I Thought The Song Went "Respect" Yourself---Not "Reject" Yourself?

So.... there is this very solid and trustworthy and loyal friend you have. This person is always there. You never have to doubt how solid they are as a friend. They are also insufferably stubborn at times. Yup.

They are also a little bit different from that family member is so calm and peaceful---you know the one who never gets upset about anything and is as seemingly as tranquil as a still sea. Not to mention that they also lack a little personal initiative and motivation at times. They just never really get too worked up about anything!

I am trying to recall how many books I have read, and how many talks I have heard, where there is this notion being spread that we can somehow separate the good in us from the bad: that we can have our exuberance for life while throwing out the impatience; that we can be solid without also being stubborn; that we can be still waters without also being a bit limp and flaccid. I used to believe it was possible. Maybe it is. Maybe in some secret fantasy world that I have yet to inhabit there is a magical realm where people are able to only be what is good and true and beautiful about themselves. Maybe there is this special formula that I have yet to come across where the exuberant person who is excited about life and living it to the fullest never comes across as impatient and the loyal and trustworthy friend never has a moment of stubbornness and the calm repose of a family member never leaves them a bit too accepting and unmotivated. Maybe. Or maybe not.

Where comes this nearly universal notion that we can accept the good and reject the so-called "bad" about ourselves, about the world, about each other? When did we become these psychological miners who dig up acres of land, destroying pristine vegetation and wildlife in the process, just so we can filter out a few ounces of precious gold? Yes, we are going to secure the good about who we are in our own unique ways and we are going to turn the rest into mere waste.... trash.... refuse.... so much ugliness and chaff to be discarded.

I used to be both a bit more idealistic---and what I see now as delusion---than I am now. Yes, I still believe in the power of love. I still believe we can overcome tremendous obstacles. I know for a fact that miracles do happen. I also feel that we cannot so neatly separate our the seeming gold of our own personality from the ground in which that gold is embedded in without some serious consequences to our overall ecology of being.

When we look back over the course of our lives, and the people we have known, I am fairly confident that we can sense how the best qualities we admired about these people were always present with some degree of quirkiness: that if someone was as solid as a rock then they also had some gravity to them and they were maybe prone to inertia at times; that if someone was as illuminative as a fire then it was only natural that they could burn you now and then; that if someone was very fluid and flowing they were probably a little wishy-washy, too, and prone to being a bit unreliable.

Now if you read a book on the Enneagrams, or take the Myers-Briggs personality tests, or partake in a little psychotherapy, or even read a popular self-help offering from the your local bookstore you will probably be exposed to the notion that a truly good person has discovered how to separate out the 'good' from the 'bad' within themselves; and that if you are serious about your spirituality you will find out how to do this, too. There is no shortage of these teachings about rejecting various aspects of our person in the hope of accepting and affirming other aspects. The tragedy, though, is that not everyone realizes the high degree of likelihood that those aspects are inseparable. Few if any ever question the assumptions in such a view. So, the result is that we end up trying to do what we would never dare do to others: accept some of them, reject the rest. That very hurtful activity is what is taught, is what is encouraged, is what most of contemporary spirituality is about: reject yourself in the name of accepting yourself. Odd, eh?