Being Whole and Complete

Interfaith Celebration Gathering

Why is it that we are often harsher on ourselves than we are with others? We hold ourselves to higher standards than we hold other folks. When we look in the mirror we see only our faults, not our beauty. Why is this?

Most of us who have this problem need look no further than our parents or other significant adults from our childhood. We heard these people criticize or make derogatory comments about people and we internalized these standards. Or we watched as the important people in our lives held themselves to extremely high standards and we internalized those standards for ourselves.

Our society also sets standards for beauty, intelligence, and abilities, and we measure ourselves by those standards. We have also been told not to be prideful, so many of us are confused over how we can accept ourselves just as we are, love ourselves and value our achievements without being prideful.

In order for us to learn to value ourselves, to see our own beauty and honor our own wisdom, we first need to value others, see their beauty and value their innate wisdom. For each person we meet, we need to find one or more things to admire about them. When critical remarks about others creep into our minds, we need to focus on the positive aspects of them rather than the negative aspects of them.

Once we learn to quiet the critical committee that resides in our minds, we can then focus on seeing the positive aspects of ourselves. The next step is learning to love ourselves as God loves us. While this might sound like a simple thing for us to do, for many of us, it can be difficult. If as children we were devalued, excessively criticized, or held to unrealistic standards, we will find that we have an inner child who is hurting, all balled up inside us, fearful of what others might think of him or her.

We need to access this inner child, praise this child for all he or she withstood, love this child, and integrate him or her into our adult personality. Only when we are fully whole again can we truly appreciate that we are the beautiful beings that God created. We began life whole and complete, perfect in our imperfections, and we can return to this state.

May the God of love add a blessing to these humble words.

AMEN