SELF-ACCEPTANCE

We are emerging from a weeklong cold spell. It is already 36.5 F, balmy for this latitude. It was 24 degrees when I went out to let the chickens out; the ice was thin enough on the sheep's water that I could break it easily.

In the process of discovering who we are, we need to learn self-acceptance. What self do we accept? The emerging self? The ideal self? Who are we? We need to accept, who we are, every moment. It is easier to talk about who we are in the abstract e.g. beings of light, pure immortal energy, etc. etc. We have learned from our spiritual mentors, and the great ones, who we might really be, but on the pathway to that realization, we need to accept who we are now, in these bodies, with all their peculiarities and limitations.

Let us look, for a moment, without any reference to spirituality. We are bodies. We are personalities. We are members of a community. When we first ask the question, who we are, we often jump to the ethereal, and leap over, what we experience about ourselves. We are in a continuous feedback loop with the rest of the folks in this world. We constantly get messages about who we are. But the feedback is social, cultural, and personal. It says something, but it is certainly not the final arbiter, of who we are. We are certainly not a summation of the world's opinion of us.

But who are we? We do have our own opinion of ourselves. The problem is, that opinion has been shaped by a very perverse cultural and social experience. At every stage in our development, people have tried to force us into one mold or another. We have been shamed, criticized, guilted, condemned and sometimes ostracized because we didn't quite fit the mold.

How can we see ourselves free from all that programming? How can we know ourselves, when we are full of others' opinions of us? How can we know our own feelings, from those borrowed from the culture, to protect ourselves? We wanted to be safe. We wanted to belong. How far did we run from ourselves to avoid censure?

Folks talk about being an authentic being; how is that possible after the programming we have endured since our birth?

This is the place where I could throw up my hands and say, “I have no idea”. I am on this journey with you. Sometimes I feel I am close to my goal, and sometimes it seems to be, on the distant horizon.

But, I do have some ideas. I think we need to see self-acceptance as a journey. And a journey we can love. We got in this mess, because we inculcated a whole panoply of judgements and ideas about ourselves. We got confused about, who we are, because we accepted other peoples judgements, about ourselves. We get out of the mess, by backing up, and giving up the judgements.

The first step is to form, the intent, not to judge ourselves. In the beginning, we can't tell the difference between a self-evaluation and a borrowed judgement. The simple decision, not to judge ourselves, opens up new windows. Blame and guilt have never advanced human kind, individually or globally. Opening windows means letting the light in. Letting the light in means loving ourselves. The moment we decide not to judge ourselves, is the moment, we begin to love ourselves.

On our journey we will find ourselves behaving atrociously. Getting down on ourselves does not help; in fact, it insures that we will do something similar in the future. We need to accept that we haven't reached our goal. We will backslide. When we do, we can look at ourselves with love and acceptance. Yes, we erred. Error is only error, and is correctable, by lovingly accepting, who we are at this moment.

We have no understanding of how magnificent we are! We are all unique and amazing human beings. At some point in the future, we may see ourselves as great beings of light and pure immortal energy, but right now, we are in these pretty neat bodies. We might just think things are marvelous when we give up judgement.

Love and Peace, Gregg