The Power of Accepting Yourself

The Sacred Path of the Warrior - etching

To improve myself or to accept the me I am today? that is the question. 

There are so many messages in my world that are trying to persuade me I'm not good enough the way I am. Self-help books, advertisements, women's magazine articles, personal growth workshops - all promise a brighter, better me if I follow their advice. And yet...

as Thomas Moore says in Care of the Soul - following the path of self-improvement is often a subtle rejection of self, exacerbating the feeling of not being good enough.

This same call to accept myself as I am right now has come to me in several ways this week. I've learnt from experience that the same message coming from different sources is definitely worth taking seriously.

I remembered a quote I saved from Nietzche:

"living in constant chase after gain compels people to expand their spirit to the point of exhaustion in continual pretence and overreaching and anticipating others."

When I feel out my present life, it is true I often feel exhausted and I know my past response to not feeling good enough is to try and do more and it is usually too much and then I feel tired and resentful and also a slight panic in my stomach because I have not actually done all I thought I should do.

My spiritual teacher tells me that accepting myself as I am opens the connection to my heart and leaves a feeling of peace. Just contemplating that feels so good. 

My fear has been that if I don't try and improve, nothing will change and there will be no growth. But maybe, what is left is - maturing. After all, trees and plants grow naturally - they are not trying to improve themselves - they're just being what they are in every moment. They change and grow according to their own natures and the rhythms of the seasons. 

So perhaps my journey instead of being one of improvement is actually one of acceptance. I like that. 

Hearing the intuitive voice more clearly

Dipping a toe in the Moonlight - etching

Hearing the intuitive voice is a skill and like all skills it takes time, practice and patience to learn. In her audio CD Self Esteem, Caroline Myss talks about how we need to 'carve a channel' of 

1. Learning to hear the intuitive voice.

2. Recognising it.

3. Saying yes.

4. Putting the guidance into action.

5. Responding quickly.' 

Each step of this path will highlight different fears and blockages. Resolving these fears and blockages and so moving along to the next step is the pathway of spiritual practice for our intuition is a channel for divine guidance.

The intuitive voice is always there whether we listen to it or not. Hearing intuition is often a matter of tuning in, of being aware that this guidance is available and wanting to hear what it has to say. It helps to create a space, a small inner silence, in order to give it room to make itself known. 

The skill of recognising guidance is the skill of distinguishing the intuitive voice from all the other internal voices vying to get our attention. Those voices may include a protective voice that is determined to keep us safe, the voices of our parents or caregivers now internalised, the voices of those whose approval we seek, the internal critic, various wounded or fearful aspects as well as the inner artist, etc. It is no wonder that some decisions have us torn every which way.

One way through this thicket of voices is to get to know oneself better - not just the daytime self we identify with, but all the aspects that inhabit our interior. Having a conversation with each aspect, one on one, in the process called active imagination is the best way I know of doing this. Through a regular practice of this process, spending just half an hour per day, I've discovered many, previously unsuspected, aspects of my psyche. 

My intuitive voice, I came to realise, was calm, direct, and concise. It did not concern itself with blame or any other emotion. Mostly it was giving me guidance in the sense of what to do or not do. It wasn't always a voice either. Particularly when I was at the stage of being confused by which voice was which it would often make itself known as a visual. I would get a internal image of what to do next. Sometimes it was a sensation in my body - an internal energy flow guiding me.

Caroline Myss says that heaven is always training us to hear and follow our intuition. She uses the example of intuitive irritants, those tasks we keep thinking we ought to do, but don't and yet the thought won't go away - like for instance clearing out a closet or ringing a particular friend. This, she says, is the universe teaching us what the intuitive voice sounds like - we're not afraid of this kind of guidance, so fear is not blocking our inner ears. And when we follow it we learn the feeling of inner peace and ease that accompanies putting guidance into action.

How to avoid the intuitive voice.

Etching

The intuitive voice is always there - but it can be blocked or muffled - in much the same way as those layers and layers of mattresses in the Princess and the Pea concealed the pea to all but the true princess. Learning to hear one's intuition clearly is a process of taking off the layers of mattresses or at least identifying them so they no longer have such power.

Sometimes it is easier to get at the heart of a matter by turning it on its head. So the question I invite you to ask yourself today is: How do I block my intuition?

Here is the list I came up with:

1. Tranquillize it with too much food, sleep, late nights etc.

2. Get locked into a fixed idea of what I'm going to do when or how something should happen.

3. Allow my knee-jerk rebel to take over - I'm not going to be told what to do by anyone - even if it is my own intuition!

4. Get carried away by someone else's energetic pull or by needing someone else's approval.

5. Refuse to take my intuition seriously unless I can work out with my mind ahead of time why I should do what it is telling me.

6. Choosing addiction over intuition - ie reading gossipy mags or surfing the internet or checking my daily astrology or falling into self-pity or disappearing into grandiose fantasies.

Intuition, so Clarissa Pinkola Estes points out, will lead us along the path of the least psychic fragmentation. The quest to hear one's intuitive voice clearly and to trust it enough to follow it may take time, but the resultant flow in one's art and life and the sense of inner peace make the journey well worth while.