This pain and travail is somewhat straight and narrow, nevertheless I hope it is the way which Christ teacheth to them that would be His perfect lovers in the Gospel, saying: Strive to enter in at the strait gate, for strait is the gate, and narrow is the way that leadeth to life, and few men find it. How strait this way is, He telleth us in another place: Whoso will come after me, let him forsake himself and hate his own soul. That is to say, forsake all fleshly love and hate his own carnal life and vain liking of all his bodily senses for love of Me; and take the cross, that is suffer the pain of this awhile and then follow Me; that is to say, in Contemplation of My Humanity and of My Divinity. (John Climacus)

In terms of hating our own soul, Climacus is drawing on the 12th chapter of John, where Jesus says,

The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life. Whoever serves me must follow me, and where I am, there will my servant be also. Whoever serves me, the Father will honour.

Jesus also said we should love our neighbor as ourself. Can these two insructions be reconciled?

The essential self is not the wheat shell - no matter how golden and regardless of how beautiful it may be swaying in the breeze.

The essential self is the creative potential within each of us, that which we especially share with our creator.

By distinquishing shell from source we are better able to know ourselves and how we might serve - and abide with - Jesus.