It is difficult to accept ourselves as we are. This is reflected in the sheer volume of self-help manuals that encourage us to believe in our worth and potential.

      There are many reasons for our not liking ourselves.

Programming

      It has been commonplace in Western societies for parents to program the behaviour of their children by denying them love when they are involved in unacceptable or dangerous activities. Parents use the giving or withholding of love as a shaping device.

      Our inability to love and accept ourselves perpetuates itself through generations. Parents who don't feel loved or accepted cannot convey a sense of love and acceptance to their children. On occasions, they may find themselves competing with their children for the affection of a partner or friend.

Achievement

      In a society in which parents have difficulty loving their children unconditionally, loving them for who they are rather than for what they achieve, the principal means of bolstering self-esteem is achievement. However, acclaim is difficult to elicit and is short-lived. Furthermore, most people are likely to react to our achievements with envy, rather than admiration.

      We live in a competitive world in which we are affirmed when we excel. However, it is usually only one person who takes off the prize. Furthermore, while we may excel, in a limited sphere, further progress pits us against high achievers. Whatever our standard of excellence, there is usually someone who has achieved more. When their successes are celebrated, it will be difficult to resist the impression that our achievements are thereby diminished. [219]

Comparisons

      Comparing ourselves with others begins at a very early age. Margaret Mahler argues that the psychological birth of the human infant, which results from the child's differentiation of themselves from other physical and emotional objects, is complete by the time they are two. Where development proceeds without arrest, this phase will be consolidated by the time the child is three.¹ From then on they begin to make comparisons, a process that becomes more acute later in their development. This measuring of ourselves against others leads to envy.

      We define ourselves by comparisons we make with others. As we begin paying attention to our appearance and personal style, it is not unusual for us to compare ourselves unfavourably with others.

      Part of the reason for this is that we are usually drawn to those whose characteristics contrast with ours. As a result of these involuntary comparisons, the competitive element is exaggerated. We depreciate our characteristics and abilities. We wish we were more like others in physical appearance and personality style. If our complexion is light, we wish it were dark. If our eyes are blue, we wish they were brown. If our hair is curly, we wish it were straight. If we are introverted, we wish we were extroverted.

      While such self-depreciatory comparisons are exaggerated during adolescence, they generally persist through our adult lives and continue to undermine our self-esteem.

Moral failure

      Self-depreciation is also a consequence of the fact that our society, though now largely secular, continues to suffer from an exaggerated sense of moral failure, bequeathed to it by the church.

      The Judaic-Christian doctrine of sin has left many with an unhealthy, debilitating legacy. Behaviour that falls short of perfection, or thought that deviates from accepted standards, is criticised. We feel ourselves under judgment. Low self-esteem immobilises our ability to accept ourselves.

      In some circles there is scant recognition that we are light [220] and dark, a mixture of strengths and weaknesses. Nor is there awareness of the fact that the process of human maturation involves making mistakes and learning from them. Few realise that the development of the human shadow, the ego's dark twin, is a function of socialisation and a necessary consequence of personal development.² Nor are we aware that dysfunctional behaviours most frequently result either from inner defences raised against the assaults of others or from cultural distortions that leave their mark upon the soft tissue of our souls.

      The notion of original sin persists in the wider society in the perception that children are born potential rebels and sociopaths and in the conviction that their spirits need to be broken. This view continues to be entertained in some circles, in spite of herculean efforts that have been made by the education system to eradicate it. When children are treated cruelly, rather than disciplined with a mixture of firmness and gentleness, this often-unchallenged assumption becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Children learn to respond to assault with assault, to abuse with abuse.

      It is important to identify weaknesses, unhealthy reactions and psychological defence mechanisms, which narrow and cripple our capacity to live fulfillingly. These need to be identified so we can work on them and repair the damage. Working with our weaknesses is one of the most effective means of developing our potential. However, addressing our deficiencies cannot proceed in the absence of some degree of self-acceptance. Change results from acceptance and is frustrated by denigration.

An inevitability

      Sebastian Moore has argued that infants, born into families where love is freely expressed and where there is a healthy interplay of freedom and discipline, experience themselves as both loved and lovable. This is largely a consequence of the symbiotic relationship they enjoy with their mothers.

      He went on to argue that this euphoric phase is inevitably followed by the gradual, but necessary withdrawal of the mother from an exclusive preoccupation with the young infant. During [221] this withdrawal the child begins to feel less loved and less lovable. As the mother, the source of the infant's physical and emotional nurture, begins to share her attention with others, her partner and maybe other children, the feeling of being loved and lovable recedes even further. Sibling rivalry deepens the sense of loss.

