Loving Ourselves

We lack giving and receiving love.

Our feelings of isolation and loneliness breed mistrust, misunderstandings, competition, antagonism and the whole series of health destroying emotions such as fear, anger, hatred, jealousy, bitterness, resentment etc. These negative emotions build up a personality complex of their own, and grow out of the control destroying our health and relationships.

Learning to accept and love ourselves and others despite our faults, weaknesses, habits and mistakes is a powerful means for healing ourselves and others.

By developing more deeply rooted feelings of security and self-worth, we enable ourselves to understand, forgive and love others and ourselves in more and more situations.

The following thoughts may help us in that process.

We are all souls in a process of evolution.

We are all controlled by our ignorance and fear, which cause us to function in less than perfect ways. Thus, it is logical to accept and love ourselves and others even though we are not perfect and make mistakes.

This can be understood more clearly through some examples.

Two broken legs

If we know someone who has two broken legs and for this reason is unable to carry out his or her responsibilities or be very productive or creative, we automatically understand that they cannot do any more, because they have two broken legs.

What we fail to understand is that many of people who we perceive as lazy, irresponsible or negative and even immoral have in fact two of their "emotional legs" broken. They have seriously impaired emotional legs of "inner security" and feelings of "self-worth".

Their insecurity and feelings of self-doubt cause them to behave in negative ways. We, too, might be such persons who have had their inner strength handicapped by negative childhood experiences. Thus we would do well to understand and love ourselves and others even when we are not able to be who we would like to be.

Accepting ourselves does not mean that we do not recognize and admit our mistakes and weakness and seek to improve ourselves and free ourselves from those obstacles so that we can manifest our inner potential on all levels.

Also, accepting others does not mean that we do not assertively explain to them the types of behavior that we need from them.

Half-finished Paintings

An incomplete painting is not yet in its perfected form. It is in the process of being perfected, of being completed. We know that it is not completed because consciously or subconsciously we know that it can be much more than it presently is. But we do not reject the painting because it is not yet what it will be. We do not say that it is wrong or unacceptable. We simply perceive it as incomplete and we attend to the process of completing it.

Let us then imagine that our and others’ personalities are half-finished paintings. Let us perceive the general state of the society and world around as a painting in progress.

Yes, there are many weaknesses, faults and aspects to be improved in those paintings. But they are what they can and should be for their incomplete stage. A painting must pass through a series of stages until it is finally completed. Each of these stages is a perfect part of that process of completion. No stage could be skipped or avoided.

Thus, we and those around us are "perfect" at every stage of that process of completion. We and everything around us is at a stage in the process of perfection. Even our imperfections are a perfect temporary part of our movement towards perfection.

When we perceive ourselves and others as unfinished paintings, we will have patience and understanding for our mutual weaknesses and faults. We will perceive them as parts of our being which need to be worked on in the process of manifesting our perfect being, which is waiting latent within us to become a reality.

The same of course holds for those around us who are in a process of perfecting their unfinished paintings.

The Bud and the Flower

A flower bud does not yet manifest its latent beauty. Yet we do not reject, criticize or condemn it. We realize that it is in a process and that it is what it needs to be now in order to become the flower which it is destined to be. We accept it is as it is and wait patiently for its blossoming.

In the same way we need to perceive ourselves and others as:

1. Paintings in the process of completing ourselves.
2. Buds becoming flowers
3. Souls in the process of evolution.

We all deserve love and respect exactly as we are.

Our life purpose, however, is to attend to the process of evolution and self-perfection until we blossom into the magnificent and totally conscientious and loving beings that we are destined to be.

Many people believe that they must be dissatisfied with themselves, or that they must reject themselves, or feel guilt or shame in order to have a motive for self-improvement or growth. They wonder, «If I accept and love myself as I am, what motive will I have for continuing to change, grow or improve? "

Accepting ourselves, as we are, is not a deterrent to continuing our efforts to learn, grow and improve ourselves. We can easily accept ourselves and still continue to improve our character and increase our knowledge.

The First Grader

Perhaps the example of children in grade school will help us to understand this. These children in the first grades of grade school do not reject themselves because they are not in a higher grade, or because they do not know as much, or are not as capable as those children in the higher grades. They accept themselves as they are, and are happy with themselves with their present level of abilities and knowledge.

Yet, no child would accept remaining in the same grade the next year or year after year.

In the same way, there is no conflict between accepting and feeling comfortable with our temporarily limited abilities and lower level of conscious, and our need to continue growing. It is natural to accept and love ourselves at his present stage of growth and simultaneously to attend to learning, evolving and improving ourselves

Growth is a natural instinctual need. Scientists have discovered that when a person learns something new, this creates the excretion of endomorphines and other positively reinforcing chemicals in the brain. Learning brings pleasure, when it is natural and not connected to fear of rejection and failure.

But there are yet other motives for action and growth, and these are love and the need for creativity. We need to love and to create, just as we need to sleep and eat. These are basic needs, even if they are higher on the need-hierarchy scale.

Thus, even if we do not have self-rejection or dissatisfaction as a motivating force, we will always have love and creativity as motivating forces to grow, create and produce.

Let us grow naturally without fear or self-doubt.

We are all in the first grade of the school of spiritual growth.

But we need to prepare ourselves to be in the second grade next year, and the third the year after and …..