Power and Beauty of Self-Acceptance

All right, all right ... Well, well ... yes. It is a pleasure; it is a joy. We say it so many times, and yet each time we truly mean it, as though we have said it for the very first time. It is a pleasure. It is a joy. And it always will be.

It is also fun. Yes. Yes, it is also fun to connect with you whenever that occurs. It is so much fun now to connect with you once again, to be with you and to work with you.

And we love you. As often as you have heard us talk of the pleasure, joy, and fun, it is still harder to hear us talk of loving you. Some feel embarrassed when we say that; some get nervous assuming surely we do not mean them. Others dismiss that love as something we have for all consciousness and for all humankind. Truly, we do love all consciousness and all humankind, and we love you. We love you.

As you read these words right now, you may be feeling a bit embarrassed, nervous, or dismissive when you read that we love you. Nonetheless, we do love you. And you are loved … your Higher Self loves you.

When you hear us or others speak of that love for you, too often you let the words pass on by. You let them slip right on by without letting them touch you at all – not because you are being rude or anything like that at all ... no. Often it is because you lack self-acceptance, or the self-acceptance that you do have lacks luster.

So we want you to stop for a moment. We want you to stop, and we want you to let it in: We love you, and your Higher Self loves you. That’s right. Even now as you are sitting there, reading these words, we mean you. So stop. Breathe deeply. Let it in. You are loved. Accept that: You are loved.

Our commitment to you is forever, forever and a day. Likewise is the commitment of your Higher Self. No matter what you do, they and we will be there. However fast you grow, however many changes you make, they and we will be there. We are walking with you as we love you. We are pointing things out as we walk and love together. We are working to help you understand in a different and deeper, in a more profound and more helpful, way.

They and we are always right beside you, perhaps half a step ahead. No matter how slowly you grow or how often you set down your metaphysics, promising to get back to it when you have more time, and feeling guilty when that time seems to grow and extend, it does not matter. No matter what you do, we love you … your Higher Self loves you.

No matter what you do, we will both be there, to laugh with you and even to cry with you – to celebrate, certainly so, and to be silent with you. And if you choose to shut us out, well, we will respect that decision as well, because we love you.

Yes, we love you that much, and we love you more. We will respect you, and it will seem as though we are no longer there. But, in fact, we are. And when you reach, we will be there to touch. We love you. As consciousness, of course. As humanity – it goes without saying – yes.

But we also love you. And our commitment is to you, and it is forever … forever and a day. As long as there is light, and the light is forever, we shall love you. We love you.

Let it in. Let it in. Let the words register. Do not let them pass by. Let them touch you.

Missing Puzzle Piece in the Mystery ...

Your resistance … Your resistance to really feeling that commitment, whether from us or from your Higher Self, is in direct proportion to your lack of self-acceptance. Your reluctance to understanding, taking action, and to really knowing that love and that commitment is in direct proportion to the lack of luster to your feelings of self-acceptance.

You see, when you will not accept yourself – really, honestly accept who you are – you risk missing so much of the richness and the magic of life and of living. Self-acceptance is different than loving and liking yourself. They are important, even critical, but they are different than self-acceptance.

Likewise, self-acceptance is different than being good enough. Again, being good enough … knowing you deserve … is vital to your happiness and joy, but it is still different than the energy and force of self-acceptance in that some people can truly love themselves and even like themselves. They can know that they are good enough and that they deserve. Even so, they do not accept themselves. They are not at peace with themselves.

How about you? Even as you love and like yourself or know yourself, do you fully accept yourself? Do you really accept who you are? Changing, growing, yes. No, you are not perfect. But do you accept … fully embrace … who you are?

Self-acceptance ... so key, so critical. So often we are asked: "Lazaris, how can I feel more of your love? How can I know more of your commitment? I hear it. I know it’s true. But oh, I just want to feel more of it. I feel it even, but I want to feel ..."

Self-acceptance is so vital. And you see, the beauty and the power of accepting yourself, we suggest, is that it allows you to receive – to really, genuinely, honestly receive – that love, that commitment, and so much more.

