#10 Costa Rica Diaries: On Loving Yourself

When I set foot in Costa Rica, I was quite excited for the month I would spend there. I had spent most of my time in Nicaragua on the beach, immersed with the ocean. Here, I had planned a month to spend as deep in the jungle as possible, observing birds and wildlife, immersing myself in green. When it comes to nature, Costa Rica takes the bar to an entirely different dimension. This tiny country hosts five percent of the world's wildlife and plant diversity. Seeing colorful birds, fluorescent-bright frogs, monkeys swinging overhead, and magnificent lizards walking alongside you becomes part of daily life. Even though these scenes are common here, it never stopped enchanting me every single time. I felt like I was inside a National Geographic documentary. The only difference was that I was witnessing this captivating life with my own eyes, not on a screen. This taught me the immense difference between looking at life through a screen versus experiencing it by living directly within it.

Over the past six months, my attachment to screens slowly disappeared from my life. I hadn't set myself a rule for this or forcefully determined a goal like "I'm going to reduce my screen time." I simply no longer had time to look at screens. I had made it a habit to meditate briefly every evening before bed and every morning after waking up. I no longer fell asleep in front of screens in the evenings because I had my meditation routine. I quite enjoyed this routine. 

Since starting my travels, my days were filled with exploration, either in the forest, ocean, beach, or at a café in the city. In the evenings, I loved spending time reading books and sleeping early - because I loved watching the sunrise the next day. During this process, I discovered how much I enjoyed staying present with my entire being. Even when sitting in a café and my hand automatically reached for my phone, I realized I actually enjoyed watching the street through the window, the people passing by, and the flow of life much more than looking at my phone. Staying in the moment, experiencing life as it is, was transforming me into a calmer, happier, and more peaceful person. Naturally, I began doing more of the things that made me happy. Since watching things ranked very low on this list, the time it occupied in my life gradually decreased.

Actually, watching the street from a café, witnessing the sunrise, savoring my coffee sip by sip, doing yoga and meditation, reading books - these were always things I enjoyed. For a long time, I had tried to adopt this kind of lifestyle, set goals for spending weekends more mindfully and limiting screen use, but I had failed every time. Even if I spent a weekend or two like this and enjoyed it immensely, I would soon find myself back in the corner of my couch, captivated by series on a screen. So what was the difference between then and now? Why had I struggled so much to sustain the things that felt good and brought me joy back then, when now I could do them so easily and effortlessly?

To be honest, I don't know the complete answer, and I don't know if there's one single correct answer, but I can share some of my reflections with you. The first and most important of these is how much I love myself. It turns out I didn't love myself very much before. When I looked at myself as I was, I always saw the things that were wrong, the things I couldn't handle, the things I lacked. My mind was constantly shouting these deficiencies at me. I was not beautiful enough, not successful or talented enough, not smart enough. When I tried to do something I loved, I would again see how I was not good enough; if I cooked, it wasn't delicious enough, if I painted, it wasn't beautiful enough. Whatever I did, my mind was conditioned to always see the shortcomings. The fundamental assumption in my subconscious was that my self-worth was equivalent to how good I was at the things I did in life. When this was the case, no matter what I did in life, I always saw that I was lacking. The more I saw this, the more I felt ashamed of myself, didn't love myself, or felt not worthy enough.

Thinking and feeling these things was extremely unpleasant. I neither wanted to constantly see my shortcomings nor deal with a mind that told me I wasn't good enough. What I wanted was the exact opposite - to escape from my inner critic screaming at me all the time. So even though I enjoyed mindfully drinking coffee in a calm morning, my enjoyment would be interrupted five minutes later by my mind nagging about what I needed to do better. For this reason, I had started to flee from quiet moments where I was alone with myself. The more I could forget about the incomplete parts of myself, the less opportunity I gave my mind to speak. The more I did things where I couldn't hear its voice, the less depressed I felt. Sadly, I had begun to mistake this feeling of being "less depressed" for "happiness" or "joy."  I had come to believe that over-working, watching tv for hours, and getting drunk on weekends was happiness.

So what had happened that I suddenly started loving myself? "Love yourself" had become a sentence we see everywhere. We hear it countless times from personal development books or spiritual guides, but how does a person love themself? Can you force yourself to love something? If you don't like spinach, for example, can you love it just because someone tells you to love it? Even if you know it's very good for you, even if you know it will solve all your problems and transform your life, if you don't like spinach, can you force yourself to love it? You can pretend to love it, you can force yourself to eat it, but can you truly love it? Maybe you can love it one day. Some foods we hated as children, we end up loving very much one day. But why we suddenly start loving them, who knows? However, the truth is that it doesn't happen by saying "I'm gonna start loving spinach today.”

