Accepting one self.

 

“The most terrifying thing is to accept oneself completely.” ~ C.G. Jung 

As children, when something went wrong, we tended to believe that there was something wrong with us. Children develop the idea that if they could only do it right, then parents and caregivers would love them, and they wouldn’t punish them. In time, the child believes, there is something wrong with me. I’m not good enough. As we grow older, we carry these false beliefs with us. We learn to reject ourselves. 

There is a parent inside each of us, as well as a child. And most of the time, the parent scolds the child—almost nonstop! If we listen to our inner dialogue, we can hear the scolding. We can hear the parent tell the child what it is doing wrong or how it is not good enough. We need to allow our parent to become more nurturing to our child. We are capable of doing this, when we start watching ourselves and paying attention to our internal chatter...the fastest way is toast yourself “how am I feeling now”  If you are feeling poorly then your thoughts were probably not uplifting, loving or nurturing.

Loving ourselves unconditionally is probably the hardest thing to do. It means surrendering our attachments to what society and/or any other authority figure in our lives claimed we should be and accepting the divinity that we are. It is a daily practice of watching our internal dialogue and catching ourselves when we speak in a less than loving and nurturing manner. We have a habit of berating ourselves when we do not meet expectations...these expectations are usually ones that were set for us and not our own personal truth. We can chose to love ourselves as we are. We can chose to see ourselves as the divine,  unique spiritual beings that we are or we can continue to live our lives measuring up to an illusion of perfection.

Once we see, accept and embrace ourselves as the divine beings that we are, we will start to see the divinity in everyone and everything, creating and preserving a better world for all.