Why Self Acceptance Is so Powerful

Contents

Forward

Introduction

What is True Healing?

Life is a Case of Mistaken Identity

Why Self-Acceptance is So Powerful

What is the Difference between Acceptance and Non-Acceptance?

Keep It Super Simple! K.I.S.S.

Growing Gracefully

True Power Brings Peace

Achieve True Inner Power: Balance Your Inner Feminine and Masculine Qualities

Do You Believe in God?

Shine Your Light for the World to See: Learning Why You Fear Your Power

Release Yourself from Guilt

Tools to Love Yourself

Love Cannot Be Lost

Detached Expression

Letting Go of Perfect

Own Your Journey and Set Yourself Free!

Accepting the Beauty and Perfection of ‘What Is’

Freeing Ourselves of Suffering

Pattern of Fixing

The ‘Gem’ of Approval

Bowing-Reverence-Worship

Personal Patterns

Letting Go of Control and Finding God-Love-Self

Finding Love-God Outside

Separation Consciousness & Ego Judgment

What is the Use of the Mind?

Accept One Small Bit & Change Your Life

Detachment from What We Think is Love to What is Love

The Internal is More Real than the External.

Surrender-Accept-Allow

Believing in Our Dreams and Expressing the Love We Are

I dedicate this book to Monica Cybula.

Thank you for keeping me grounded, as I learned to fly.

Thank you Mom for always being my biggest fan.

Thank you to all my teachers and students who are one in the same.

Forward

When Barbra first asked me to copy edit this book, I thought, Great! This will be fun. Little did I know, I hadn’t agreed to a job, I had agreed to a journey. The changes this book triggered in me went far beyond any word suggestions I made. As I worked my way through the chapters, starting with the concept of self-acceptance and self-love, moving into identifying and releasing the Mud and recognizing myself in every one of the five patterns, my life began to change. People and situations in my life started to mirror the chapters I was reading. An issue would come up with a loved one, and the very next day when I sat down to read, the issue was addressed in the text. The self-realizations came subtly, weaving into my consciousness gently, a breeze through my hair. The situations with loved ones came swiftly, a tiger watching from the brush, daring me to show my truth. All along the book supported this, just when I was about to give up and revert to my comfort zone, there would be a reminder… I am Loved.

For many years I have been working my way out of my shell. It hasn’t been easy, often my truthful statements, in my anxiety and haste to get them over with, came out as embarrassing blurts, leaving the other person with an expression of surprise and barely masked horror. I was so busy hiding inside costumes there was little time left for expressing the truth. When I was at work, I would put on the intelligent, professional costume. When I was on a date, I would put on the sexy, funny costume. I just peeked out the eyes, knees trembling, afraid they would find the zipper. All the while, underneath the layers of subterfuge, fear and Mud there was this Pow! Sha Bang! Sweet Thang! of a female lion, a wild, sunbeam of creation, just caked with scared. After reading this book, the truth just comes. There is still fear, but it is weakened. I am not ashamed of myself anymore; I am just like everyone else. I shine like a fat drop of dew in the morning. I am as naked as an animal. And it feels good.

Throughout the book, there is a soft reminder to let go of the past, of what you think defines you, and make room for the truth. In order for this to happen for me, I had to release a slew of patterns that have been lying over my SELF, smothering me like a blanket. Necessary in the winter, but it is spring now, and this buffalo robe is hot as hell. It has to go.

I feel new. I feel fresh. The emotions I used to think of as bad, I know see as good. I see my reactions and fears as tools, mere props. My favorite billboard in town is of an elderly man, showing every one of his spanking white dentures, holding his walker high in the air. The tag line, advertising a physical therapy center, says, Bob is totally off his walker! Get it? Walker? Rocker? I laugh every time I see it, but when I think of my emotions now, I think of them as my walker and my rocker, my tools to a deeper understanding of myself and others, of life itself.

As I read this book, I would realize my limiting beliefs and how they affected my life. This would start first in my mind. I would then take a break, go about my day, and new realizations about this belief and how it had affected my life would surface. At some point, I would then be faced with this belief in reality, whether through a situation or from a loved one. This was so hard, practically crippling. I don’t know if it came so furiously because Barb and I were on a time line, or because I wanted it so bad. It felt as though I had decided to hike a little known trail that was rumored to pass through a raspberry thicket so lush the birds would weep when they found it. Off I went, the day was fresh, I was eager, with the sense of adventure and happy cluelessness known to the hiker whose longest walks to date involved a letter and a mailbox. Days later I emerged, dirty and rumpled, hair crazy and littered with leaves, a hole in one shoe, raspberry stains on my mouth, and changed, inherently, the sun screaming for the cloud to move.

