Recognizing Yourself as Beautiful Once Again

Most of us learn ugliness towards ourselves at a very early age.

We then suffer the consequences well into our adulthood.

We push ourselves too hard. We rely on substances to blur ourselves. We become critical or negligent of ourselves. We distance from ourselves and others.

So much ugliness, in so many ways.

The ugly has “no profound and encompassing idea of what [it] wants to be…it is not true to itself, and consequently it cannot be beautiful or do good” (J. Hillman). The beautiful, on the other hand, evokes love.

And yet we learn at a certain point that love has limits.

We learn that we are not deserving of love when we are _____________.

Angry. Sad. Excited.

You name it.

As a result we develop a neu-erotic adjustment, not-loving. We negate those aspects of ourselves that were once deemed unlovable. Through this act of repression we make it impossible to develop a profound and encompassing idea of ourselves, and we are then unable to be true to ourselves.

The way out of the neu-erotic adjustment is to recognize the beauty of that which we have negated. To love what was once deemed unlovable. To stop attempting to be something other than what we are.

We suffer until we do so.

Love draws us closer to that which we love.

It is only when we are closer to ourselves that we have any sense of center.

It is only then that we’re capable of living in alignment.

It is only then that we have leverage.

And it is only then that we’re able to work most effectively in the creation of a better, more beautiful world. It is through work that we tidy the muddle, clean up the mess, and address the ugliness that exists in the world.

That work asks for leverage.

Leverage, in turn, asks for alignment.

Alignment asks for nearness to your center.

And that, of course, asks for you to love what you are.

It begins by healing the neu-eroticism you experience within yourself, suspending the ugliness you’ve learned to enact toward yourself, and recognizing yourself as beautiful once again.

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