Similarly, I didn't say "I'm starting to love myself today" when I met Roko. There had been many days when I said this and pretended to love myself for mostly the wrong reasons. However, I had stopped pretending and truly started loving myself the day I met Roko. More precisely, I discovered within me that day a deep love for myself, for all life and existence. So what happened that day? Something very important actually. Roko reminded me who I was not, and therefore who I really was. I wasn't just this woman named Urala. I wasn’t my career, I wasn’t what I did or couldn't do. I was Life. I was a light shining brilliantly like a star. I was the Universe. I couldn't be defined by the full or the empty side of the glass. I couldn't be limited to either the glass or the water inside the glass. I was the ocean. I was not only the clouds, I was the sky. I was love. How beautiful I was— just like a flowering tree, like the stars, like the sky, like the setting sun. What changed for me that day was seeing who I was in totality. All this time, it was as if I had been looking at only a tiny dark part of a massive work of art, and saying "this color isn't beautiful," believing I was only that dark part. Believing I wasn't beautiful enough.

When I stepped back a few steps and looked at the entirety of this massive work of art, that's when I realized what a beautiful, magnificent, awe-inspiring work of art I was. When I saw the whole, I began to love even the dark corners of the painting - the ones I called ugly and disliked. They, too, had their place in the whole. They were necessary parts for completing and making the whole so beautiful. And because the whole was so beautiful, they were beautiful too. I just needed to see them within the whole to be able to see their beauty. Even more beautiful was that this magnificent work of art was a living, changing, transforming existence that was different moment by moment. Captivating in its beauty every time. I was both an enchanting work of art and an artist creating it at the same time. I was both creation and the creator. When you see yourself like this, is it possible to not love yourself? Our only task is not forgetting this truth—this essence— and reminding ourselves every time we forget.

I would have liked to tell you that my mind, which constantly shouted at me that I was not good enough, beautiful enough, or successful enough, fell silent. But that's not what happened. It didn't fall silent. Because this is the nature of the human mind: sometimes, like a parrot, it endlessly repeats things it was told in the past. However, it's possible to teach this parrot new things and retrain it. It's just a process that requires regular practice, effort, and a little bit of time, just like exercise. The importance of a regular daily meditation routine comes into play right here. After my session with Roko, I sat in meditation every morning, repeating to myself: "I am happiness, I am love, I am light." This practice reminded me daily of who I was and who I was not. It taught my mind to say more beautiful things to myself.

Along with this, my mind continued to scream with fears, doubts, and criticisms from time to time. However, I was now aware of the truth: I was not my mind. Not everything my mind said was true. I didn't need to take everything it said seriously. During such times, I saw my mind as it was; the parrot was again repeating something it had heard somewhere in the past. I spent these days approaching myself and my mind with as much love and compassion as possible. I gently tried to focus it on other things. This sometimes worked, and sometimes didn't. When it didn't work, I didn't fight with it. I didn't try to silence it. I allowed it to speak. I also didn't cling to what it said. I let its words flow like a river. Time would surely come and these waters would also pass. And so it happened; passing like clouds, new ones replacing them.

Now, let me connect what I've written to the beginning thought. I quit all my addictions - screens, alcohol, overeating - by focusing on loving myself and regularly training my mind. Through returning to love for myself. Through reminding myself who I was. By focusing my mind on love daily through meditation, I started being able to stay in the moment. I began to take great pleasure in living slowly and being with myself. Because my mind no longer screamed like before, and even when it did, I was no longer afraid of it. I was much more sublime, much more powerful, much stronger than my mind. I was not my minds slave, but its master. As I maintained this dynamic, an indescribable peace and relief began to flow into my inner self—my heart—my life.

So, when I came to Costa Rica, I was living my life mostly in the moment with such peace, happiness, and joy. I no longer had any desire to escape from myself or forget myself. I loved being with myself. My way of living had changed dramatically. Now, I would read a bit in the evenings and sleep around eight-thirty, waking up at four every morning to start the day with meditation, watching sunrise, and doing yoga. During the day, I only looked at screens for writing, spending the rest of my time in nature. I consumed almost nothing that weighed down my body and mind - alcohol, coffee, overeating. Living this way, my body, my mind and perceptions had become very sensitive. Now I could see tiny details in the flow of life that I had never seen before, hear sounds I had never heard. When I looked at life with more attentive, curious, loving eyes, the more it showed me its magic. Even the things I thought were lifeless came alive. Everything seemed magical. I started realizing that life and universe speaks to us through magical signs, we only need to be present and look attentively to not miss them. I began to learn the language of the universe. And I was about to learn how to make critical life decisions not through analyzing pros and cons, but simply through reading the language of the universe guiding me towards the right path— the path of my heart.

Urala