Radical Self-Acceptance

So basic, so rare.

We cannot be peacemakers if we are not at peace with ourselves. Let me say this more strongly still: We cannot be peacemakers if we don’t face the full true story of who we are, all the good and the bad, and remain at peace with ourselves.

When I was asked in 2018 to prepare a “guest lecture” for the inaugural course on “The Inner Transformation of the Peacemaker,”¹ those lines were at the centre of the lecture, which I called “Radical Self-Acceptance.”

I had some hesitations around this title. Psychology has long been too individualistic, and focusing on one of those notorious hyphenated self-…. words felt a bit dubious.

Self-esteem seems to get tripped up by being too annoyingly comparative.² How does our value stack up against others, we pointlessly wonder? This leads to the paradox that one tends to hate being average which, apparently, most of us are.³ And when it comes right down to it, what we need more than self-esteem is to have at least a few others who value us, who believe we matter.

Self-actualization is a term that barely graduated out of the humanistic psychology texts. I doubt many folks could even suggest what it means. It seems to be a concept oddly based on living up to some vague calling, but since most contemporary humanists were secular, there was no one calling us to anything in particular (except maybe advertisers).

And I won’t say much about the self-help/self-improvement industry other than to suggest that, for many, this is a most miserable hobby, and in its typical form bears little fruit, possibly because it holds out the promise for change without enabling the deeper transformation that makes change possible - likely running headlong into Emile Coué’s “Law of Reversed Effect: When Belief and Will are at war, Belief inevitably wins.”⁴

Can self-acceptance fare any better? I like to stick the word “radical” in front of it to emphasize the slight irony. After all, at some level, one might expect that admitting who we are and being ok with that is pretty basic. It’s just that it’s also rare. And, of course, it’s rare because in reality it’s very difficult. I should also add that “radical” isn’t meant to imply complete or perfect self-acceptance, just that we’ve made a real start in welcoming our “shadow.”

This understanding of our “shadow” is one of the best legacies we’ve inherited from Carl Jung, and it refers to all the parts of ourselves that we that we have repressed and rejected. We don’t like our shadow and don’t want to know it or admit it’s there. Radical self-acceptance means moving past this resistance, accepting our whole self, including our shadow. In Jung’s words, it is the foundation for self-awareness:

The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge….

But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved.

What Jung calls “considerable moral effort,” I would describe as the courageous honesty and compassion required to stop avoiding and rejecting these parts of ourselves. The “effort” also involves increasing our tolerance of uncomfortable emotions,⁵ a skill best learned through contemplative practices. A supportive friend or caregiver may also be necessary. It’s not for the faint of heart to become aware of all the dark corners lurking inside of us.

But since I’ve already introduced Coué’s Law of Reversed Effect, let me point out that the “effort” is secondary to becoming convinced of some important beliefs. I’ll invite you to open yourselves up to two:

1. We’re all “fundamentally mixed”; we all have a rich mixture of weaknesses and strengths, histories of shame and delight, lovable and unlovable traits, generosity of heart and stingy self-protection. And we might even say: a mix of good and evil.⁶ Being a beautiful and messy mix is as good as it gets for all of us.

2. We’re all loved and interconnected regardless of this mix. All the deep wisdom/spiritual traditions of the world acknowledge this fundamental mixedness of humanity. None of us can purge the darkness in order to gain admission. We’re welcomed as we are, and the welcome enables the transformation that begins to lessen the harm that we do to others and ourselves.

So we’re the angel-beasts,⁷ capable of creative and loving beauty as well as horrific violence and cruelty. None of us have fully purged that violence and cruelty from our souls, but much of that violence and cruelty stems from our struggle (and our parents’, and our community’s, struggle) with self-acceptance.

Where Jung gave us an understanding of our shadows and our need to acknowledge and integrate these rejected aspects of ourselves, Freud (and others) gave us a description of “defense mechanisms,” the practices that we’ve developed to avoid the truth. While we’re avoiding the truth, we stumble into much harm.

