Your faith touches me as always, but do not be my acolyte just now. They were already legends—filled with love for all they saw around them, beings who understood the word joy. How can we learn to love ourselves? Perhaps we can start by admitting that it is impossible! It is not possible in the same sense that we will never become completely self-accepting (not in this life anyway!). Like others values worth wanting, loving one’s self is an ideal never fully realized. However, moving in that direction is a fascinating and worthwhile, lifelong adventure. If we can become more self-aware, it will help us to become more loving toward ourselves. It is not possible to love someone profoundly whom one does not know, and many of us are virtually strangers to ourselves, so deadened have we become to any awareness of our deeper feelings. And since we have spent many years cutting ourselves off from awareness of hated parts of ourselves, the recovery of awareness is usually not easily accomplished. We are frightened of what we may find and resist awareness in multitudes of ways. Frequently, the help of a professional therapist is needed to help us overcomes these resistances. Often in the early stages of recovering self-awareness it will seem as though we are learning to hate ourselves, not love ourselves. This happens because one of the first things we become aware of is our hidden self-hate, which has been building up over the years and of which we have likely had only vague intimations, and feelings that have been too unacceptable for us to allow ourselves to experience some to the surface. #RandolphHarris 1 of 14

We may begin to feel more hate then we thought it was possible for us to feel. Self-loathing, deeply experienced hurt, disgust about pleasures of the flesh, and other frightening feelings may burst into awareness. This is a crisis in personal growth, but it is often a necessary crisis. Advocates of self-actuating thinking approach mental health frequently do a disservice at this point. Too often they short-circuit this process by encouraging individuals to think optimistically about themselves without taking into account their need to first experience their self-hatred. Under the influence of this advice individuals are likely to cover up something bad about apparent self-acceptance and self-affirmation over the tomb of their inner deadness to themselves and their self-hate. In this way they may talk themselves into being more successful insurance salesmen or less disagreeable husbands, while they have only cut themselves off even farther from contact with themselves and the ultimate possibility of genuine self-acceptance and self-affirmation. Gradually, when we allow ourselves to experience self-hate, this crisis will pass. We discover that it is not so bad after all to have very human feelings. A young woman who has been shocked and scandalized by accounts of promiscuity feels profound disgust as she becomes aware that she, too, has desires for pleasures of the flesh that are not limited to one man. However, she begins to enjoy and cherish her feelings for pleasures of the flesh. As is usually the case, he disgust masked an unaccepted appetite. #RandolphHarris 2 of 14

Khayman was a young man addicted to working long and hard hours and he was considerably bugged by his father’s lack of ambition. He could not understand how his father could go off for a day of fishing when he was having business difficulties and financial pressures. When the young man examined his feelings more closely, it became evident that he did not allow himself to experience his own desire to take off and get away from it all occasionally. He was afraid he would like it too much and become a drifter. So he drove himself constantly, no allowing himself the pleasure of relaxation. And it is not surprising that once Khayman was able to experience this desire to loaf within himself, he not only moved in the direction of greater self-acceptance but was able to experience more love for his father. If we can keep our goals realistic, it will also help us in our efforts to learn to love ourselves. Many of us make severe demands on ourselves. We think we ought to be perfect, and we think we ought to achieve that perfection immediately. When we fail to do so, as we certainly must, we are burdened with unproductive feelings of guilt and worthlessness. With this kind of perfectionist cycle operating we might easily make even the search for self-acceptance a new vehicle for feelings of worthlessness! #RandolphHarris 3 of 14