      According to Moore, a critical transition occurs, for boys, during the oedipal phase, when the young lad finds himself in competition with his father for the love and attention of the most important person in their lives. His response is to pull away from his mother and identify with his father.³

      However, few fathers, particularly in Western societies, are capable of nurturing their sons in a gentle, affirming way, where feelings and emotions are acknowledged and spoken about. It is at this stage, according to Moore, that the sense of been unloved and unlovable becomes a settled conviction. This gut response is further reinforced by a competitive and unforgiving society, and by the treatment the child receives at the hands of peers and adults. All this means, at least in the context of the nuclear family, that the eventual implantation of the notion that we are unloved and unlovable is a necessary consequence of the process of socialisation.

      This dynamic is patterned into reasonably healthy nuclear families. However, this type of domestic unit represents a decreasing percentage of the population. Children in dysfunctional families, and in step-families, single parent families and single gendered families where they continue to be caught in cross-fire between their biological parents, often suffer additional handicaps.

Adolescence

      Children, in individuating, need a parent against whom they can assert themselves, a parent whose love for them is established and consistent. It is important for them to know that they will not be rejected in attempts they make to establish their unique identities.

      Adolescents, at this stage in their development, unaware of the dynamics of the process, often consider that their parents are [222] deliberately thwarting their plans and ambitions. Their angst can cloud an awareness of their parents' affection and concern. It is only later, often when their own children are going through this same stage, that they become aware of the degree to which their parents love for them, and commitment to them, underlay the firmness with which they were held. They also realise that it was this love that enabled their parents to hang in during their adolescent development.

Parenting

      It is not easy being a parent. We should not expect perfection of ourselves as parents. We bring our unresolved psychological baggage to the task. Most of us have hardly begun to resolve issues remaining over from childhood and adolescence before we find ourselves responsible for children. This situation is further complicated by the fact that we often have to deal with our offspring before we have effectively negotiated a relationship with a partner. We are also saddled with expectations and tensions related to work situations. Conflict over money-management and issues related to economic survival have also to be factored into the equation. The omens are hardly favourable for healthy child rearing!

      To live fulfillingly, and effectively, we must learn to balance tensions--tensions between freedom and responsibility, between self-enhancement and concern for others, between the needs of a partner and those of our children, and between family and work responsibilities. We spend a lifetime learning to develop the ability to balance these tensions. For most of us, achievement falls short of expectation.

      We are also bedevilled by reactive responses learned in childhood, from which it is difficult to extricate ourselves. The greater tragedy is that we unconsciously inflict these reaction patterns on our children.

      People of my generation, the Baby Boomers, felt themselves constricted in their freedoms. They raised their children, very often, in an atmosphere that allowed for a much greater degree of [223] freedom than they had enjoyed. Some went overboard and failed to provide appropriate boundaries.

      Many went further even than this. They insisted that society needed to further dissolve restrictions. The reality, however, was that what their children needed was not greater freedom, but firmer boundaries and appropriate discipline.

      Unfortunately, when each generation reaches the stage where it accepts responsibility for establishing social patterns, it is influenced by persisting adolescent reactivity that distorts its perception of current reality.

Self-acceptance

      It is important for us to accept the fact that we are a mixture of light and dark, of strength and weakness, of healthy and pathological responses.

      We must accept moral and legal responsibility for our actions. However, negative judgements we pass upon ourselves should be balanced by an awareness of the fact that we are who we are largely as a result of the interplay of genetics, the influence of others on our embryonic personalities and the dictates of our individual daimon.

      Genuine self-acceptance can only result from us accepting ourselves in our totality, an acceptance that recognises that we are persons in the making, unfinished products.

How?

      How are we to do this?

      Those who were nurtured in a loving environment that provided them with boundaries and a freedom to manoeuvre within those boundaries, have an advantage, the extent of which they will never fully appreciate. They will never know, from experience, what it is like to be denied this nurturing environment and to be crippled by the denial. Self-reflection, and comparison with others, will lead them some way towards an understanding of the struggles others have with self-acceptance, but their understanding will always be deficient, however acute their [224] capacity for empathy.

      If you have to start from scratch, because your self-esteem is so low, you may find it helpful to seek out someone, as a friend, who will help you feel accepted.

      There is an inherent difficulty in this approach, however. The more desperate we are, the more likely we are to crowd others with our needs, to suffocate them. Others will eventually attempt to escape from the demands we place upon them. The more needy we are, therefore, the more difficult will we find it to discover the sort of friend who can affirm us sufficiently to begin in us the process of self-affirmation. It is also likely, if we are desperate for just such a friend, that we will be jealous of the attention they give others. This will further complicate the relationship, and diminish, rather than augment, our self-esteem.