Thanks to this book, and the Pow! Sha Bang! of our own Barbra White, I now see my patterns and self-defeating behaviors, I can witness them. I can finally, after years of feeling like less, love my fine ass self. I can let my limiting beliefs go, whereas before I just lived alongside them, in a scared, suppressed existence. Now I know I try to fix everyone around me. I try to please everyone but myself. I sacrifice myself for them, whoever them is at the moment. I give too much; I give until I am dry. I want so badly to be perfect. I try to control my life to feel safe. I am afraid of God. I am afraid of myself. I think I am ugly. I am afraid to be honest.

And that is okay. Because I AM LOVE.

Introduction

If we know loving ourselves will make us feel better, heal our body, and help others, why don’t we do it? There are many reasons to why we play small, suppress our magnificence and don’t do things that are good for us.

One reason we don’t shine is because we have not been taught what it truly means to love ourselves. Many of us believe loving ourselves means to get our hair done or go golfing. These things do help, but loving yourself is not something you have to do. Loving and accepting yourself occurs through an internal process of witnessing your perceived unlovablilities… and loving them.

To shine our light, we first must learn how to love our emotions. We are taught to resist and fight pain. For example, if a tiger attacks you, you will either run or fight back. In the healing process, it is the opposite. We must learn to move towards the pain, instead of away. Loving our suffering makes the suffering go away. Our mind has trouble comprehending this, because it wants to fix, figure out, or repress the emotion. This does not work. This is why there is an epidemic of depression and illness.

That which we accept or love transforms. What we resist persists. Like learning to ride a bicycle, learning to ‘love your emotional pain’ takes practice. Every time you clear a layer, you ‘birth’ a greater level of your Divine Self.

Your True Identity is a shining diamond of Love, Beauty, Creativity, Joy and Genius! When you love your perceived unlovablilities, you clear Mud off the diamond, allowing your True Self to shine.

You are not the Mud. The Mud is the limiting beliefs, emotions, patterns, and stories we create about ourselves. The Mud is just a mental creation, it is not real. The Mud comes from the overly helpful mind trying to reason away the pain.

We have a choice whether to turn our pain into suffering. We choose whether to let our pain define who we are. We unconsciously define ourselves by our past pains and struggles. We limit the possibility of future good by holding onto the past. We can’t even see the good that is right in front of us because we are too busy looking back.

When you clear the Mud, you open to the infinite potential of good that waits to be revealed. Trying to ‘be positive’ before clearing the Mud creates a pseudo positive unauthentic person. Clear the Mud. Then, and only then, affirm the Truth and Beauty of who you are.

This book is designed to subtly shift you into greater allowing and self compassion. When you release the need to control your emotions, you feel a greater control or grace in your life. Learning to love your emotional pain actively cultivates an inner faith. As you love the Mud you will feel how all of Life conspires for your good.

All of Life or God seeks to Love you. This statement only remains words in your head if there is too much Mud on the heart. God is not a theory or a set of rules to be memorized. Your True Divine Self, the child of God you are, can only be felt.

We are not given emotions so we can condemn, fight or repress them. We are not bad for having fear. Fear, if loved, can transform us into a powerful knowingness of God within. It is there for a reason. Mud (emotions-fear/ limiting self-beliefs, patterns, stories) are the fertilizer to ‘growing you’ into your greater awareness.

Everything is of God. It is only when we believe something is separate, that we make it so. Everything is Love or God… including you. To truly know this truth within, you must be willing to go through the beautiful process of self—acceptance or self-love.

What is True Healing?

It is important that we remember ‘who is the pen and who is the writer’. In the healing process, herbs, acupuncture, drugs, massage, etc., are the pen. The writer is you. You will gain immense benefits from any healing modality when your heart is open to self-acceptance. Just as the pen does not write the letter, the healing modality does not ‘do’ the healing. You do. Taking an action can promote a greater sense of self-acceptance and peace, but it is your inner peace that creates the healing. Any healing modality, whether from natural or western medicine, is just a different kind of pen.

This never ending expansion of good and God must start within. Over the years, I have found that drugs, herbs, and manual treatments done without inner evaluation and self-acceptance can only ‘buy a person time’. A health issue is an opportunity to learn more about your Authentic Self and/or God. If you just cover it up and ‘fix’ it without learning about yourself, then that opportunity is lost.

The amazing, wonderful, benevolent, omnipresent force called God will continue to present the opportunity. It will be ‘disguised’ as a different health issue or personal problem, but it is really another chance to embrace your divine nature and look within. You are a beautiful expression of the divine. Who you are is completely lovable and precious. It is only the limiting beliefs (self-judgments) about ourselves that create our suffering.

We over-complicate life. We think we must figure things out in our heads, find the magic pill, or make the perfect decision, but our issues are never really new. The same essential issue presents itself in different forms over and over again. We perceive our situations or emotional troubles to be separate issues, but when we look within we see the common thread. They are all just different themes on self-acceptance. We think because the situation, emotion or health issue has changed that it is a new problem. This perception is the core of the problem.

