Self-Appreciation

Be kind to yourself, for this is a time when you need to be giving to yourself.

All that you are is so loved by the World that surrounds you, by the ALL-That-Is immanent and informing every moment, every thing. All that you are comes together now. All of your creative and artistic pursuits, your interests, your hobbies, all that you love, and fear, and tend and bend your back over.

Do you ever scan back over your life and feel as if some of it might as well have happened to someone else, so distant does it seem to you now? Do you ever wonder what you thought you were doing? Well, it all comes together now - all your bits and pieces. You integrate into a Whole and the totality of it is more than the mere sum of the parts.

Those fleeting memories of sunlit kitchen tables and a friend's smile, that particular coffee mug or tea cup, that tree that you passed every day on your way to work.... it all comes together now in an infinity of Self, every part precious, every part perfect.

When you have done the work of coming into full appreciation of those parts of you that you had denied, hidden from you, pushed away as if they were poison, when you have come into full acceptance of them, released them therefore to whatever beingness they choose to become, perhaps a character in a novel that someone somewhere might write some day... free of all constraint, free of all censure, when you've done that work, the appreciation of your self by your Self sounds a song as yet unheard by you. And that song is joy. It sounds joy in being, joy in Now Being Self in the Now Being World. It sounds light. It sounds freedom. It sounds an appreciation of ALL that is so pervasive that it encompasses ALL. No exceptions.

I come back to the image of the dump truck. When you are in joyful appreciation of the dump truck, you're in that state of being which I am attempting to describe. Or the toilet bowl. Or the compost heap.... although I've always appreciated a good compost heap - I'm told that is a peculiar trait of mine. And a real test is whether or not you are in appreciation of people who disagree with your political and social views. Whooooo. Take a deep breath with that one.

Self-appreciation is imperative if you choose to move into closer and closer alignment with the divine - whatever words you use to name It. Yesterday as I walked with a friend, we agreed that the words 'divine grace' came close for both of us. If you seek this as a direct experience, if you yearn to touch the essence of divinity, of enlightenment, with your consciousness, begin by readying your very own self through the joyful work of self-appreciation. For in truth, you are that which you have sought.

Big surprise. All the dump truck mud in the world can't hide your grace, your beauty, your divinity from eyes that truly see.