Radical self-acceptance is true self-love. It’s hard, and it doesn’t come easy, as we were told since early childhood that we are not enough, unless we do this or that, look or behave in a certain way.
I train myself in embodying this self-acceptance by allowing myself to say or do stupid things without trying to save face, without defending. I see myself wanting to write a message to someone and, either while writing it or right after, I see it being incomplete, insufficient, silly or outright stupid or just too revealing. Although I am tempted to delete it or edit it I am leaving it there as it is, most of the time, as I am not trying to create a good image of myself anymore. I am more and more allowing people to perceive me as they want, and I sometimes enjoy observing myself and that inner struggle I have in which I force myself not to defend or correct people’s impressions of me.
Of course, I am still work in progress, so I am at points catching myself trying to repair it and I even do it sometimes. But I am heading there.
How can we truly accept someone else in our lives fully when we haven’t yet done that in our cases? How can we accept someone else’s flaws and differences unless we’ve at least started to do that about ourselves.
Radical self-acceptance is a mandatory step on the path to remembering and embracing who we truly are. And self acceptance is not about all the bright features and characteristics, but wholesomely and fully incorporating every single aspect especially the undesirable ones courageously.
I am many times writing something to a girl that I fancy, and after I sent the message I go back and read it again and I see all the things I can improve, I should delete or edit… Most of the time I leave it as it is, offering an off-ramp, a possibility to see this part of mine which can help them run away. Why walking on eggshells? I am what I am, and I will definitely continue to do or say things that are less than perfect. Why would I try to create a fake image about myself when I like people to see me as I am?, so in case they like me, they will like the real me, and not some fancy image that I created, and that I assume would be better than the real me.
This is where we are wrong and hence we keep unnecessary people in our proximity through the fake image we project, enforce, and we keep our true soul-family and potential suitable partners apart because of our fear of not being “perfect” or enough by failure to fully embracing our own expression.
I am enough! For myself at least, therefore in my life, and with my apparent flawed version that I dare to expose to the outside world now a miracle happens: People are reacting different to me, people who used to like me (the mask) are not anymore interested and people who are more genuine and are as unapologetically themselves as I am learning to be are attracted to me. It’s beautiful. Finally, not trying to please anyone, nor playing roles, not trying to save face or force a certain perception onto people, but radical self-acceptance.
If you haven’t tried it, I recommend you to give it a shot. Yes, you’ll lose some unnecessary acquaintances in the process, but you can’t lose what’s yours, so be happy, as a more real life is being shaped and you’re slowly removing unnecessary debris from the old idea of how you ought to be and you start discovering who you truly are.
Once you start loving yourself for who you are, others will be more open to accepting and loving you for that. Isn’t that amazing?
Inspired by and dedicated to Jivanmukti and Siddha Param-Para 