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In a flash I became Princess Fiona, lacking
only a nifty white, wedding dress, flowers in my hair and royal make-up. For
in my magical moment of chill-bump divinity, in my emancipation proclamation
of self-acceptance, all the energy of my personal curse exploded outward
leaving no one untouched. To embrace ourselves, to gently nurture ourselves
with an inner hug of allowing, which empowers another sliver of authenticity
to emerge, will break the curse that holds us bound down deeply in
depression, despair, anger or any energy pattern, any chemical chain of
peptides, any thought, behavior, or habitual reaction pattern that doesn’t
joyfully encourage and facilitate forward movement. Ask me now:
“Holman, do you love yourself?” Likely I’ll response by cocking an eyebrow,
smiling a gentle half-smile and saying, “What’s not to love about Holman?”
This thought might be colored by a few ironic underpinnings, and yet how
gloriously different from before. I’ve created
a new relationship with the mirror. My whole life
has changed in ways magnificent and unfathomable. I’m far from perfect (as
difficult as that may be to imagine) and yet my imperfections merely
represent lessons still on the curriculum, lines of development still under
development! |
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Aloha and Good Morning, Shrek. You’ve
seen it. Remember that bleak instant when it seemed like the bad guy got the
girl? Then, in a magnificent moment of self-realization, Princess Fiona
embraced her authentic self and broke her curse. |
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All the energy that held her locked into
another’s idea of whom she was and who she ought to be exploded out of her
body and across the plane of existence leaving no one present untouched. My own
journey of self-acceptance and self-realization began years ago. I sat in the
office of my then spiritual mentor, a man I admired greatly, expressing the
anguish of self-criticism and doubt. He stopped me gently and asked: “Do you
love yourself?” I pulled the
mantle of my curse more tightly around my shoulders and shivered in
the sudden cold, literally unable to speak or respond in the numbing shock of
realizing that I didn’t know. I didn’t know what it meant to feel love for
myself; I didn’t know self-love was possible. I cried out silently in my
heart: “Am I not less than perfect and therefore perfectly less than
acceptable?” Years went
by. I found
myself in massage school, troubled by the emotions of the moment. It’s late;
it’s dark. I’m sitting in the school courtyard and see my friend Rick
wandering about. Somehow our conversation came full circle with my past when
he asked me: “Do you love yourself?” |
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“I don’t
know,” I replied. “Yeah. I felt like that for a long time and
sometimes I still do,” he said, “But dude, I love you just the way you are. I
wanted you to know that.” Rick grew up in a gang. His best friend died of gun
shot wounds in his arms. Can you even begin to imagine the chain of little
miracles that brought him and me together at that exact instant with Rick
able to speak these words and me able to hear them? In that
moment something changed. The glimmer of an idea burst into the world, new
born and shinning to take its first breath. “What if,” I wondered, “What if I
am okay, just the way I am?” |
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The leprosy
of my self-image found a cure in an inner light of divinity and
acknowledgment, a dance of unconditional love and merriment, a fine wine that
only improves with age, a thought that created a new reality. Self-acceptance
creates self-love. My hope, my
intention, my desire is that as you personally ponder the question, “Do I
love myself?” you find your whole soul crying out “Yes!” in a resounding,
brilliant exclamation of joy. I tell you truly, there is nothing that isn’t
lovable about you. Sure, we all have areas in our personal growth that lag
behind and need a little gentle nudging forward from time to time but that’s
simply our process of polishing. It ensures personal growth never grows
boring. The universe gleefully provides! We’ll always
bump up against those places that need improvement. Life offers ample
opportunity; to live is to grow. The question becomes how fast we desire to
rush forward (where angels fear to tread) and how deeply we desire to embrace
the limitless possibilities of our own divinity. For today I
will smile at myself in the mirror and hug my inner princess. Perhaps you can
to! Thank you for
spending this Morning Moment with me. With love and deep aloha, Holman Shrek
images © 2001 Dreamworks Pictures |
