Know how beautiful you truly are, and you will know happiness every day of your life. Any dissatisfaction you have in life is based on your appraisal of yourself. Yes, matters in the world take place and irritate, yet your irritation is with yourself and not so much with life and others as you like to believe. You are quick to pounce on someone or something else as the source of your irritation when someone or something else reminds you of your own mis-perceived inadequacy.
Something or another in the relative world is awry at one time or another, no doubt about that. Someone or something will offend you or drive you to distraction. Nevertheless, if you were not so hard on yourself, you wouldn’t take life as seriously as you do. You would not take it seriously at all.
You have a wounded picture of yourself. When someone else makes a mistake, their mistake is like salt on your wound. With your irritation with others, you are really saying:
“Don’t remind me ever again, not even once more, of my human frailty. For this reason, I pounce on you and can’t tolerate your inability to be perfect. I cannot tolerate my own errors, and, therefore, I absolutely can’t tolerate yours. I cannot tolerate anyone’s errors. It is automatic for me to want perfection from you, and I respond automatically when you reveal any dimension of imperfection. The more imperfect I perceive myself, the angrier I become with you. I like to believe that it is you who causes me grief when I am the cause, the one and only.
“You are to me the way a red flag is to a bull. When you are not as I wish you would be, I seem to be capable only of wanting to shake you. I have become a tyrant of judgment as I judge you and find you wanting. You get my mind off me and my errors as I hold you in judgment. Your presence defrays my attention on myself.
“You are my scapegoat. Everyone is my scapegoat. The more I judge myself, the more I find you guilty.
“And now, I turn to You, God. I have asked You one-hundred times to free me from judgment. You tell me one-hundred times that You love me and all Your children deeply, and that You see me from a greater perspective than I see myself. Even so, what You say about this doesn’t seem to make a dent in me. I put someone else’s face on the wanted poster of myself, and I fuss and fume. It is myself I am intolerant of.
“And now You say that if I could break through this one barrier, I would know happiness forever more.
“Get me there, God. I am supremely willing and can’t seem to do this on my own. Take a bigger hand in this. Free me, please, of my own displeasure in myself. Erase this perpetual picture of myself. Get it out of my sight. Replace my judgment with love. Oh, if only You will do this.
“God, this would be leading me to green pastures. This one thing would be worth a King’s Bounty. I would give all of my life on Earth to be free of what inevitably holds me back in life. This is my life in the world, and I have self-deprecation. Please, God, turn my dissatisfaction into acceptance. Dissatisfaction couldn’t be worth less than it is. Acceptance of myself, and, therefore others, is worth everything to me.
“Does enlightenment transfer into acceptance of myself? Is it that my opinions and pictures of myself contribute nothing helpful in the world? Do my confrontations with others all mean this same thing, that when I lift shackles from myself, I will lift them from the whole world and everyone? Does enlightenment mean that I am not blameful but a blessing, and that what I am, everyone is also really? Is this the way it is, God?”
Yes, this is right. All fault-finding is within yourself. Pluck the splinter from your own eye, beloved.