Perhaps the secret is possessed in learning to relax and enjoy what we are right now—every feeling, every urge, every idiosyncrasy that is a part of us. Then if we really want to be what we have always told ourselves we ought to be, we may be freer to move in that direction. In other words, we dare not wait until we are perfect to start loving ourselves. We would wait forever. Let us learn to love ourselves in our imperfections. This attitude toward ourselves might be compared to the attitude of a warmly affectionate father toward his son. When the boy makes mistakes, he does not stop loving his son. He recognizes that failures and probably will express his concerns and perhaps may even become angry. However, somehow, there is communication from father to son of steadfast love and encouragement that is no destroyed or even threatened by these occasional crises. A similar attitude toward ourselves is very desirable. There will, of course, be times when we feel we have goofed. We may be angry and say to ourselves, “Oh, you meathead, you have done it again.” However, if there is a basic underlying sense of personal worth that is not shaken by the recognition that we have made a mistake, we can be much more effective about doing what we want to do in the future; for we will not be wasting the days of our lives in self-recrimination. Often this self-accepting attitude involves a sense of humor in which we can laugh at ourselves in our errors, give ourselves a good kick in the britches, and move on to the next moment of living. #RandolphHarris 4 of 14

Ideally, religious faiths might play an important part in helping their believers to learn to love themselves. Perhaps they do, but frequently they tend to create self-hate. Often religion says, “You are unworthy and condemnable in God’s sight. However, if you confess your unworthiness, God is willing to forgive you. You will then be a new creature, and God will give you strength to feel and act in more acceptable ways.” It cannot be denied that individuals who accept such a belief in God often experience a profound relief as they feel released from the burden of self-hate. And often they live greatly changed lives. However, the question remains whether the basic problem of self-hate has been adequately dealt with or whether a veneer of self-acceptance has simply been laid over the self-condemnation. It would appear that a new and better repressive technique is often acquired whereby the individual can somewhat better avoid dealing with the desires and feelings that are still felt to be so condemnable in God’s eyes. On the other hand, religion sometimes says, “God knows how often you get into messes you regret. He also knows how ugly and brutal you can sometimes seem. However, he also knows how frightened you are and understands why you do the things you do. He loves and accepts you as you are. Because God loves you, he really wants you to enjoy life and the experience of love to the fullest. He enjoys being a partner in your quest.” It seems likely that faith in this kind of God would add to the experience of love for one’s self. #RandolphHarris 5 of 14

Millions of humans come into the World and after a relatively short existence disappear. No of us are an exception, our turn to vanish will also come. Thought, confronted with this fact, must either despair, take refuge in the hopes of religion, or resolve to find out the truth behind the tremendous cosmic drama. It is better to accept the loneliness of the quester than the complacency of the Worldling who lives without any understanding of life’s inner purpose. Men and women try various ways to overcome their innate loneliness and with various results in the end. So long as the expedient used is something or someone outside themselves, their victories turn out to be illusions. There is no final way other than the Way which everyone has had to tread at last who ever succeeded in this objective, and which leads inwards to the Overself. In their search for satisfaction outside of and apart from the Overself, men and women are really fugitives from it. The response provoked in you by the entry of these ideas will determine your future. We suffering from stagnation and imagine that existence in the intellect and body is enough; it is not. The primary emphasis must be laid on the living principle of our being, the central self which creates both body and intellect. Here it is, the human creature put upon this round planet and left to make nothing from life, merely survive, or to make something out of it, and hold the great vision of the World-Idea, in company with the gods. #RandolphHarris 6 of 14

The making of money, the earning of a livelihood, and the attainment of professional or business success have their proper place in life and should be accorded it but—in comparison with the fulfilment of spiritual aspiration—out to be regarded as having quite a secondary place. Some people throw their clothes away after they wear them, they rent million-dollar apartments and forget where they are. No scientific technological advance, buy sports and luxury cars and cannot remember where they parked them. These individuals have an endless parade of sports coats, pants, robes, silk foulards. mink-lined raincoats, and dinner jackets for Monte Carlo, and jeweled cuff links. When they awake, their clothes are already laid out for them. Heaven help them if they were to change a single time, from the linen handkerchief to the black silk socks. Breakfast awaits them in the immense kitchen with its beautiful windows. The Greeks as always were a splendid people, gentle and trusting though they were darker of hair and skin now on account of their Turkish blood.  The power to communicate varies. To listen to the thoughts of others is often to be heard oneself. #RandolphHarris 7 of 14

