“Take full account of the excellences which you possess, and in gratitude remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.” – Marcus Aurelius
Do you know how beautiful you are?
Well, I do.
How do I know something about you that perhaps you don’t quite know or believe about yourself just yet?
I know because I’ve traveled the path from insecurity, depression and defeatism (behind a confident-ish façade) to a deepening knowledge and acceptance of my own power and beauty.
I know what it is like to live without my own inner sense of beauty, and living through that experience taught me how essential a healthy sense of self-love is to our existence. It’s like the drowning man who, as he thrashes to reach the surface, suddenly and profoundly understands the importance of air. He may have lived his entire life without giving air a thought, yet in his moment of need he knows its importance and he knows it not just for himself, but for everyone else as well.
Self-love is just like that. If you have it, it doesn’t require a second thought. It’s as natural a part of your being, thoughts and actions as the air you breathe. But if you lack self-love, you understand it in a different way. Lacking self-love, and feeling the debilitating consequences of that lack, you know its vital importance, not just for yourself, but for everyone. And you understand that it is as essential to the quality of life as air, food or water.
Luckily, despite the childhood lessons that led me to squelch my inner flame – lessons that taught me that my feelings, thoughts and needs did not matter – I held onto a glimmer of the light that is my essential being, and a distant memory of the innocence and beauty that I once felt. It has taken many years to recover what was lost, reclaiming what was mine, and re-learning a whole new way of being that accepts and honors my feelings, thoughts and needs, and I now have fanned the faint spark into a beautiful flame.
My experience allows me to see the spark in you, and recognize it as the same divine spark that lives in me. I know the difference between what’s true and what’s false, and what brings happiness and what does not. I know that what you seek is already within you.
I see your beauty and I see your divinity, just as I see my own. I see it so clearly. I see the light shimmering within you, waiting, hoping to receive the healing gust of truth and recognition that will fan it into full flame. You are already all that you seek. Experiencing that knowledge will change everything.
I see my own beauty, and yours, in two distinct ways:
I see the divine spark. I see the holy, sacred fire that is and always will be: pure, radiant, and limitless.
And I see the container, the vessel of that flame. I see the shape and form. I see the smooth and shiny parts, as well as the nicks and scratches that all tell the story of where we’ve been and how we’ve moved through life.
The key to self-love is in self-acceptance. We have to learn to love the container, the shape, the nicks and the scratches, in order to reach the divine holy spark. And we are beautiful. All the nicks and scratches are beautiful, for they tell our stories.
For example, one might easily think of me: “How sad for her to have lived without a feeling of self-love for so long!” And yet at the same time, how glorious, for that lack is precisely what gave me the insight that enables me to see my beauty and to stand up for it. And that experience is what allows me to recognize the beauty in you and be its staunchest advocate, and all that gives me the gift to help others see their own beauty as well.
So my nicks and scratches – the marks of my journey – are beautiful, as are yours. Love them, and that will help you begin to uncover why they are so beautiful.
Love them, and love your divine inner light, for I am and you are, truly, divinely beautiful. All of me and all of you, inside and out, is beautiful, lovable and precious.
