Quote:
Originally Posted by Sannah
Acceptance of who you are in this very moment must occur before any moving forward is going to happen. Why? Because you need a stable foundation to start your work. If you won't accept who you are then your foundation is a mirage. Work must begin with a stable foundation.
And I get the feeling that you are being way too tough on yourself anyway.
There must be a lot of pain in facing who you are?
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Self-acceptance is tied to shame I believe. Shame at not being a better person. How can I accept myself when I know there is a standard that I'm not meeting? I can look around myself and see people who are much more compassionate, loving, giving, sympathetic, kind and so on.
The imagery that sticks in my mind is the Mother Teresa model. My T tries to convince me that meeting my own needs is not being selfish. I can agree with her on a cognitive level but deep inside myself I believe that I should deny myself for another's good. And I'm not able to do that wholeheartedly and when I do, I feel resentment.
So, how can I engage in self-acceptance when I fail to meet the minimum standards of being a good person? To me, that is being a liar and glossing over the truth.
My T tries to explain to me that that is not glossing over the truth but putting the 'lacks' into proportion to the whole. So, I guess we have a mathematics problem here. What percentage of the whole can be used for the flaws before the flaws are the dominant? But then each quality can be weighted which throws the equation into a complicated mess. (Any mathematicians here who can help develop a scale of worthiness?)
I discussed this a bit on another thread
http://forums.psychcentral.com/showthread.php?t=191937
Right now I am doing a kind of grudging self-acceptance. I'm relishing my badness and accepting that I can't be God. The whole question of humanness arises.
I think it's a question of wanting to be able to love and to receive love in its fullest. ""You live that you may learn to love. You love that you may learn to live. No other lesson is required of Man." (The Book of Mirdad)
So, when the small parts of myself - the greedy, the selfish, the judgmental, the lazy, the self-indulgent, and on and on exist, how can I realistically accept myself? All of those negative qualities prevent me from experiencing love as it's meant to be experienced.
"Love is not a virtue. Love is a necessity; more so than bread and water; more so than light and air."
And this "necessity" of which I'm barred because of my own failings causes deep pain. Self-acceptance? Not possible because it may inhibit my continual striving for that which we all seek - Love.