They are sane, but they are so busy, and have so much money, and travel so much that it is like finding a tree in the forest without a map of which one you are looking for. Gold watch on his wrist, one of those high-tech numbers he so adored. Think of that thing flashing its digits inside his office. No scientific technological advance, no political gain, no economic improvement will ever be enough in and of itself to provide a proper goal for human endeavour. It is easy to forget this in certain favourable periods, and if we do we come close to disaster in the end. We use every possible moment to cultivate the uncertain fields of commerce or to grow the perishing flowers of pleasure, but we are unable to spare one moment to cultivate the certain fields of the spirit within ourselves or to grow the enduring asphodels of divine devotion. The goals of progress are but imagined ones. There is only one goal which is undeniably real, completely certain, and authentically true—and that is an unchanging one, an eternal one. Yet it is also the one that has escaped humankind! #RandolphHarris 8 of 14

Our self-hate is developed primarily from experiences of feelings of rejection by others. Learning to love ourselves also involves relationships with people. We need the experience of emotional intimacy with others so that we can learn that we can be accepted as we are and thus can grow in self-acceptance. A very real predicament faces us at this point. We are desperately afraid of intimacy because we assume that deep involvement with another person will lead only to further rejection and hurt, and further confirmation of our feelings of worthlessness and unlovableness. Yet the experience of intimacy is almost a prerequisite for moving in the direction of the greater self-acceptance that would free us to enter into intimate relationships. The only solution to this dilemma seems to be to move gradually into increasing intimacy in spite of our fear. We will probably act somewhat like a wild deer leading to trust a would-be human friend. Because of our fear, our seeking of intimacy will undoubtedly proceed slowly and cautiously and our forward progress will include many frightened strategic withdrawals. However, if we can overcome our fear sufficiently to begin to talk about our inner feelings with another human being we will begin to learn that we are not unique. And out of the mutual acceptance will begin to assert itself. When we feel hurt, angered, misunderstood, and above all else, frightened, of course such a relationship will have its difficult moments, both for ourselves, and the other person. This will happen because we are both so frightened of self-disclosure that we constantly seek to avoid it. #RandolphHarris 9 of 14

If we can persist in spite of our fears, the rewards in satisfaction and growing self-acceptance will be great. If we are sufficiently motivated toward changing ourselves, if we have not been so emotionally damaged that we cannot make a start, the suggestions described above for breaking through the cycle of rejection and our self-hatred and learning to love ourselves will probably be helpful. Here in this country, mortals are more eager to better their manufactures than themselves. They will accept their own imperfections quite smugly and contentedly, but the imperfections of their automobiles—never! Yet, if they do not even know why they are standing upon it at all what is the use of their running from point to point on this Earth? Mortals as scientists have put under observation countless objects on Earth, in sea and sky. They have thoroughly examined them. However, mortal as mortal has put oneself under a shallower observation. One has limited one’s scrutiny first to the body, second to what thinking can find. Yet a deeper level exists, where a deeper hidden self can be found. One will discover that it is not enough to regard as good only that which is favourable to one’s physical life. One must complete the definition and sometimes even contradict it by adding that which is favourable to one’s spiritual life. There is nothing more important in life than the Quest, and the time will come when the student discovers that there is nothing more enjoyable as well. #RandolphHarris 10 of 14

This is inevitable in a Quest whose essential nature is one of infinite harmony and unbroken peace. No Worldly object, person, or pleasure can ever bestow the satisfaction experienced in uniting with the Overself. It is not the primal needs and their gratification but the realization of our divine possibilities which is the hidden justification of our presence in this World. The ceaseless longing for person happiness which exists in every human being is a right one, but is generally mistake in the direction along which satisfaction is sought. For all outward objects and beings can yield only a transient and imperfect delight that can never be equivalent to the uninterrupted happiness of life in the Overself. An existence which has no higher aims than purely physical ones, no nobler activities than merely personal ones, no inner references to a spiritual purpose, has to depend only on its own small resources. It has failed to benefit by its connection with the power behind the Universe. That the truth of life must be deeper than what we see and hear and touch, is suspected by intuitive persons, believed or felt by pious persons, and directly known by wise persons. What the surface story tells us is not the whole of it, they say. The love of institutional religion, although the name of God necessarily comes into it, is not in itself an explicit, but an implicit love of God, for it does not involve direct, immediate contact with him. #RandolphHarris 11 of 14

