A Ramble about Self-Acceptance

I'm not who I want to be. I'm not who I think I should be. I'm not who I think others want me to be. I'm not who I think others think I should be. As I was meditating today, and saying a Private Mass which is my daily practice, I struggled and searched for why I felt, and have been feeling so cut off lately. Why haven't I been able to experience the Being of God, His love and joy, when He surrounds and fills me and is never apart from me?

I have a real issue with needing the approval or recognition of others. It's funny, because I never really thought I cared about what others thought, but the truth is that what I perceive as others' perceptions about me colors how I perceive myself. As a result, I also have an issue with vanity. Unconsciously I think "Oh look at me, see now who I am and what I can do. Don't you approve of me now?" And try as I might against it consciously, I seek higher or more prestigious positions; I stress out about how much money I make and how I am presented to others. In other words, I struggle because I identify myself with my perception of others' perceptions, whether or not my perception is accurate.

As I meditate, a lot of extraneous thoughts come into my mind. My first thought is to reject them. For instance, as I attempted to let go, a scene from the recent Star Trek movie flashed through my mind. It was innocent, and totally benign, but I immediately condemned myself for it happening. I think my unconscious thought was something like, "no, I must reject all of this waste and condemn it."

Now here's the issue, what constitutes all of my identity is effectively that waste. Not that I only and totally identify myself with Star Trek, but that it is a part of a larger whole of memories and experiences, preferences, dislikes, hopes, fears, etc, all of which in themselves are quite transient and will eventually be destroyed when this physical being dies, but in themselves for the moment are a mixture of moral, immoral, and amoral. Now my rejection of what I see as immoral or waste within me is based on the erroneous idea that the good will be preserved and the bad will be destroyed when in fact it will all be destroyed upon physical death, and the only thing remaining will be the distinction between I and God, and His all-consuming love.

Now here's the answer to my question, "why do I feel so cut off from God when He surrounds me?" Because I am projecting my perception of myself onto what I perceive He thinks of me. It seems like this happens on a subconscious level, because with my conscious mind I acknowledge that God loves me, and I Him and I seek that love, but I allow the darkness which comes from judging myself to obscure my perception of Him.

With God, I have been joined to Jesus Christ in His death and resurrection. This is a fact. All the "waste" has already died, and the wages of sin, being death, are in fact satisfied. The only thing remaining to go is the physical body. He therefore passes no judgment on it because it has already been judged on the cross. That which has died has been freed from sin. He neither indulges it, nor condemns it, but accepts it and lets it die peacefully.

This is why I have felt so cut off. I have not accepted my self without judgment, nor have I let it die peacefully, and I have allowed this lack of acceptance, this non-zero attitude (I don't know why but the idea comes into my head that +1 is indulgence and -1 is condemnation), to be projected onto God, onto others, and to erupt into attempts to "prove" how worthy I am, or how spiritual, or how good, or even how I might be better than the other person being secretly fearful that I am worse.

Perhaps this is why sin leads to hell, always. And hell doesn't have to be after we die, it is a fact of the living as well as the dead. Sin is a non-zero attitude towards ourselves and it projects our perceptions of ourselves onto everyone else, including and especially God, and this perception is fear whether we know it or not. All the while, God surrounds us with His Being of love. Our ability to recognize that is dependent on our ability to let go of that fear, and stop projecting our perceptions onto Him.

St. Paul said in Romans 8:1 - "There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, who do not walk according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit." I think, quite possibly that this is part of what he meant. Not that God condemns the person in actuality but that we project our own subconscious self-condemnation onto Him, whereas the person who lets the self die peacefully with Christ, neither indulging nor condemning, realizes the ever-present and all-consuming love of God and his perception isn't clouded by the darkness of self-judgment.