Our life struggle becomes so intense that we finally surrender, take responsibility for our part, accept it, and then let our Spirit take over. We base our feelings on external circumstances and conditions. The problem with this way of living is that if things are bad externally then we feel bad. We blame ourselves or others for the way things are. The inner thought is, Things are bad and I feel bad. It must be something I did or did not do. or, Things are bad and I feel bad. It is your fault.

Being accountable doesn’t mean blaming yourself for the way things are. Accepting accountability and accepting yourself means self-forgiveness, self-witnessing, and releasing of your limiting thoughts so that you can rise above your current situation.

You are more powerful than your conditions and circumstances. The worthiness and gifts within you can never be lost or destroyed. They are waiting to be discovered. Life doesn’t need to be a continual experience of building to ultimate pressure and then finally looking within and surrendering to the flow and wisdom of Love/God. It can be a graceful growth process though insight and inspiration.

We can only heal, transform, and change our issues through acceptance. Acceptance is the most potent form of Love. Love is the only true medicine. Think of a teenager who has done drugs, lied or stolen. When this child is given some advice or told she needs to stop; what does she do? She rebels, and continues the behavior. A wise grandmother, or teacher, accepts the child for who she is, doesn’t try to change her behavior, and instead holds the consciousness of acceptance. From this, the miracle happens.

The child feels the vibration of acceptance and begins to realize she is not broken. All of the things (addict, thief, liar) she thought that she was have now been accepted and thus released. From this place of acceptance the teenager can receive the words as guidance instead of just another confirmation of her brokenness.

Life is a Case of Mistaken Identity

We think we are the pain, situation, emotion or illness. This is seen in our language. ‘My arthritis’, ‘my problems’, or ‘my anger’ are all ways of identifying with pain. Life is a case of mistaken identity.

This is a natural human response. When we are feeling fearful, we feel like we are that fear. I am just an anxious, type A personality. When we are sick we feel like we are that sickness. My family has this health issue, so I will have it. It is just a part of me. When we are fat, we identify as a fat person. We all have pain that we have unconsciously formed into our identity. This is a normal human limited response.

We hold onto these things because we feel the need to keep an eye on them, to control them. We must learn to manage our temper, manage our arthritis, and manage the situation. When we hear the word surrender we think it means to give up, die, or fail.

Unconsciously we believe WE ARE these emotions or problems, so to accept them and/or surrender them feels like we are giving up a part of ourselves. This sounds insane, but we all do this. If we didn’t do this then we would be happy 100% of the time. We would never feel bad. If we were not self-identified with situation, illness or emotional pain then surrendering to our joy, God and/or Authentic Self would be easy.

Acceptance is a continuous process. We come to this Earth, forgetting we are Spirit, thinking we are this body, this race, this family, this emotion, this illness, this job, this bank statement, this reputation, etc. We are continually given new things to mistake our identity. It is a never ending process of surrendering, of accepting that which we think we are, and allowing the magnificence we already have been created to be to take hold in our awareness.

Life is a continuously expanding circle. It is a continual rediscovery of whom and what we Truly Are. Every time we rediscover the Love and greatness we truly are . . . we bring in more Heaven to Earth! We raise our vibration or consciousness to another level of Love/God. When we heal our perceptions about ourselves through the process of self-acceptance; our body creates health, our mind changes, and our emotions resolve.

We all think we are ‘The Mud’. ‘The Mud’ is our negative emotions, racing mind, limited self-beliefs and physical pain. M.U.D. Minful Understanding of the Density accronym describes the result of accepting the Mud, and symbolizes the negative emotions, limiting beliefs etc.. M: Mindful is non-judgemental awareness of mind, body and emotions. U: Seek to love the density and true understanding will result. D: Density is the pain and suffering in yourself and world. Once we accept our Mud, we realize that every part of us is Love and that Love/God has no opposites.

We are all amazing, complete pieces of Spirit-God-Love-or Consciousness. We are all ‘diamonds’ with ‘a little Mud on us’. Just as Mud in nature grows trees and flowers, ‘The Mud’ in our lives, IF ACCEPTED can evolve us into more self-realized, loving, conscious beings. This is ‘The Process’ of self-acceptance. We continually dip into ‘The Mud’. Every time we come back up, we are more aware of our True Essence, Soul, or Authentic Self.

We all crave the ‘quick fix’. We want that ‘magic pill’ to free us from having to do the work. We want the black and white answer because part of us is afraid to look within. Our fear keeps us from processing our ‘humanness’ (or Mud) and rediscovering our oneness with Love/God (or True Identity).

