Love is acceptance, joy, beauty, trust, forgiveness. Love is all those good things. Love is like the sunshine.
Today my intention is to love myself throughout the day no matter what I do. When I love myself, I can love you and I can love all the people around me. What I see, to what's going on in this world, it's people who don't love themselves, who are unable to love someone else because of that.
When I love myself, it's easy to love anyone regardless of their external characteristics. If I don't love myself, it's easy to start not loving other people too.
Thank you for being here on the live stream.
Phillips says, "I see you Jerry went from 1 million to 2 million followers."
Yes, and thank you for watching this live video. This is my first one I've done on Facebook and YouTube simultaneously with two different phones, with two different microphones and I've shared a really personal story for the benefit of helping someone else in your life.
Because a lot of lives, one of the top causes of death on this planet is people taking their own life and we need to get the message out to other people before when they're in that place of pain, we need to get the message out beforehand.
Gaboo says, "This was cool and awesome."
Thank you.
Thunder Lord says, "Have you tried psychedelics?"
I have not, although from alcohol, I've got many of the effects reported from psychedelics.
Miller says, "Thanks."
Alif says, "We should love ourselves."
Yes, that's my message to love yourself today.
Thanks for being here. I'll see you on the next one.
Love,
Jerry Banfield
Edits from video transcript by Michel Gerard.