The beauty and the power of self-acceptance are that you can receive the bounty of God/Goddess/All That Is and the abundance of Spirit, Soul, and of your Higher Self. On the physical, emotional, mental and the etheric levels, you can be the beneficiary of this august bounty. You can receive this cornucopia of the Goddess’ love and of many loves.

So what stops you from accepting yourself? Oh, oh, oh, thousands of things – blockages and limiters of all sorts, we know and you know. We are not going to go into all that.

But one thing that stops you is often missed. We would suggest, it is often ignored among the many reasons you could come up with. Missed or ignored, one of the most important puzzle pieces in the mystery of self-acceptance is remorse. What stops you? Refusing to or being unable to feel remorse – genuine remorse – for your acts. Remorse, yes.

Remorse is a scary word. It scares a lot of people, makes them shudder.

"Oh, I don’t want to feel that. Besides, I thought we were not supposed to feel self-pity."

Remorse and self-pity are not the same. Though many confuse them, we suggest that remorse has to do with sorrow, not self-pity. To feel remorse means to genuinely feel sorrow without also feeling self-pity. Succinctly, remorse is feeling genuine sorrow and feeling honestly sorry for your impact. It has nothing to do with self-pity; it has nothing to do with guilt.

As uncomfortable as it may be, most people are not afraid to feel self-pity or guilt. But to feel sorrow without these accompaniments can be frightening. It can be so frightening that we suggest that many people within and without the consensus reality often seek or settle for alternatives to sorrow: self-pity, guilt, martyrdom. They often settle for feelings of being defenseless and weak only to follow these feelings with defensive action. Some resort to self-effacing actions of self-recrimination and self-deprecation, which lead to self-ridicule and self-punishment, as their substitute for feeling remorse. There are so many alternatives.

There is something about feeling remorse that is almost repugnant as well as frightening to so many. Rather than stop and feel remorse, people would rather go around ridiculing themselves, punishing themselves, admitting and feeling terribly weak and beginning to believe their own weaknesses, feeling defenseless and then defensive, and being caught in another round of self-pity or martyrdom. What is it about remorse?

Think about that for a moment. Isn’t it fascinating, as you step outside of yourself and your world and look at it for a moment?

There is a world out there – a reality – where people are afraid of feeling sorrow. They are afraid of saying, admitting, and fully feeling sorry. They would rather go through all the torture of self-pity and martyr – all the humiliation and embarrassment of defenselessness – and demean themselves with weakness, with punishment, with ridicule and self-effacement. All this to avoid this thing called remorse. Why? Fascinating. Fascinating, indeed.

What is so frightening about feeling sorrow? What is so terrifying about feeling sorry?

As an infant, among the many things that you were to learn on your way to early childhood was remorse. Among the building blocks of infant-child are several emotional building blocks. One of them was that you were supposed to be taught to feel sorry for your actions … for the impact of your actions.

But it did not happen. Shame takes it away, certainly so. For many the sense of remorse was swallowed up and lost in their sense of shame. There are other factors that robbed you of your sense of remorse.

There was a time, a primal and wonderful time, when you were supposed to build the foundations of remorse. But for most of you, that foundation was never built. If perchance it was built initially, it did not grow. It did not develop structure or armature, and thus what was initially built crumbled. Either way, you ended up without the ability, the capacity, to feel remorse.

As much as you might be willing, as much as you might choose to, you are unable to genuinely feel remorse. Without remorse, no matter how much you may want to, you cannot feel genuine sorrow. Without genuine remorse … far more than just saying the word … you cannot honestly feel sorry.

So what does this all have to do with self-acceptance? We suggest the following chain reaction:

Without remorse, you cannot feel genuine sorrow and be honestly sorry.

Without the genuine and honest experience of sorrow and "sorry," you will not fully forgive yourself.

Without full forgiveness, you are at risk of not fully accepting yourself.

Thus, without the ability to feel remorse, no matter the good intention, you risk falling short when it comes to self-acceptance.

