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Do
you ever feel like life goads your negative qualities on?
You try to be good, but one challenge comes after another and your
good nature starts to disintegrate into a ball of raging fire?
When we’re on the spiritual path, we often want to suppress
negative emotions because we mistakenly feel "unspiritual" for
having them in the first place. But
we can only deny them for so long until a pressure builds that makes us
want to bite the heads off of innocent puppies.
Maybe letting off a little steam in the early stages is really
what’s called for---if only we could quit coming down on ourselves for
occasionally delving into the dark side.
It’s pretty ironic, but part of perfecting our spiritual
expression is recognizing that we are imperfect as human beings and that
our "evil" tendencies are just as divinely inspired as the
"good" ones. Don’t
believe it? OK, go ahead and
pretend you’re not angry until that ulcer develops, or condemn your
shortcomings until you convince yourself that you’re really of no value
to the world. Not very
productive is it? Now try
owning up to your behavior (hmm, that takes courage), and then let it go
(wow, that requires forgiveness). Now
you’re in a pretty good position to do the right thing next time, or to
help another person who may be faced with the same dilemma.
By accepting ourselves---warts and all, as the saying goes, we
effectively turn our lower nature into an opportunity to express our
higher qualities. It’s like
turning water into wine! So
just remember, you may be a son of a bitch at times, but you never stop
being divine.
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