Blog: A Spiritualist Medium's Point of View

Self-Acceptance
Self-acceptance is one of the keys to living a happy and productive life. In some families, self-acceptance is part of the energy of the family system. But in others, particularly in dysfunctional families, self-acceptance has to be learned and practiced outside of the family system.

There’s a difference between self-acceptance and egotism. Self-acceptance means accepting all the parts of you – strengths and weaknesses, needs and desires, the good and the bad – and knowing that you don’t need to be perfect to be loved by the Creator. Egotism, on the other hand, is an exaggerated sense of self-importance. It shuts others out; it shuts out love for humankind and All That Is in the interest of self. So there’s a big difference between self-acceptance and egotism.

A lot of us, myself included, have trouble accepting what we see as our faults or limitations. But if we didn’t have these parts of ourselves that we perceive as less than they should be, we wouldn’t have anything to work on. Maybe these parts of ourselves that we have difficulty accepting are really part of whatever lessons we’re learning in this lifetime. A person with a physical disability, for instance, has to learn to live life well in spite of the disability, and perhaps our limitations, even if they’re not physical, provide the same kind of incentive for growth.

In some of the personal work I’ve been doing lately, I’ve noticed that most of my “shoulds” relate to what I perceive as my own faults. I tell myself I should do this, and I should do that, and I think it’s a fault when I don’t want to. But I’ve recently realized that when I hear myself using the word “should,” it just means that my passion doesn’t lie in that direction. I’m usually following someone else’s suggestions, or an old rule that doesn’t apply any more. When I think I “should” do something, it often means that there’s really somewhere else I need to be expending my life force energy. But I bump up against what I learned I “should” do as a child or something society suggests I “should” do. When I really stop and examine the “should,” and look underneath at what’s going on, I often find that doing the “should” wouldn’t really be part of what I believe my current life’s true path is.

We all grew up trying to meet other people’s expectations in order to be acceptable, to be loved – whether that was our parents and family, or expectations at school, or society’s decrees, or adult relationships. When we try to meet other people’s expectations because we want to be loved and accepted, that creates a “should”. But when that “should” bumps up against what our inner compass, or our soul, says we need to do, then we have a problem with self-acceptance.

Society certainly doesn’t help – commercials and magazine ads keep hammering away at us with the idea that we’re not acceptable unless we have white teeth, or a new car, or a perfectly clean and decorated home. We’re offered images of adults who juggle family, work, household chores, and even volunteer activities with complete ease. And most of us feel like we can never live up to that, so we must be unacceptable. The problem is that we’re comparing ourselves with a media-generated ideal, not basing our perceptions in the reality of our lives. We never get to see inside the person who seems to “do it all” – are they happy? Are they fulfilled by what they’re doing? Are they really doing what they came to the Earth plane to do?

I wonder sometimes what goes on in the consciousness of animals and plants – because I do believe they have some form of consciousness. Are the plants in my yard thinking, “I didn’t grow enough this week – I better pull myself up by my bootstraps and try harder!” Does a blade of grass think that if it could only do better, it could become a rose? Does my cat think, “I shouldn’t want to sleep so much. What a waste of time!”? I believe that we are just as acceptable to the Creator as animals and plants – and I believe it was not a mistake that we were created with limitations. As souls, it gives us something to “push against,” so that we grow, and discover over time who we are and who we’re meant to be.

All of us have had pain in our lives, and all of us have worked to move beyond it. All of us have parts of ourselves that we think we should change, or ways that we think we should be “better.” But that doesn’t mean we can’t accept ourselves, just as we are, with all of our limitations. All of us have done good things for others, too, whether it’s listening when someone needs to talk, or going out of our way to take care of someone else’s needs. So, all of us have also done good in the world. The problem occurs when we start thinking of these good things we do as “shoulds,” rather than as gifts we offer from the heart. And then when we’re living our lives mostly in those “shoulds,” we give less and less from the heart, and start feeling more and more resentful. This creates a vicious circle where we can’t accept ourselves, and so our self-esteem gets lower and lower, and that creates more problems. Then we try harder to do better and give more, and the vicious circle just goes faster. We get so wrapped up in the “shoulds” that we stop being able to connect with the treasure inside of us – the true gift that we have to give to the world.

Once you begin to accept yourself and look at how you really feel about the things you think you “should” do, you suddenly have more choices. If there’s something you “should” do, but you just don’t have the passion for it, you can decide not to do it – and to accept yourself for making that decision. You don’t need to punish yourself with guilt for choosing not to – there’s already enough guilt in the world. There might even be a lot of people who would make the same choice you would. Or, you can decide to go ahead and do what you should do, and understand that you’re going against what your inner self says, and accept yourself for making that choice. So life becomes a series of options – instead of “shoulds” – where you can choose to look at each “should” as it comes up, and know that you are “good enough” no matter what you do – because there have been many other times you’ve helped out or done something for someone else, and there will probably be more. Just because you decide not to this time doesn’t mean you’re unacceptable.

So whether it’s our thoughts and beliefs, our bodies, our homes, our relationships, or whatever, we can accept where we are right now with the knowledge that we can make changes as we go along, and we can accept that we’re doing a good job with our lives, and know that we are acceptable to the Creator just as we are. The interesting thing is, it’s often very hard to change things in your life when you feel unacceptable, because subconsciously you don’t think you deserve them. But when you begin to accept yourself unconditionally, it becomes easier to make changes, because you know you’re worth having good things in your life.

One of the parts of the Spiritualist creed that I especially appreciate is the idea of being nonjudgmental, and many of us do really well with that in terms of others – we let them have their needs and desires, their strengths and weaknesses, we know that because we aren’t walking in their shoes we can’t judge who they are or what they do. But we need to apply some of that nonjudgmental attitude towards ourselves – to give ourselves a break along with everyone else – and accept that we don’t always have to live up to some ideal – that we’re made the way we are for a purpose, and that in accepting ourselves, and even loving ourselves, we’re sending more love and light out into the world, as well as within to our hungry souls. So I encourage you to think a little in the next few days about how you could become more self-accepting, and begin to love and honor yourself a little more. Give yourself a break.

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