When they are pure, God is present in religious practices, just as he is present in our neighbor and in the beauty of the World; in the same way and not any more. The form that the love of religion takes in the soul differs a great deal according to the circumstances of our lives. Some circumstances prevent the very birth of this love; others kill it before it has been able to grow very strong. In affliction some mortals, in spite of themselves, develop a hatred and contempt for religion because the cruelty, pride, or corruption of certain of its ministers have made them suffer. There are others who have been reared from their earliest youth in surrounding impregnated with a spirit of this sort. If they are sufficiently strong and pure, we must conclude that in such cases, by God’s mercy, the love of our neighbor and the love of the beauty of the World will be enough to raise the soul to any height. The love of institutional religion normally has as its object the prevailing religion of the country or circle in which a mortal is brought up. As a result of an inborn habit, everyone thinks first of that each time one thinks of a religious service. The whole virtue of religious practices can be conceived of from the Christian tradition concerning the recitation of the name of the Lord. Our goal is to raise ourselves in a land of purity, and the Bible reminds of that the Lord really has the power of transforming the soul. Religion is supposed to truly be nothing else but this promise of God. #RandolphHarris 12 of 14

Every religious practice, every rite, all liturgy is a form of the recitation of the name of the Lord and in principle should have a real virtue, the virtue of saving whoever devotes oneself to performing it with desire. All religions pronounce the name of God in their particular language. As a rule it is better for a mortal to name God in one’s native language rather than one that is foreign to the culture. When it has to make the slight effort of seeking for the words in a foreign language, even when this language is well known, except in special cases, the soul is not able to abandon itself utterly. A writer whose native language is poor, difficult to manipulate, and not widely known throughout the World is very strongly tempted to adopt another. There are a few like Joseph Conrad who have done so with startling success. However, they are very rare. Except in special cases such a change does harm, both thought and style suffer, the writer is always ill at ease in the adopted language and cannot rise above mediocrity. A change of religion is for the soul like a change of language for a writer. All religion, it is true, are not equally suitable for the recitation of the name of the Lord. Some, without any doubt, are very imperfect mediums. However, religion is known only from inside. Catholics say this of Catholicism, but it is true of all religions. Religion is a form of nourishment. It is difficult to appreciate the flavor and food value of something one has never eaten. #RandolphHarris 13 of 14

The comparison of religions is only possible, in some measures, through the miraculous virtue of sympathy. If at the same time as we observe them from outside, we can know mortals to a certain extent, as we manage by sympathy to transport our own soul into theirs for a time. In the same way the study of different religions does not lead to a real knowledge of them unless we transport ourselves for a time by faith to the very center of whichever one we are studying. Here, moreover, this word faith is used in its strongest sense. This scarcely ever happens, for some have no faith, and the others have faith exclusively in one religion and only bestow upon the others the sort of attention we give to strangely shaped shells. There are others again who think they are capable of impartiality because they have only a vague religiosity which they can turn indifferently in any direction, all our faith, all our love to a particular religion in order to think of any other religion with the high degree of attention, faith, and love that is proper to it. In the same way, only those who are capable of friendship can take a real heartfelt interest in the fate of an utter stranger. If we do not love our fellow travelers on this mortal journey, we cannot truly love God. We are all spirit children of our Heavenly Father and, as such, are brothers and sisters. As we keep this truth in mind, loving all of God’s children will become easier. #RandolphHarris 14 of 14