A Note from Neale...

From last week: 

These were my gifts, not my faults, and my only challenge was to rein in their considerable energy, so that I could match it with the energy of the Moment Presenting. Then I would be in closer harmony with what was going on Right Here, Right Now, and people would see me as magnificent, not malevolent. 

Wow! What a simple, transformative understanding! Whew. It was over. My long struggle with me was over. On the day I "got" that God accepted me, on that day I could accept me as well. I remember well the statement that opened me to this experience: If you saw you as God sees you, you would be very proud, and you would smile a lot.

Once I was able to forgive myself and accept myself, I was ready to take the last step to self-friendship: celebration of myself. And once I was able to celebrate myself, I was at last able to celebrate others. Especially those closest to me. 

I had come full circle. For it was through celebration of them to begin with that I fell in love with them. Then, if I wasn't careful, I loved them to death. The parts of them that I so loved and so admired and to which I was so attracted, died in my arms as I smothered them with expectations and demands and requirements to be this way, and not that; to do it the right way and not the wrong way; to be perfect, thank you, by my lights, not by theirs... 

These were requirements that I would never place on my friends. That is why someone very, very close to me once said to me, "You treat your friends better than you treat me. You talk to them nicer. You respond to them with more patience. You accept them with more grace. I want to be one of your friends. To hell with being lovers!" 

As I said, that stung me. And rightly it should have. I was guilty on all counts. But I don't feel "guilty" anymore. I have regrets, but no more guilt. I have forgiven myself. I have accepted myself. And now, I am celebrating myself. 

I am a wonderful person. I am generous and caring and deeply compassionate; I am helpful and assisting and wonderfully supportive; I am wise and insightful and emotionally intelligent; I am clever and bright and refreshingly stimulating; I am forgiving and accepting and consistently patient; I am exciting and inspiring and terrifically creative; I am easy going and adaptive and remarkably adjustable; I am loving and embracing and caringly present. I uplift people! I give people back to themselves! 

These things are true about me, and more. And only when I can see the best of me can I see the best in you. It is that simple. I must stop "making wrong at every turn" the person closest to me — which is me. 

Then I can stop making wrong at every turn the person who is next closest to me — which is the wonderful human being across the pillow. 

I can celebrate you again! I can not only love you, but fall in love with you again, as if I was meeting you for the first time. As if I didn't have all my "stuff" about me in the way of you. 

I think that everyone should make a list, should write a paragraph about themselves, as I did above. Then we can celebrate life. We can celebrate the wonder and the goodness in all of us. And then we can treat our closest one and our family as we would treat our best friends. For they are our best friends, accepting us for who we are more than anyone else in the world. 

Be friends today. Let's all just...be friends. 

Love & Hugs,