Self-Acceptance
and Kindness
by Swami Kriyananda
The first attitude fundamental to "centering"
is self-acceptance. You are who you are. Make the best of
it, and envy no one for what he or she is. Don't draw comparisons
between you and others: Encourage yourself, rather, in your
efforts to attain your own highest potential.
Self-acceptance will come progressively as you try to live
up to the highest that is in you. Unless you are already
in superconsciousness, you cannot but recognize the fact
that an inner conflict exists between your soul's call to
the heights, and the siren call of temptation to the depths.
You can't laugh off soul-longing, though you may try.
Soul-conscience is not something imposed on us from without.
It rises spontaneously from within ourselves. Often in history,
soul-conscience has pitted individuals against society-it
brought Jesus Christ to the cross, and Socrates to the poisonous
cup of hemlock.
Hamlet's mother said, "The lady doth protest too much,
methinks." One might as justifiably say, "That
person doth laugh too much, methinks." Be careful,
if ever you find yourself making too much fun of anything
or anyone. What you denounce in others is a clue to the
faults you have in yourself. Make sure, then, that you are
not merely hiding from some failing in yourself.
True conscience is innate. It is the silent voice of the
soul. To achieve self-acceptance, you must be clear in your
true conscience. Such clarity comes only when we accept
that our higher Self is our eternal reality.
Needless to say, one doesn't achieve this degree of self-acceptance
in a single leap. So long as you sincerely resist your lower
impulses, and strive toward your own inner heights, your
conscience will be reasonably clear, and you will find yourself
able to achieve that measure of emotional and psychic relaxation
without which it is not possible to find rest at one's center.
Self-acceptance makes it possible for one to view others
also in their own higher nature, and to accept that potential
as their own reality. Only from within will it ever be possible
for you to know others truly. When you relate to their center
from your own, you will find that they, too, respond to
you from that center in themselves. Soul speaks to soul,
and recognizes itself in an infinity of manifestations.
This was what Jesus meant by the words "Love thy neighbor
as thyself."
My guru, Paramhansa Yogananda, lived always at that center.
Wherever he went, he attracted utter strangers to himself.
Friends of mine a few years ago stopped at a gas station.
The attendant, an older man, recognized a photograph of
Yogananda on the dashboard of their car as he was cleaning
the windshield. Deeply moved, he related how "that
man"-about whom he apparently knew little or nothing-would
stop for gas at a station in Highland Park where he had
once worked. That contact, casual though it was, had had
a profound effect on his life.
When it comes to understanding things rather than people
at their center, as Nijinsky did during his observation
of the ski instructor, you will find the doors of innumerable
mysteries unlocking themselves for you. Any undertaking,
indeed, to which you apply your mind will come out successfully.
I've tested this principle many times, and in many ways.
It is no abstraction, nor is it a question of individual
talent. It is, simply, a practical application of the truth,
"center everywhere, circumference nowhere."
Kindness
Acceptance leads to the second attitude necessary for finding
your own center: kindness. To achieve that clarity of conscience
which is the companion of self-acceptance, you should practice
kindness also toward yourself. You'll never overcome your
failings by hating your shortcomings, nor by hating yourself
for indulging in them. Of course, you shouldn't allow kindness
to excuse them. In true kindness to yourself, you should
work, rather, to strengthen yourself in virtue. Seek always
your own highest potentials. If this means being stern with
yourself occasionally, so be it. But never be judgmental.
Kindness is necessary also for understanding other people.
In fact, without it, there can never be acceptance of them.
By kind acceptance you will find yourself intuitively aware
of them at their center.
Kind acceptance may be a more difficult concept to visualize
in connection with inanimate things. As a means of achieving
such understanding, relaxed acceptance rather than kindness
may be an easier concept to grasp. And yet, because consciousness
is inherent in all things, to feel kindness toward things
also need not really strain the point.
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