Today, Asteroth told me write about love.
I asked for more detail and she said ‘love as acceptance’. I didn’t need anymore words because the words themselves conveyed the entirety of the suggestion. This is a difficult concept to explain but it seemed as if the words themselves conveyed the feeling and understanding of love as acceptance. It’s as if the words are only a key to a packet of understanding which opens up and engulfs me.
What those words conveyed to me was along the lines that when we are told to ‘love one another’, we are told to accept one another for what we are and what we have the potential to be. It’s a surrendering of one’s own ego and viewpoint. A letting go of our own conditioning and biases allows us to see our fellow humans simply as they truly are. In itself, this is an act of magic since it involves first changing ourselves in order to see more clearly – to see the divine spark in each and every person.
Part of our problem in trying to love one another, perhaps the entire problem, is that we have a habit of projecting ourselves onto those around us. When we interact with someone and dislike them it’s really because in that person we see the reflection of something we dislike or fear about ourselves. We constantly measure others by projecting ourselves onto them. Our ego doesn’t allow us to see this for what it really is – after all, I am an individual, separate, and by the way, I am surely superior. My views, my beliefs and my conditioning are used to synthesize and process my view of the other person and I find them wanting in some way. Indeed, I may violently disagree with them and set them up as my ‘enemy’. However, if I truly know myself, understand myself, and see myself for what I really am then it surely becomes clear to me that I am a child of light, imperfect but evolving with life’s lessons to a higher place in that eternal process of evolution.
If I know myself then I recognize my ego for what it truly is and I place it to one side and tell it that I, the real me, I am in charge here! If I can learn to accept myself through self-knowing and coming to terms with who and what I really am then I learn to love myself. In learning to love myself I am able to love others through acceptance of what they are and where they are at in their own journey. Acceptance is a process of letting go and as we let go we no longer feel the need to struggle. We forgive ourselves and we forgive others and we learn how to truly love. It is only when we truly know and love ourselves that we really gain the right and ability to guide others knowing how to help and correct without damaging that person’s self-worth and progress. Otherwise, any act may be based on something less than love, it may be based on our distorted perspective of ourselves.
Indeed, love is acceptance.