Self-Acceptance: Managing Expectations of Yourself

This world is filled with expectations – perceived conditions for acceptance and love. It makes the state of self-acceptance a difficult one to achieve. If we want to have friends, to be included by others and avoid their criticism and rejection, we must conform to ways that are important to them. At least it would seem this way. We have to go to the places they like to go, engage in the conversations that interest them, eat the foods they like to eat, do the things they like to do.

When we don’t, they’ll begin to talk. “What’s wrong with you? There is something not right. Why do you pull away from us? You are going to have problems in your life if you don’t stick with the tribe.”

For the seeker, this is inevitable. You are moving through life on a different path at a different pace. You will move through circles of friends. Your biological family may not feel like your true heart family anymore. Your old friends may now feel like strangers…

Yet your heart and soul pull you to move at a pace that honors the awakening of an inner light. The awakening shifts your seeing from the eyes of your face to the eye of your heart.

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My teacher, Sidi Shaykh Muhammad al-Jamal wrote in his book, Music of the Soul:

“Now you will be like a stranger in the world in which you are, yet at the same time, you are not. It is as though you were only passing through it. Here you carry the holy meaning inside your heart and your soul. For this reason it is said, ‘Be a stranger in this world. Love God and then He loves you. Look not with desire to what is in the hand of another, and he [the other] will love you. Look at his heart and not at his pocket.”

A seeker on the path is always moving between both states – the desire for love in this world and the desire for the Love of the heart and soul. This is how the path challenges us to know ourselves, to know what is true for us, and to move beyond self-acceptance to realize the Unity of the presence of God within us.

So when the voice inside, the inner critic, says, “I should be doing this or that, I should be moving more quickly, I should be focused here or there,” remember that you are in this world and yet at the same time you are not.

Are the expectations you have of yourself hinging on the values and constructs of this material realm of linear time and space? It’s a slippery slope, and it can get confusing. Be patient and merciful with yourself.

If you could use help with discernment, patience and mercy with yourself and others, and true self-acceptance please listen in to today’s Prayer & Healing Circle. We’ll dive a little deeper into this topic and call the patience, mercy and love into the depths of the heart.

Are the expectations you have of yourself hinging on the values and constructs of this material realm of linear time and space? Share on X

You’re invited to join us. As always, you are welcome to bring your prayers for personal struggles, challenges of and with those you care about, for peace, for fulfillment, and for the health and sustainability of our planet.

Bring whatever is on your heart. Come as you are, receive, heal and grow. Please invite your friends to join us, too.

In the future, if you’d like to join us live, there is time for Q&A and sharing at the end of the call – off the recording.

Hope to see you there next time…

By the way, today’s topic is another request from the Facebook community. You’re invited to join our discussions there. Click here to access the group.