The Great Healing: learning to love yourself, unconditionally

[Steppingfeet]

Within every challenge we encounter is an opportunity: the opportunity to use that challenge as a stepping stone for spiritual growth, that is, movement toward a permanently greater state of well-being.

The opportunity in *any* form of distress is to react to it with compassion toward oneself.  That is efficient use of the catalyst.  Without being unconditionally loving toward oneself, it becomes impossible to sustain love toward others.

Forgive yourself first.  Again, this does not mean excusing the behavior; it does mean: deciding not to be an enemy to yourself, not to criticize or blame or punish, despite the perceived fault or misstep. 

Such potent learning for me. A core lesson that my conditioning obscures to my vision again and again. So much of discipline is simply a reminding of the self to turn the attention toward love and light. Other-selves who share these reminders of insight with others are a helpful boon to that self-discipline. Thank you, Stranger.

Btw, the depth of self-responsibility you describe in processing one's catalyst reminded me of this Thich Nhat Hanh quote that a friend recently posted:

"A monk decides to meditate alone.

Away from his monastery, he takes a boat and goes to the middle of the lake, closes his eyes and begins to meditate.

After a few hours of unperturbed silence, he suddenly feels the blow of another boat hitting his. With his eyes still closed, he feels his anger rising and, when he opens his eyes, he is ready to shout at the boatman who dared to disturb his meditation.

But when he opened his eyes, he saw that it was an empty boat, not tied up, floating in the middle of the lake ...

At that moment, the monk achieves self-realization and understands that anger is within him; it simply needs to hit an external object to provoke it.

After that, whenever he meets someone who irritates or provokes his anger, he remembers; the other person is just an empty boat. Anger is inside me."

- Thich Nhat Hanh