Central among this harm (when it comes to self-acceptance) is “projection” (seeing/fearing in others the darkness that one is avoiding seeing in oneself) and the scapegoating that often follows. A blatant example that is far too common in our day is that of Christians denying their own violent and fearful shadows while they rail against the violence supposedly inherent in Islam. It’s like these Christians don’t even see all the genocidal texts⁸ in Joshua and elsewhere in their own Scriptures — a violence often reflected in the rhetoric that follows this projection. How much harm, how much scapegoating, has been done by this kind of projection!

But there is also goodness that is still hiding inside of us! Our shadows are not all malice and violence. Most of us have also been encouraged, at times, to push away even good, creative energy: constructive resistance, defiant tears, novel self-expression, and even shared vulnerability may all be parts of ourselves that we have needed to tuck away for the sake of social/parental approval or even to ward off our own fears of where this energy could take us. This is why radical self-acceptance is not only important for enabling us to face and care for our dark sides but also to make room for gifts that have been long-suppressed.

A paraphrase of an ancient text will give us a picture of how old this dynamic is (and how stubbornly we often miss the point):

Don’t think that you understand people and have some right to condemn them, look down on them, or even fix them. You wind up just seeing (projecting) your own unfinished business and condemning yourself in the process. This gets in the way of your being generous and compassionate to yourself and others. You hide behind a mask because you hate what’s underneath, and then you start hunting for the smallest problems in other people, while ignoring that you can barely see at all with so much junk in the way.

So, first, have some compassion for yourself and start clearing up your own mess. Once you do that, your compassion will open up a softness in you that will be a safe space for others. You’ll be able to truly pay attention to people and give them courage to clear up their mess.

That’s my paraphrase of Matthew 7.1-5 in which Jesus (with more humour than my earnest paraphrase) tells people to take the “log out of their own eye” before they go looking for the speck in their neighbour’s. Ask yourself this: how often have you heard this story as if it were telling you to “judge yourself first before judging your neighbour,” when it is precisely starting with Jesus urging us to laugh at ourselves and not judge at all? Can’t we read this as an invitation to self-compassion rather than judgement (of self or others)? Accept yourself even with a freaking huge log in your eye! (But by all means have the self-compassion to try to get it out.) Once we’ve faced the beautiful mess that we are, we’ll be a lot less interested in judging others – though the ongoing temptation may well remain a part of what keeps us messy.

I take part in a weekly “Celtic Liturgy” in which a pilgrimage of voices travels through both our shared confession (”we have chosen to hide, and to protect ourselves at the expense of others”) as well a reminder that “the goodness of God is planted more deeply than all that is wrong.” We share the vulnerability of our intercessions and experience the inclusive table where all are welcome. I like to think, to hope, that this weekly journey makes our self-acceptance more natural and more communal as we weave this into our lives. We are collectively accepting our whole selves.

“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Carl Rogers

“Today, as I close in on eighty, I know there are no shortcuts to wholeness. The only way to become whole is to put our arms lovingly around everything we know ourselves to be: self-serving and generous, spiteful and compassionate, cowardly and courageous, treacherous and trustworthy. We must be able to say to ourselves and to the world at large, “I am all of the above.” If we can’t embrace the whole of who we are—embrace it with transformative love—we’ll imprison the creative energies hidden in our own shadows and be unable to engage creatively with the world’s complex mix of shadow and light.” Parker Palmer

One of the best gifts ever - when my daughter, Cara, made this for me

[This is part of a series of posts exploring a contemplative pathway to healing/maturing that I call “a compassionate consent to reality.” For an introduction to the project, you may want to see this post here, or perhaps better, a summary here.

I’m so grateful for your interest and for any comments that you may have!]

1. This course is at the heart of the MA in Peace & Justice offered by the Jim Forest Institute at St. Stephen’s University.

2. “Comparisons are odious” after all, or “odorous” as Shakespeare would say.

3. No doubt why most of us see ourselves as being among the top ten percent of drivers or among the most intelligent people – statistically dubious.

4. Likely a good topic for a future post.

5. Another future post or two.

6. And another future post, this time maybe even the next one.

7. A friend read this and gave me credit for “coining the term” making me realize that Bruce Cockburn must have coined it years ago in this song on a favourite album of mine. I’d always assumed that the term had more history, but it looks relatively fresh and original to Cockburn as far as I can tell.

8. And let me make it clear that, to my shame, I also did not see this for far too long.