Gazing in the Mirror

January 9 - Radical Self-Acceptance

Bring everything up to the surface.
Accept your humanity, your animality.
Whatsoever is there, accept it
without any condemnation. Acceptance
is transformation, because through
acceptance awareness becomes possible.
~Osho

The Truth known is instantly demonstrated;
for the Truth is Changeless Reality and
cannot come and go. No matter how long
we may have been away from Reality in
our thought, it is always here, ready to
spring forth, full-orbed, into expression.
~ Ernest Holmes

When we fully accept ourselves, we are able to share ourselves fully without fear of how the others around us will interpret that. It may not be easy to accept everything about your self – how you look, how you act, when you feel you have not performed as well as you would have liked to (note I did not say you did not do your best). When we measure ourselves against our illusions of these similar characteristics in other people we can feel diminished in comparison.

The beauty of radical self-acceptance is that when we are able to accept our own self fully, we begin to accept what might be called "flaws" in a perfect world when we see them in other people. Knowing our own blunt humanity lets us understand that we are more similar than we are different. If we focus on similarities more often than differences, we begin to accept a lot of what being human includes without expecting or demanding or being disappointed that people or situations are the way they are.

Even when I have a difficulty with another person, deep down I do know that person is actually doing the best that they are able to do. We all do the best we are able to do all of the time. If we could do something different than the way that we are doing it we would. It really is as simple as that. This does not negate any potential or actual ability to change some of the ways that we approach our circumstances or our interactions with other people. Awareness increases with attention and a release of condemnation.

I appreciate it when Osho says – "Those who go on telling you to amend your nature and improve upon yourself are very dangerous people. Nature cannot be amended; it has to be accepted. Whosoever you are, whatsoever you are, that's how you are – that's what you are. It is a great acceptance." When we second-guess our initial impulse, the one that arises naturally from within us and allow someone else to alter for us what we feel deeply at heart we should do, we lose our personal power and give it away to someone else. And allowing someone else to have power over you is always dangerous, even the power of your admiration for them, even the diminishment of your believing them to be superior to you.

We are taught to believe that we can be wrong, that we could make a mistake and that others in authority know better than we do what is right for us. Self-acceptance is not the same as having self-esteem – which is how much we value ourselves or how worthwhile we see our own self as being. With radical self-acceptance, we embrace ALL facets of ourselves realistically, not just those that we or others might judge as positive. We are able to look fully at our weaknesses, our limitations and our goof-ups without feeling our gratitude of expression diminished. Our acceptance of our own self must become unconditional. It can't be qualified or lost but only recognized.

We can only begin to fully accept the self that we are, when we stop judging any aspect of our self as not good enough, lacking something or flawed. By letting go of a need to "judge" our own self, we moderate our own reaction to the self that we are. It can be hard to increase our own self-acceptance if we did not feel "accepted" by our parents or teachers in childhood. If we were only able to receive appreciation from our parents if we behaved in a certain way, we may spend a whole lifetime trying to please others by doing what we think they want and we may not even be accurate about what that actually is. We began our lives basically whole and we can heal our own self of the damage we may have unconsciously received in childhood by beginning to look at our most authentic self with an open mind that we are already whole, perfect and complete and that we do not need to be fixed – by ourselves or others.

~ perspective

I have learned to appreciate and respect
my body and love myself by caring for
the body that houses my soul.
Realizing how brief this time in physical
incarnation truly is, I want to live
my life fully enough and exactly as
my inner guidance tells me to, so that
there can be no possibility for regrets.
Sometimes the noise of other people's
opinions seem to drown out my own inner
voice so I must remember what I heard
within first is what is correct for me
and that others opinions are secondary.
Loving myself enough is letting end what
isn't healthy for me – including people
who might seek to hold me back from
what my truest expression seeks to be.
Even though it sometimes isn't easy to
give up on an ideal expression of myself,
I'm beginning to become quite comfortable
simply being my honest self and loving that.

#acceptance #attention #awareness #comparison #condemnation #fear #healing #recognition #self-esteem #wholeness