Projection and self-acceptance

Coming to accept ourselves just as we are is a difficult battle for many people. Realizing they don't accept themselves as they are often becomes one more stick to beat themselves with. We are too often blind to our own attitudes, and trying to change alone is very difficult.

A very simple method for discovering the places where you do not accept yourself is by looking at people who bother you. We are only bothered by characteristics that we have judgment about. If I have no judgment about baldness, then I will have little reaction to someone who is bald, or to noticing that my own hair is thinning. However, if I have judgment about talking too much, I will be annoyed by those who do so.

Think of people you know, and pick the person who bothers you the most. Then pick the attitude that they have that annoys you the most. This is a judgment against that attitude - a decision that having that attitude is not okay, and anyone who has that attitude is not okay. Any judgment that we carry against others, we also carry against ourselves. We do not accept something in others, because we do not accept it in ourselves. Ask yourself what it would be like if you had that same attitude yourself. You will probably find a sudden self-hatred welling up. Then ask yourself if you have ever had that attitude, or ever struggled with it. Since it has an emotional charge to you, it is likely that you have had, or currently struggle with that attitude yourself.

You have now pin-pointed something in yourself that you vehemently reject - a part of you that you are not okay with. This is a restriction you have placed on yourself that keeps you from true acceptance. Every judgment of others comes from a lack of acceptance of yourself. We cannot hate another unless we hate ourselves first, just as we cannot truly love another unless we learn to love ourselves.

Does that mean I should go out and do the things I despise and think are evil? No, not at all. But it does mean that we need to recognize that on some level, we are all human, and have primitive desires, and that we need compassion in dealing with those desires. When we pretend we are above all that, that is when we reject those who are not, and we create a division between us and them, creating the illusion that we are different, better than, other.

Unity comes through recognizing our common nature in all of its forms.