      The better approach will be for us to find a group of people who are accepting. This means that no one person will be burdened with our demands. Responsibility for incorporating us into the group will be borne by the group. It is also likely that we will find, in such a group, one or two individuals who are sufficiently centred in themselves, and accepting of themselves, to be able to attend to us, without this attention being a means of meeting their needs. These people are aware that they can nurture us without diminishing themselves.

      Such a group does not have to be focused on self-development. An interest group may fulfil the function. It may even address it more adequately. The group may be interested in motor mechanics, gardening, or quilting. Before joining a group, we should attempt to discover what we most enjoy doing, what we would love to explore or what we feel we have the potential to accomplish. It could be counter-productive to link up with a group that was attempting a task for which we had little capacity. This could further diminish our self-esteem.

The source

      The source of all love, a love that is inexhaustible and unconditional, is the Spirit Presence that is differently named in [225] various religious traditions.

      The Hebrew Scriptures refer to a Creator God who is merciful, forgiving and the champion of the downtrodden--a God of love and justice. Buddhists speak about a cosmic wisdom and compassion, qualities they consider to be innate in every human. Sufi mystics speak of the love that pulsates at the centre of the universe and argue that this love, which is incarnate in the Beloved, draws us irresistibly into its ambience. Hindus refer to this presence as Being-Consciousness-Bliss.

      The fact that the God worshipped by the world's religious communities is a loving, affirming and forgiving God is not always obvious because it is sometimes contradicted by subsidiary beliefs and actions that appear to contradict it.

Two levels

      Frithjof Schuon has argued that individuals can live their faith at two levels, the exoteric and the esoteric. Those who think through, and live out their religious commitments at an exoteric level believe that their myths, legends and stories are literally true. On the other hand, those who live their faith at an esoteric level recognise the metaphorical nature of their faith-language and relate to God in contemplative ways.⁴

      Those living at the exoteric level, however, find it difficult to accommodate others living at a similar level within other traditions, because each takes literally its storehouse of tradition. In other words, if I am right, you can't be right. Your claim to rightness is a denial of my God. This last response is most evident in exoteric expressions of the three exclusivist, monotheistic religions--Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.

      The contemplatives of different religious traditions, the mystics, whose experience of God transcends words and images, feel a deep affinity with each other. Their experiences of God are similar, even equivalent, if one makes allowance for the different cognitive frameworks used to structure them.

      Where religious traditions are lived exoterically, there is a tendency for the God worshipped to be a projection of elements [226] from the unconscious of the individual or community. In many instances, self-loathing is projected onto the deity, who is viewed as reflecting this. This results in further self-flagellation and, in some instances, in attempts at compensating for weaknesses by devoting energy to holy crusades.

      Those who express their faith at an esoteric level have begun exploring the deeper levels of the self and unearthing responses generated in the shadow. They have also begun to discover the dimensions of an inner divinity that is loving and compassionate and that requires of them, above all else, that they be true to themselves.

Spiritual Presence

      God, an embracing Spiritual Presence, the source of an infinite and accepting love, is as close to us as our breathing.

      This Presence can be discovered in the world of nature. It can be discerned intuitively by those who are open. It will be encountered as we journey into ourselves. We can identify the Divine Presence in relationships that penetrate beyond triviality, where soul energies are shared. We will find it incarnated in individuals who have developed the spiritual dimensions of the bodyself. We will encounter a loving, divine Presence in those whose need evokes a compassionate response. If we can sit with our pain, we will encounter this transforming Presence in our suffering. Meditation will open us, at progressively deeper levels, to the Wisdom and Compassion that are its essence. Religious worship, which leads us into ourselves, focussing on the affirmation of our essential being, is one of the principal routes leading to encounter with the Spirit.⁵

      The paths are many, the descriptions are diverse, and the names are anything but uniform. The God who is available, whatever the path, however confusing that description and whatever name is used; the God who honours all paths, who defies all descriptions and is beyond all names; the God who is utterly incomprehensible; this God, is available to us and longs to awaken in us an awareness of her presence, her creative wisdom and her [227] compassionate love. It is this Presence, this Wisdom and this Love, which is the ultimate source of our self-affirmation.

      By attending to this Spirit we will experience an acceptance that will help us accept ourselves. The longer we remain within the ambience of this affirming Presence, the more will the feeling of being accepted be consolidated. This will lead to our feeling more self-accepted, more worthwhile. Healthy self-esteem will enable us to treat ourselves respectfully, gently and compassionately. Self-hate will be exchanged for self-love. We will be able to forgive ourselves. There will no longer be cause for us to stand in judgement on ourselves. We will have the capacity to be kind to ourselves, to deal tenderly with ourselves. [228]

[LS 219-228]