The Lost Commandment
A Spiritual Revelation and Self-Love Revolution
Barry Thalden
By Barry Thalden
About the Book
Why aren’t people happy? Is there a critical underlying reason? Can we live happier lives? Would the world be a better place if we did?
The Lost Commandmentproposes that the clue to answering these questions is hidden in the Ten Commandments. In Matthew 22:37-40, Jesus interprets the Ten Commandments as: “love the Lord with all your heart” (which summarizes the first four Commandments) and “love your neighbor as yourself” (which summarizes the last six). The words “as yourself” imply an unstated teaching essential to understanding Jesus’ interpretation of the Commandments: love yourself.
Building on this point, this book suggests that there may once have been a Commandment to love ourselves, but it was lost—or perhaps considered so obvious that it didn’t need saying. What would life be like if “love yourself” were given the same value as Jesus’ teachings or the Commandments Moses received at Mount Sinai? This possible lost commandment is what this book explores.
The Lost Commandment proposes that self-love is the key to happiness. The love we seek outside ourselves actually begins within us. We are worthy of love just for being who we are. Our resistance to self-love shows up primarily in the form of fear and judgment. However, practices such as forgiveness and changing our self-talk free us to love ourselves.
As we embrace who we are, we become capable of developing our unique gifts and pursuing our dreams. Loving ourselves, we become able to truly love others. Indeed, self-love may be crucial to whether humanity’s future is characterized by abundance or conflict and competition.
The Lost Commandment takes a progressive spiritual and humanist approach to its topic, and includes reflections from my own story of discovering self-love and, from this new basis, rebuilding a happy, fulfilled life.