Loving Yourself

Rev. Amy Russell - 2008-04-29

Loving Yourself

April 6th, 2008

Rev. Amy Russell

From the first day we’re born, we are interacting with the world around us, taking in and observing how the people around us treat us. We notice when someone smiles at us. We observe how it feels when someone ignores us. As children, we hear the tone of voice of our mother when she speaks to us, and the tone of voice when she speaks to others. We notice how our siblings interact throughout the bumps and scrapes of childhood. When someone shares with us. When someone takes something desirable away from us. And each one of these reactions forms within us the shape of who we come to believe we are.

Are we someone who is loveable or unloveable? Did our parents smile and give us approval when we talked? Or did we receive very little attention from any caretaker? Were we left to our own devices in figuring out how to decipher the world around us? Did our siblings talk and laugh with us, or did they turn their back to us and call us names?

We develop our idea of who we are from all these early interactions and continue to shape our sense of self as we move through the world, as we become students, friends, lovers, spouses, and parents. Within these relationships and all the roles that we play in life, our idea of who we think we are is completely tied up in the kinds of feedback we get in these roles.

Do people think we’re smart? Do others seem to enjoy our company? Do we get good grades? Are we successful in our careers? Do we find friends easily? Do we find good relationships with others?

Our experiences often can shape how we think about ourselves and who we are. Our selves are like a fragile shape shifting membrane that changes sometimes as the wind blows or as the waves flow over it. But the basic shape of this membrane was developed from our earliest days as a human.

Rachel Naomi Remen, who is an author and psychotherapist for cancer patients, tells stories about people and how they think about themselves. She tells a story about Max, a man who came to her office dressed in a ten-gallon cowboy hat and scruffy cowboy boots. He seemed like a real cowboy. He owned a ranch and was seemingly very successful at what he did. But he seemed to approach life determined to live a risky, rugged existence. He had won and lost two fortunes, been married four times, and had lived through several accidents and injuries that were life-threatening.

As Rachel talked with him, she noticed that he talked about life as if it were something to be won, as though maybe he didn’t have a right to live but that he was determined to beat the odds. He finally spoke about his parents. He revealed that when he was born, he was a small sickly baby. He had been told that he was not expected to live. As he grew up and became stronger, he got the feeling that his father did not really care for him while his mother was constantly struggling to help her weaker son to survive. He got the feeling that his father disdained his weakness, expecting him to be stronger as a male.

After many conversations, Rachel finally asks Max if this feeling he has about his father has affected the way he lived his life. Max sits and thinks for a while and then replies through much emotion that he felt ashamed. Rachel asks him why and he answers through tears, “Because something in me wanted to live.” Through his life, his many brushes with death and his risky behavior, he seemed to struggle with whether or not he had the right to live. His father’s rejection of him had created in him a belief that he was not really worthy of life. But something deep inside him remembered his mother’s love and her belief in him. His feeling about his own self was formed with this deep conundrum about his worthiness, about whether he was loveable. During his therapy with Rachel Remen, he began to love himself, to see himself as loveable as Rachel asserted her belief in him.

Our egos are fragile structures. We are susceptible to so many aspects of the world around us. A casual glance expressing approval of how we look. A perceived slight from someone we love. The comments that our boss makes on our performance appraisal. Some of us are so easily influenced by these seemingly neutral interactions. And then there are interactions that are not neutral such as physical, sexual, or emotional abuse from those whom we trusted. Those who have suffered from these devastating experiences have had their fragile selves beaten down and trampled. Many never recover from the damage done. Some recover with a great deal of work and struggle. The selves who rise above the traumatic stress of abuse can become butterflies arising from a cocoon and flying high with their own re-built spirits.

Some of you have heard of the book that’s being discussed by Oprah in an on-line program between her and the author, Eckhart Tolle. The book, A New Earth, defines the ego as the continual judgment of an individual of their own behavior, thoughts, and actions in the context of other’s behavior, thoughts, and actions. He characterizes this constant battle as one in which we are always trying to justify ourselves as right and others as wrong. Tolle does not see our thoughts, behaviors, and actions as our selves. He sees a deeper inner presence as our true identities.

He says, “Spiritual realization is to see clearly that what I perceive, experience, think, or feel is ultimately not who I am, what I cannot find myself in all those things that continuously pass away.” He suggests that what is underneath our outer selves is our inner consciousness, our inner Beings. The thoughts, feelings, perceptions come and go as waves upon the water, but what is underneath is what is truly ourselves. He asks “Can I sense my essential Beingness, the I Am, in the background of my life at all times? To be more accurate, can I sense the “I am that I am” at this moment?”

This phrase “I am that I am” is the phrase that God uses to describe himself to Moses in the Torah. God describes God’s self as simply being – what exists. Tolle is describing humans with the same phrase suggesting our own divinity – our own essential oneness with the entire universe.

Tolle suggests that all of the activities that characterize the ego are driven by fear. We are afraid of what people think about us. Do they care about us? Do they judge us? The fear of death, and the fear of insecurity – all these things Tolle characterizes as ego. He says that we are caught up in the “content” of our lives – not the essence.

The essence is the deep underlying presence of our Being. And in that deep underlying Being we can only feel peace, we can only feel Love. But we can only sense this presence if we can get past all the fear that is a constant distraction to our fearful egos.

I remember a day when I was sixteen and my family had moved again – the third major move of my life. This time we moved to Dayton and I had just returned home from my first day of school – at Oakwood High School. The day had not been so horrendous. I mean I didn’t feel that I had totally humiliated myself in front of this small school where everyone knew each other and had known each other since birth. Coming in as a high school junior was sort of like joining a party an hour before it was over where everyone else knew everyone and you knew no one.

As a sixteen year old, I was shy and painfully conscious of my body: my too thick eyeglasses, my too curly hair, etc. etc. But that day, there had been some friendly students who had actually greeted me. And some wonderful teachers who had gone out of their way to try to make me feel at home. But I was in such pain every moment of that day, thinking that every one else was watching me to see who I really was and finding that I was not good enough to find any friends at this school.

I remember coming home and going straight to my room, sinking down into my bed and crying. My mother came to my room and held me. After I could talk again, I described to her the day and how difficult it was. She listened and then she just hugged me and she said. “You are you. You are who you are and I just love who you are. And you should just be proud to be you, whoever that is. You are just perfect the way you are – you don’t need to change one thing. And the people who can see that, they will be your friends. You don’t need anyone else.”

I struggle still with loving myself just as I am. I struggle as I think we all do to get past my fear about who I think I am – both my sense of self-esteem and my sense of worthlessness. Because both are fleeting and temporary. I struggle with the possibility that there is more than that available to me. That a deep presence or just being – just love – just peace is at the core of my self.

Often the way that I win this struggle is simply to love myself. As Walt Whitman said, “I celebrate myself, I sing myself.” There are moments when I can simply love who I am and forget all the imagined faults that I continually observe and obsess about. Those things that seem to take up most of our day – how we look, what we wear, what our relationships are at that moment, how much success we perceive we have in our work or in our families, on and on with those aspects of our lives that are never good enough, never happy enough, never enough – because of our fear.

This fragile membrane of judgments about who we are – that is not our selves – that is our fear. We are love. We are peace. We are one with each other and the universe.

Amen.