self forgiveness & self acceptance

MESSAGE FROM SAUL through John Smallman

Waiting is less than totally absorbing... Waiting is less than totally absorbing, and it seems that you have spent a long time waiting to enter your natural state of full consciousness. I assure you that soon you will have finished waiting, and that what you have been waiting for will be beyond your wildest dreams, and well worth the wait, as you come home to a welcome sparkling with joy and good humor. It will be a truly scintillating occasion. But while you wait, focus on releasing all those negative emotions that have directed so many of the activities that command your attention in the illusion. Anger, a need to be right, and your requirement that others recognize that you are right are very draining for you, because they strengthen and encourage your illusory sense of separation. Especially as the thought of being one with those you judge as wrong is anathema to you! Remember that no one is truly wrong. Yes, errors are made, and some of those errors may appear unacceptable and unforgivable, but they are all lessons you chose to learn when you accepted life as a human. When errors are seen for what they are~~mistakes~~and you use your energy and intelligence to assist those who made them to correct them, and to limit and repair any damage that they have caused, much more favorable outcomes will be achieved than by blame, condemnation, and punishment. Forgiveness is mandatory. Without forgiveness, bitterness and distrust infect any negotiations, slowing down or preventing meaningful progress in correcting the errors and repairing the damage they have caused. And forgiveness starts with self-acceptance. Nearly every human culture teaches its progeny that acceptance is dependent on submission to its forms and customs, so that a child quickly discovers that it is basically unacceptable. This judgment is internalized, while it sees most others as acceptable but not itself. As it develops basic skills it gets to judge the apparent lack of skills or abilities it sees in others by projecting its own sense of inadequacy and unacceptability onto them. By adulthood the lesson has been well learned; conformity is seen as a social benefit, and the right and need to judge is seldom questioned. Adolescent rebellion is understood to be a necessary stage in development that discipline and experience will dissipate into conformity, and so conditional forgiveness is offered to those rebelling. True forgiveness is found through self-acceptance and self-forgiveness, and this requires you to let go of the societal and cultural "shoulds" that were imposed on you as you were growing up. Many of those shoulds carry a strong emotional charge making it difficult for you to recognize and acknowledge them; it is far easier to accept them as "normal responsible living" and thus avoid questioning their validity. But to enjoy life you need to be yourself and honor your wants and needs, and to do that you have to examine the shoulds that you take for granted and discard the invalid one—probably most of them. Doing this will give you a marvelous sense of freedom—freedom that you are most certainly entitled to experience and enjoy. With that regained freedom you will be able to start accepting and forgiving yourself, and then extend that acceptance and forgiveness to others. As you practice living like this—and growing increasingly aware of your reasons for doing so—you will find you are becoming more and more at peace as your levels of stress and anxiety ease. Then you will really begin to enjoy being the perfect and unique creation of your heavenly Father, and will be ready once more to enter your natural state of full consciousness. With so very much love, Saul.