I recently worked with a teenage girl who was experiencing asthma symptoms and shoulder pain. She had gone to many medical doctors and healers but couldn’t find the reason for her symptoms. When we met, she was emotionally shut down. She did not want to express her feelings. I shared the energy of acceptance by telling her, Nothing is off limits. I choose to see the ‘beauty and perfection of what is’, everything in my world is Lovable and from God. More importantly, everything within you is Lovable and from God.

She then opened up for the first time, after enduring years of therapists and teachers trying unsuccessfully to heal and fix her. She told me of her religious mother, who would respond to her daughter’s requests for help by researching the bible and lecturing her with what she found. If the daughter believed the situation to be any different than what the mother was telling her, the daughter was scolded.

The daughter was feeling suffocated. She could not breathe; which I have come to understand is the originating emotion that creates asthma. I am not saying the mother’s reference to the bible was wrong; there are many paths to God. It is just that her approach was from a place of fear, fixing and non-acceptance.

I did not tell the daughter whether she was right or wrong, but that her feelings were normal. I shared that having her own voice and individual, personal connection to God was important. I suggested that that her mother was learning to trust her own connection to God.

The mother felt that since her daughter was presenting the problem, the daughter had to find the answer right away. I guided the daughter to forgive her mother’s approach and to realize it was not a personal attack.

After only one session, all of her asthma-like symptoms and shoulder pain disappeared. As the facilitator ‘I’ didn’t ‘Do’ anything except express the truth of acceptance without attachment. When we have a willingness to love ourselves and the commitment to look within, we ALL have the power to help one another.

The mother’s immediate impulse to fix is something to which we can all relate. It is especially hard as a parent not to react in fear and trust that acceptance is enough. The daughter just needed to feel that everything would be okay. She needed her mother to listen peacefully and to express the energy of acceptance within herself by saying to the daughter, It will be all right. You are still wonderful in my eyes.

We don’t think offering loving acceptance is enough. We are so busy trying to fix our own perceived brokenness, that when the opportunity comes to fix another, we jump at the chance.

This can even play out at a funeral; we think we need to say just the right thing to relieve the pain of the person in grief. We don’t think it is enough to just be present, hold the space, witness someone in grief, and not DO anything.

We think it is about the action, or the perfect word, because this is what we have been taught. We think it would be irresponsible to just accept the situation. We think, How can I not say something? This is a major event in their life. How can I not DO anything? This is a huge discomfort for us both.

We are all expanding in our awareness of the power of acceptance or Love. An amazing friend and client of mine who uses chiropractic and natural remedies to do healing work told me this story of one of his patients. I will call him ‘Chuck’.

Chuck was treating a mother and daughter. A medical doctor had told the daughter that she had only one month to live. She had stage four cancer and had refused chemo and radiation. Chuck helped the daughter to live for over three years! At the end of three years, the daughter went into a coma for several weeks. At one point, the mother was pacing the hospital room saying, What more can we do? What more can we do? Then the daughter sat up out of the coma, grabbed her mother and said, Just love me. With that, the daughter laid down and died.

Chuck told me that he and the mother had been trying to figure out what more they could have done. The mother said, I loved her very, very much, I don’t know how I could have loved her any more. The daughter was telling her mother to ‘just love her’. The mother didn’t need to take more action, or love her more. Just loving her was enough.

At the moment, the mother and Chuck didn’t perceive the full message of ‘just love me’. When Chuck realized the daughter’s last request was to be ‘just loved’, it caused a huge shift in his perception. He passed the awareness on to the mother, who was greatly healed by Chuck’s expanded awareness of the power of ‘just loving’.

We think just loving ourselves is not enough. People on the natural health, religious, or spiritual journeys can be some of the biggest ‘fixers’ of self. They are continually trying to correct their ‘broken selves’. They seek to heal their unworthiness, to heal their health issues and to positively affirm away negative thinking. If our intent is to ‘heal’ or ‘improve’ ourselves, we are unknowingly starting with the intent of ‘fixing’ instead of healing though acceptance.

We don’t need to be any more to the Mud. We just need to accept the Mud as it is. We can’t make the Mud any more attractive; it is what is. If we try to ‘get rid’ of the Mud, we will be trapped in it.

The only difference between a conscious master and a beginner is that the master has accepted their Mud. The spiritually realized person is just extraordinarily human.

Perhaps the only difference between someone who is expressing their divinity in the world and the newcomer is their level of self-compassion. That is it. We all could be ‘spiritual masters’ by simply practicing self-acceptance. All the Consciousness-Wisdom-Love or God is already within us. It is just the resistance to the Mud that prevents us from realizing God within ourselves.

Think of acceptance in another way. Clapping your hands requires each hand to move at the same force and distance. As you clap, your hands are not going anywhere; it is just an exercise of movement. When you take action on something without first moving into acceptance, it is