You know, when you have done something for which you would normally feel sorrow and you instead feel self-pity or martyrdom, you end up punishing yourself with ridicule, effacement, or worse. Even when the other person forgives you for your action, you do not feel forgiven. Perhaps you successfully manipulated their forgiveness, but you do not feel forgiven. Manipulative or not, even though the other person forgave you, you do not feel forgiven, and you have not successfully forgiven yourself.

No matter the words you use, to honestly feel forgiven by another and to honestly forgive yourself, you must feel remorse. To fully accept yourself, you must feel remorse. To receive the bounty from God/Goddess/All That Is and from Soul-Spirit and Higher Self, you need the ability to feel remorse.

If you never had a foundation of remorse or that foundation has fallen into ruin, it is time now. It is time to develop the ability to feel remorse to go along with your willingness, eagerness, and choice to feel it. With this ability, as well as loving and liking yourself, as well as knowing that you are good enough, you can also start feeling that glorious feeling of acceptance – of fully accepting yourself.

Phase 1: Building the Foundation for Remorse

The foundation, the structure, the fulcrum upon which to build this feeling of genuine sorrow comes from the various personal realizations. Each statement sounds simple – maybe too simple – on the surface. But as each concept comes alive and begins to breathe inside of you, a foundation with structure and fulcrum begins to form.

One: "I can make mistakes. I’m a human being. I can make mistakes."

Two: "I am forgivable. I can forgive, and I can be forgiven."

Three: "Sometimes I am prepared, and sometimes I’m not prepared. And it will be that way throughout my life, and that’s OK."

Four: "My needs, my wants, my desires, and preferences have value. Sometimes they come first; sometimes they don’t. My needs, wants, desires, and preferences have value, but they don’t always have to be first or last in the list."

Five: "I can motivate out of my desire to grow. My motivation can come from my longing to grow and change."

Six: "I have a foundation and an armature … I have the substantive stuff to build character."

Seven: "I can reach for my spirituality. There is a piece of God/Goddess/All That Is in me."

You see, when you honestly know these things about yourself, you can find the path of remorse, and you can find the forgiveness that lies on the other side of remorse. Stop reading, and let it in for a moment.

When you know that you can make mistakes and that you can be forgiven the possibility of feeling remorse becomes more real … more acceptable. Sometimes you are prepared, and sometimes you are not. … That’s life. You don’t always have to be prepared. There is a freedom there.

Your needs and wants are important. They are valuable. But they do not have to be the only needs and wants, and they don’t always have to come first or last in order to qualify as being important and valuable. Many erroneously assume that if their needs are not first, they must be last, or they must not be important at all. When you can know your needs and wants are important because they are yours … because they belong to you … then you can relax and allow. There is a peace there.

Your motivation does not have to be duty-obligation or fear-guilt. You can motivate yourself out of your desire to grow and change. You can motivate yourself out of the adventure that you seek. See how it becomes easier to accept yourself?

You do have the stuff of character and the stuff of ideals and principles, too. You have spirituality within you. Though you know that "I am God" is just not true of you, it is true to say that there is a piece of God/Goddess/All That Is inside of you and that it is becoming more.

When you let each of these statements in and allow them to be real inside of you, they grow. They root and sprout. They grow stronger inside of you. As this foundation is forming, it becomes easier to feel remorse. The possibility cum ability begins to grow. And in it all, self-acceptance becomes more plausible and more real.

Currently, we would suggest, there is a lack of these. If not an absence, there is a lack of luster to what of these are present in your reality.

Many feel, "I cannot make a mistake. I’m not forgivable. I’m never prepared. I must deny my own needs and wants in favor of everybody else’s. I must be motivated out of my badness or out of duty and obligation, and I do not have a foundation for character. I am separate from my spirituality."

If you feel this way, the basis for sorrow ... genuine sorrow ... is missing and self-acceptance is more distant.

Without that basis, the very idea of feeling sorrow, the very idea of feeling sorry ... is very frightening and even repugnant. It is much more enticing to flirt with or to fall into self pity or martyred places. It is more convenient to deal in self-effacing ridicule or to feel weak or feign weakness. It is more familiar to punish yourself. Anything, almost anything, seems better than to feel sorrow when there is no basis for remorse.

