This Is How You Must Think of Yourself

It is too easy to feel bad about yourself.

We start out in life knowing nothing. We might feel, perhaps, for a while, perfectly accepted. We might never feel that. But even in the best and most loving of families and environments, pure and perfect acceptance quickly gives way to something else.

There are rules. There are expectations. There are mistakes, and we make them, and don’t even know what we’ve done wrong. But we learn.

We learn so quickly that we are capable of doing wrong, and that turns swiftly into an idea that we can be wrong. That we are wrong. That something in us, that is us, misses the mark.

We see disapproval, we sense disappointment, and we carry it in ourselves. Why is it that we quickly turn from seeing that we’ve done something unacceptable to thinking that we ARE something unacceptable?

I don’t know, but we slide down into that pit fast, and then we get stuck there.

A Course in Miracles

Helen Schucman

You are the work of God, and His work is wholly lovable and wholly loving. This is how a man must think of himself in his heart because this is what he is.

[Source]

But we don’t really understand who we are, do we? So trying to change ourselves to become acceptable and accepted becomes an endless obstacle course. We don’t even know which way we’re supposed to be running. But we dare not stop trying, stop running. We force ourselves over walls and thru holes, we cringe and crawl, we become different shapes and flavors and voices and feelings depending on what we think is wanted.

But we’re never sure.

And in the midst of that trying to become something that is worthy we just bury our true selves. Maybe we finally achieve some measure of value, some level of achievement that should, according to what we know of life, make us good enough. Make us acceptable. Make us admirable, even.

But we find something missing. We achieve, we reach a goal, we change, we accommodate, and we breathe in deep, ready for that sense of peace, worth, acceptance, safety.

It’s not there. Something’s still wrong. Something is missing.

It’s us.

Rumi

“Knock, And He’ll open the door
Vanish, And He’ll make you shine like the sun
Fall, And He’ll raise you to the heavens
Become nothing, And He’ll turn you into everything.”

[Source]

Who we are gets buried under the years and layers of trying to become something better.

When we finally wake up to the fact that no one knows what is needed or worthy or accepted, we start to get it.

We see that everyone is scrambling, running, hurtling through some imaginary gauntlet, trying to reach some illusory place of being enough.

We realize that our own work and effort has been for nothing, really.

Everyone else is too busy trying to become worthy, trying to feel accepted themselves, to notice our efforts. To care. To accept.

Eckhart Tolle

Acceptance looks like a passive state, but in reality it brings something entirely new into this world. That peace, a subtle energy vibration, is consciousness.

[Source]

That point of realization is where the real choice waits for us.

The pursuit we began as children, we began in ignorance. But now we are not ignorant. Now we see that we are all seeking some place of safety, some merit, some feeling of worth. We see for what they are those silly habits of jumping through hoops, following endless rules, cultivating group hierarchy, judging and proving ourselves.

They are for nothing. They are for a measure that does not exist. They are for an acceptance, a worth, that has always been there.

We have just been listening to the wrong source. We have heard, from the echoed stress and pain of other people, all looking for their own place of safety and value, the sense that we must work for our own.

We must listen to another source. We must see that who we are has always been who we are supposed to be. We must seek another measure. And when we find it (waiting for us) we can begin to share that acceptance with the rest.

The Thunder, Perfect Mind

Tr. George W. MacRae

I was sent forth from the power,
and I have come to those who reflect upon me,
and I have been found among those who seek after me.
Look upon me, you who reflect upon me,
and you hearers, hear me.
You who are waiting for me, take me to yourselves.
And do not banish me from your sight.
And do not make your voice hate me, nor your hearing.
Do not be ignorant of me anywhere or any time. Be on your guard!
Do not be ignorant of me.
…
Look then at his words
and all the writings which have been completed.
Give heed then, you hearers
and you also, the angels and those who have been sent,
and you spirits who have arisen from the dead.
For I am the one who alone exists,
and I have no one who will judge me.
For many are the pleasant forms which exist in numerous sins,
and incontinencies,
and disgraceful passions,
and fleeting pleasures,
which (men) embrace until they become sober
and go up to their resting place.
And they will find me there,
and they will live,
and they will not die again.

[Source]

Photo Credit: frankieleon via Compfight cc