A different way to meditate

I disagree with the way meditation is taught, which I see as a form of severely conditional self-love.

The way meditation is generally taught is to start by placing one's focus on the meditation-object, usually the breath. If one's focus then wanders and ends up on something else, one is taught to redirect one's focus back to the breath and restart.

An analogy for what you're doing to yourself when you meditate like this is the following:

Imagine you have a child that you want to become a professional basketball player (child - focus, basketball - breath). You tell your child to play basketball, and as long as it does what you want it to do you love it, but when your child stops playing basketball and goes to do something else, you no longer love it and tell it to go back to playing basketball.

To confine your attention solely to a single object, such as the breath, is in my opinion extremely unkind to your attention, and thereby arguably yourself. It's like telling your attention you'll only love it if it does what you want it to do.

When I meditate and my focus wanders away from the breath, rather than bringing it back to the breath, I follow my attention to where it wants to go, be it thoughts, feelings, memories, or whatever. It's possible that at times it goes somewhere you're uncomfortable and you have to tell your attention to pause or stop, but I strongly encourage everyone who meditates to try this approach to meditating and see if they like it.