During Phase 1, we want you to work with understanding your own foundation – or lack of foundation, more clearly put.

Now many of you have worked with some of this already, and therefore it is a matter of reviewing, reinstituting, and familiarizing yourself with what you already know. For others of you, we would encourage you either to listen to Ending Shame I where we talk of preverbal shame and where we first talk about remorse. We also recommend Ending Shame, Part III: Those Adolescent Years, where we deal with the adolescent shame. It is a unique expression of shame. In that discussion, we would suggest, you can come to more clearly understand the role of defensiveness-defenselessness and the role of the arrogance to those adolescent years. There is righteousness and blame that is uniquely adolescent, and it relates to the idea that "I cannot make a mistake." There is a personal flavor to forgiveness and to the unforgiving of those years as well.

Technique: "Observing from Afar"

We encourage you during Phase 1 to work in your way to become familiar with your personal foundation of remorse. Once familiar, then we suggest this technique:

Select an acquaintance among the people you know. You are going to observe them from afar. It should not be a dear friend or an intimate. It is particularly valuable, we suggest, that this person be an acquaintance.

In our "observation from afar," look for what they lack of foundation. See if indeed they act and function as though they cannot make mistakes, as though they cannot be forgiven, or as though they must deny their own needs and wants – or are dealing with the fact or the belief that they are never really prepared and have to pretend that they always are.

Now, do not judge them. That is not the point at all. Observe and take note of where their foundation is lacking or lagging behind. The emphasis is to understand the principles at work here. Sometimes it is easier to observe from afar rather than to look too closely into you.

Now do the same kind of observing, but now with a friend ... a dear friend ... that you do care about. This could be your most intimate friend, but maybe it would work better for you to observe an intimate friend who is other than your most intimate one.

Observe another from a distance; observe a dear friend in proximity. Now observe yourself. Look at the lack of foundation for feeling genuine remorse.

Phase 2: Micro-Meditation ... Seeds of Remorse & Acceptance

Select a passage of music from among your most favorite meditative music. Use this music for a Micro-Meditation. It can begin planting new seeds for a foundation of remorse; it can begin generating new roots for greater self-acceptance.

To experience a Micro-Meditation, go into your meditative altered state in your usual fashion with the music playing. Then become very still; become totally silent and completely still. Become as if immobile; become as if you cannot move.

In this meditation within a meditation (Micro-Meditation), ask your Higher Self, and you can ask us as well, to work on the first three qualities – to reach inside your heart, to reach inside your brain, and to rebuild what should have been there all along.

Ask your Higher Self, and ask us if you like, to go back into your past, to the time that you were an infant, and to work with healing the infant – that 18-month old child. And let us work with you, in the Micro-Meditation, the very still place, as the music plays. You may not know what is happening. You may not be able to see or be able to recount what is happening.

When the music ends come out of this meditative state. If something happens that jiggles or jolts you out of the stillness and the immobility, come out of meditation. You may not think it is time to stop, but it will be. You may not be able to put words to the experience, but it has begun.

Know that the first three qualities, the first three foundational blocks, are being created. The block of knowing that you can make a mistake is building. The block of knowing that you are forgivable and that you can forgive is also beginning. The foundational block of knowing that sometimes you are prepared and sometimes you are not and that is okay ... that’s okay ... is also expanding.

Also during Phase 2, as you are living your life, focus on being conscious of these things, as you go about the daily routine or going about the day that is not at all routine, be conscious. Remember and remind yourself of these foundational building blocks of remorse.

Phase 3: Planting More Seeds ...

During this phase, we would suggest, it would be most helpful to work with the final three building blocks. Skip over the fourth – "My needs, my wants, my desires, and preferences have value. Sometimes they come first; sometimes they don’t. My needs, wants, desires, and preferences have value, but they don’t always have to be first or last in the list …" – and work with the fifth, sixth, and seventh.

