True Acceptance
Recently, a friend described something I said as being “egoic”. I experienced an inner twinge, and a sense of rapidly pulling back.
I could see, almost in slow motion, the rising up of defensiveness. Internal rejection and denial automatically stepped in. The conversation sailed on with no time to explore the issue, and in truth, I could see my resistance to exploring it in the moment, although my friend was more than capable of receiving me outside of judgment. I was already inside of judgment.
I saw how quickly these transactions unfold outside of awareness. There was a whiff of, “How dare you imply that I am less than perfect?”, followed by a rapid internal turning away, completed by a brief hit of vulnerability. It was a fascinating, slow-motion unpacking of a defensive reaction, all in the present moment.
True self-acceptance is sourced in a willingness to see ourselves. When we are not ready to see ourselves, we turn to self-destructive avoidance habits such as that glass of wine, piece of chocolate, cell phone game, shopping binge, or TV show. We also avoid through angry reactiveness, projection, and judgmental blame, all applied to get the focus off of us. Of course, these compulsive behaviors just give us more to judge, deeply reinforcing our self-blame and shame.
A historic favorite of mine has been to fix myself. Never happy with who I was in the present moment, this “becoming”, took me down the road of self-rejection for decades, with the dangling reward being the idea that someday I would be worthy. Under my merciless focus on growth and “improvement”, I failed to see how I repeatedly reinforced the perception that my essence was somehow less than perfect.
We do not accept ourselves because we are not ready to compassionately embrace our humanness, with its perceived imperfections. The mind quickly jumps in to judge, criticize, avoid, to blame, and to project blame. This is a balancing act. On one hand, we must see, tenderly hold, and accept in loving Presence our essential beauty and perfection, while on the other hand, we must be willing to see, tenderly hold, accept, and forgive our egoic nature with its mental and emotional limitations. To The One, our Higher Sacred Self, nothing about us is unacceptable. Can we choose to tenderly apply this same attitude towards ourselves?
