Self-acceptance – Returning Home

Welcome to this talk named Self-Acceptance Returning Home.

Self-acceptance is the gentle art of embracing the full spectrum of who you are.

Your strengths,

But also your soft spots,

Your quirks,

And all the small shifting shades that make you,

You.

Everything included,

Not just the good sides,

The bad too,

Or what you perceive as bad,

Not that it's bad in itself.

Self-acceptance is a quiet recognition that,

As a human being,

You are always in motion,

Always unfolding on your path.

To accept yourself doesn't mean giving up or stopping your growth,

Like,

Now I can just be as I am because it's okay.

It means meeting your own truth without judgment.

And when real acceptance is allowed to take root inside of you,

Both the acceptance you show yourself,

And the acceptance you receive from the world around you,

Something important happens.

Life begins to feel more honest,

More spacious.

Your choices start to rise from your real values,

Your real feelings.

It's an art,

And in this talk I hope you can get closer to experience exactly this.

In yoga philosophy,

This quality is called santosha,

The ability to meet life as it is,

To find small moments of contentment,

And to cultivate a steady inner peace regardless of what's happening outside.

You simply appreciate what is.

Santosha is not passive,

Like,

I guess this is fine.

It's an active softness,

A gentle willingness to greet the present moment and what is with friendliness.

A warmth inside that helps you stay steady even when life becomes uneven.

When we start noticing our patterns,

You know,

Low self-worth,

Recurring negative thoughts,

Old stories we've carried for years,

It can feel very heavy.

On the beginning of the spiritual path,

The first thing you do is to bump into all these things that isn't as good as you thought they were,

Because you go deeper,

And you see your patterns,

And maybe you see the reason for your patterns,

And maybe your childhood wasn't perfect.

It's tough,

But behind these patterns,

There is a wide potential for the future,

Not the past.

If the issue is not the world around us,

But the way we meet our self here and now,

Then the doorway forward is here as well.

You see that?

The past can't shape you.

From now on,

You're in charge.

It's in how you see yourself,

How you are with yourself.

Even someone who has lived for years with a feeling of being a victim can suddenly discover a new inner room,

A space that opens the moment,

And this question appears.

What can I do to experience self-acceptance from within?

Because it's so easy to accept a rainy day or a cancelled meeting without much drama,

But it's much harder to meet our self with the same gentleness to our own inner world.

We accept the weather changes,

But not what we are or what we do.

We know the wind isn't our fault,

But when our feelings start to move,

We take it personally.

But is there really so much difference between the wind and the weather outside and the feelings inside?

Do you choose your feelings?

This is where the poetic lines from Sarah Blondin lands with such tenderness.

She writes in her book Heartminded,

Do you remember,

Dear one,

What made you leave the seed of your heart?

Who told you it wasn't all right just to be?

Who told you that you were not allowed?

This was an accident.

She says it's an accident to leave your heart,

Because leaving your heart is basically the same as not accepting who you are.

And for many of us,

There was a moment,

Or many,

When we lost touch with our own heart,

Our own inner compass.

It wasn't intentional.

It wasn't a choice.

It was,

As she says,

An accident.

An absent of protection,

Warmth or guidance.

This line isn't nostalgia.

It's an invitation,

A soft call back to what is real in you,

Back to the living child inside you who knew how to be present before you learned to shrink,

Before you stepped away from the home and your own body,

Your own chest.

And perhaps it is the same shame that closes the door most tightly.

To fall into shame,

That is to become a victim of the saboteur's voice.

You hear that?

You don't want to be a victim of the saboteur in you.

Remember,

Thoughts are just creative energy.

They are random and they are the sum of your learned experiences,

Which means you had an experience earlier in your life.

And this is what makes your thoughts be what they are.

And they can be negative,

But they're not true.

It's just creative energy that's the sum of your learned experiences.

You can choose wiser.

You can choose to go from your head to your heart.

Shame freezes us.

It makes us small.

It blocks movement.

You see,

It's the antidote to self-acceptance.

The word shame.

Shame is,

I'm not as I should be.

And the antidote is both simple and brave.

Love,

Compassion and self-acceptance.

And if you haven't accepted yourself this far in life,

Or maybe the last months or years,

You haven't done anything wrong.

You were simply never taught how to accept yourself.

You don't learn that in school.

And most parents don't know how either.

They can't teach you this.

So self-acceptance then is not about performing on the inside.

It's about healing an old wound inside of you that you see is no longer relevant.

It's no longer true.

You don't need to be ashamed.

You don't need to build defense mechanisms.

You don't need to leave your own seat of truth.

It's about slowly returning to an inner home you may have believed was gone forever.

But I'm telling you it's not.

Because it's not possible.

The truth is,

You are perfect.

And mark my words,

Because I don't hold them lightly.

I mean it.

You are perfect.

There is a deep peace in understanding this.

You are exactly as you are meant to be.

Everything about you.

Your appearance,

Your voice,

Your temperament,

Your mood,

Your sensitivity,

Your strength is the result of countless causes and effects that have met in you in this one life.

In yoga philosophy this is called karma.

Not as punishment or reward but as the quiet movement of life flowing through you.

Everything has a cause.

You are exactly how you have to be.

Nothing about you is accidental or wrong.

You're where you need to be.

So soften a little bit.

Step back into your own two shoes.

This is a beautiful saying from the Zen master Adyashanti.

Just step back into your own two shoes.

You don't have to try anymore.

It's fine.

Just be you.

You've probably just stepped outside of you for a while because you thought you weren't good enough.

Or right.

Or correct.

Relax into who you are.

I can repeat myself.

You are perfect as you are.

Exactly as you are right now.

How fortunate you are to be at the place in your life where you are listening to words about self-acceptance.

Wow,

What a beautiful place to be.

This is self-care.

This is the moment you take yourself seriously.

You treat yourself with kindness.

Maybe you're not fully enlightened yet,

But you're trying.

You're kind to yourself.

You choose to listen inwardly.

This is beautiful.

And the truth is,

You deserve gratitude.

From yourself to yourself for doing this.

And yet,

Being whole does not mean you will not grow.

Radical self-acceptance is not the end of the journey.

It's the best beginning.

The true foundation for inner growth.

Because only when we truly accept ourselves can we move in a direction that is honest and true.

The path toward our true self,

Our Dharma,

Opens only when we stop fighting who we are and begin walking with it.

You see,

All these,

In brackets,

Successful people who try to achieve so much and they don't see that they're only walking further and further away from themselves.

Maybe on the outside they look successful,

But I've talked to so many of them and they don't even know who they are on the inside.

They have left completely.

And I don't want you to do the same thing.

I want you to step back into your own two shoes and know that that's the best place for you.

So I invite you to ask yourself this question.

What if I'm allowed,

Right now,

Exactly as I am?

And let the question settle for a moment.

Take a breath.

Let your breath soften.

What if you actually are allowed,

Right now,

Exactly as you are?

If you listen to your heart,

This question can become the beginning of a new way of living with yourself.

Gentler,

Truer and more free.

Free from what,

You might ask?

Well,

Free from yourself,

Who you thought you had to be.

You can finally relax because you accept yourself as you are.

And when you do,

You can start listening to what actually lives inside of you.

Not listening to all the advice out there on how to get successful.

But just listen to yourself because you know you're enough without all that.

So do what you like to do.

And start today.

I hope this talk makes you understand that you are exactly how you have to be.

That you can fully embrace and accept yourself exactly how you are,

Including all the good and the bad.

It's not good and bad,

It's just is what is.

It's perfect.

Thank you.