Once again, pick a favorite music selection. We would encourage you to pick a different selection. Play the music while going into a Micro-Meditation state. Remember, a Micro-Meditation is where you go into a meditative state and from there move into a state of total stillness – no movement – total suspended animation, if you will. It feels as though your heart has stopped beating (it actually continues to beat, certainly so). It feels as though the blood has stopped flowing in your veins. That kind of stillness and quiet is what you want to achieve or accomplish.

In that state, ask your Higher Self or ask us to work with you – to work with the infant, the child, and the adolescent – so that you can really understand that you can motivate out of the desire to grow. You can be motivated just because you want to change. You don’t have to be motivated just to fix or correct something or to undo a wrong. You do not have to limit your motivation to duty and obligation or to fear and guilt.

You can actually motivate yourself, surely and purely just because you want to grow. There can be other reasons, but this one ... motivating because you want to grow … can be a paramount one.

Additionally, ask your Higher Self or us to work with you from infancy to the present with knowing that you have the stuff of character ... both personal character and spiritual character. Ask your Higher Self or us to awaken more of your spirituality ... to awaken more of your relationship and partnership with God/Goddess/All That Is and with yourself. No matter how awake your spirituality may be, there is always room to awaken more of it. No matter how beautiful your relationship-partnership with God and Goddess may be, it can always become more beautiful. And with yourself?

When the music stops or you are spontaneously jolted out of the stillness, let the meditation for that day end. It may end quickly or last long. Trust the process in this case.

Also during Phase 3, watch your reality for the evidence of these foundational energies and forces functioning in your life. And again, during this phase, pay attention and catch yourself denying this ability to motivate yourself, denying your very character, feeling the separation. Catch yourself and stop it.

Phase 4: The Bounty of Her Love ...

It is during this final phase that you focus on that fourth building block. This is the phase where you work with understanding the value of your needs, wants, desires, and preferences. There is a continuum of value that is often determined by where these things fall or are placed in line from first to last.

Some of you drift toward the end that says, "I have no needs and wants. I shouldn’t have any. Mine are unimportant. All I’m here to do is to please others, to take care of others, to make other people happy. My needs, my wants, they’re nothing. I shouldn’t have them."

And others go the other extreme. "My needs and wants are all that matter. Nobody else’s matter. Only mine, only mine, only mine."

These, and the various positions in between we would suggest, are opposite sides of the same coin. Where you want to be is with an entirely different coin.

The different coin: "I have needs and wants, and they are valuable – not the only thing that is valuable – but they are valuable. Sometimes my needs and wants come first, and sometimes they come last. And sometimes my needs come somewhere in the middle."

Regardless of where they fall, they are important. They are valuable based on their meaning to you rather than based on a position in a line or on a continuum. They are valuable because they are your wants and your needs.

In this sensing, we encourage you – we suggest – that you work with this component. It is central, keystone, and cornerstone to remorse. It is seminal to understanding and accepting yourself.

Allow us, allow your Higher Self ... Focus on it, think about it, pay attention. Be conscious.

Now to work with the Phase 4 meditation, we suggest that you enter meditation in your familiar way. In that meditation, work with your imagination to sense yourself being cleansed, as though in a flush of energy and a rush of light. Sense yourself cleansed and purified in a shattering and reconstructive way. Let it be exciting; let it be full of feeling and imagination.

In the meditation, sense the cleansing by being meditatively consumed by fire or by immersing yourself in the waters. Sense in a meditative way being cleansed by the air or in the earth. Allow the elements ... your element ... to be a part of this cleansing and purifying meditation.

Once cleansed, be filled – be totally filled and overflowing with these qualities:

that you can have the positive beautiful quality of knowing you can make a mistake

that you can be forgiven and you can forgive

that you sometimes are prepared and sometimes not prepared – you are both and it’s OK

that your needs and wants are valuable

that you can motivate out of the desire to grow – not just out of a desire to fix or to correct or to make right … you can motivate from the position of rightness that already exists

that you have the character

that you have the spirituality and that you should know this

Then accept yourself. Accept yourself. Accept.

Then you will know the beauty and the power, and you will begin to receive the bounty, the bounty of Her love.

And we love, and we are committed to you ... You can feel it, understand it, and know it.

With love and peace ...

Lazaris

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