Forgiveness and self-acceptance, to Sympathetic Joy…

Hello and welcome,

I’d love to share another cuppa together while we ponder sympathetic joy through the art of self-acceptance through forgiveness…

I’m contributing this piece to Debbie, of Forgiving Connects and her ForgivingFridays initiative, where she kindly invites us to ponder the steps we can take towards self-forgiveness, a huge leap towards self-acceptance and love.

 

 

Accepting ourselves involves all the traits we deem unworthy of our acceptance.
We cannot begin to see ourselves as whole until we acknowledge those parts of us we are hoping no one notices….

Take jealousy for example…

I’ve been the worst at being jealous of everyone and everything they’ve achieved.
It’s only recently I’m beginning to get a grip on this.

I can see where these intense feelings were coming from now….
I wasn’t happy with myself. It was like life had become one huge race, where there was one set of rules on how to be successful, how to live a happy life…

I was living according to everyone else’s idea of what that should look like.

As a result, I’d allow myself to gravitate towards traits, experiences, material things that I associated with a successful life.

Perhaps I was running away from being myself?

This realisation began through the critical journey towards self-acceptance…

Learning to explore what those intense feelings were trying to teach me, began the journey to accept it as part of me.
And like a naughty child, once some attention is given to them, they don’t feel as desperate to create havoc…

Becoming more comfortable with myself enabled me to reach a point where I can now be happy for others’ successes. Any residual feelings means there are more lessons for me to learn.

As part of this acceptance, I discovered there is a term in Buddhism for this…the wonderful world of Sympathetic Joy.

Once I discovered I could cultivate this by focusing less on ‘eradicating’ jealousy, and focusing on learning how to be truly happy for others, it became a new way of thinking, like a mindful mental workout.

That doesn’t mean that little ‘green eyed monster’ won’t rear its little head any more.

But I’ve made peace with who I am, what I believe are my strengths and can laugh at the ‘rest’ of me now. Believe me, there are plenty of those occasions….

It helps negate the desire for the worst kind of comparison…the type that originates from those feelings of unworthiness, as opposed to being inspired to reach a level we wish to attain, coming from a place of love, or simply just being happy within ourselves for no particular reason.

The act of self-acceptance means when we have our buttons pushed by others, we have a greater capacity for seeing that person with compassion and understanding, knowing where they are coming from….after all, at any given moment we can also be in that place of discomfort and need to lash out in our own way.

In our wholeness, we can also at times be belligerent, jealous, thoughtless…

I forgive myself for feeling inadequate when I compare myself unfavourably against others, or display emotions that I have deemed ‘unworthy’.

A spiritual journey isn’t so much about ignoring  or attempting to ‘mend’ all those parts of us.
It’s about diving deep into our messiness, understanding ourselves, going ‘within’ in order to have greater capacity to emerge, with greater awareness of the impact we have on others.

In a way, it can become the essence of our purpose…

It begs us to ask the question, ‘How can I be more loving in this situation?’

We learn to respond rather than react.

When we return to the world in a state of non-judgement towards ourselves, we can offer this gift of peace, of being fully present and compassionate towards everyone we meet, including revelling in their joyful moments.
In other words, we see ‘us’ in everyone….

Everyone becomes our teacher, helping us forge deeper roots to anchor our growth…

It embraces the power of connection, and is my new interpretation of the expression ‘we are all connected’…

…when we can delight in the joy of others, because we too understand joy,
and also…
…when we can sit with them in their pain, because we have also known pain.

That’s when the beautiful magic between us and others begins…

The quote by Teal Swan is from the link I’m including here, titled ‘Self Love – The great Shortcut to Enlightenment.’
If you have a desire to listen in your own time, I hope you enjoy it too. There are some amazing pearls of wisdom in her teachings.

As always, I thank you for being here,
Much love from Di 💜