“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

If you do so, then in the great flow and sweep of your eternal reality there will be an overall current of love and creativity that carries you. Affirmation is the acceptance of yourself in your present as the person that you are. Within that acceptance you may find qualities that you wish you did not have, or habits that annoy you. You must not expect to be “perfect.” As mentioned earlier, your ideas of perfection mean a state of fulfillment beyond which there is no future growth, and no such state exists. (See the 626th session in Chapter Five, for instance.)

“Love your neighbor as yourself.” Turn this around and say, “Love yourself as you love your neighbor,” for often you will recognize the goodness in another and ignore it in yourself. Some people believe there is a great merit and holy virtue in what they think of as humility. Therefore to be proud of oneself seems a sin, and in that frame of reference true affirmation of the self is impossible. Genuine self-pride is the loving recognition of your own integrity and value. True humility is based upon this affectionate regard for yourself, plus the recognition that you live in a universe in which all other beings also possess this undeniable individuality and self-worth.

Fake humility can cause you to tear down the value of others, because if you accept no worth in yourself you cannot see it in anyone else either. True self-pride allows you to perceive the integrity of your fellow human beings and permits you to help them use their strengths. Many people make a great show out of helping others, for example, encouraging them to lean upon them. They believe this to be a quite holy, virtuous enterprise. Instead they are keeping other people from recognizing and using their own strengths and abilities.

(9:40.) Regardless of what you have been told, there is no merit in self-sacrifice. For one thing it is impossible. The self grows and develops. It cannot be annihilated. Usually, self-sacrifice means throwing the “burden” of yourself upon someone else and making it their responsibility.

(Pause.) Love yourselves and do yourselves just honor, and you will deal fairly with others. When you say “no,” or deny, you always do so because in your mind and feelings, a present situation, or a proposed one, falls far short of some ideal. The refusal is always in response to something that is considered, at least, to be a greater good. If you do not have too-rigid ideas of perfection, then ordinary denial serves a quite practical purpose. But never negate the present reality of yourself because you compare it to some idealized perfection.

You must first love yourself before you love another.

By accepting yourself and joyfully being what you are, you fulfill your own abilities, and your simple presence can make others happy. You cannot hate yourself and love anyone else. It is impossible. You will instead project all the qualities you do not think you possess upon someone else, do them lip service, and hate the other individual for possessing them. Though you profess to love the other, you will try to undermine the very foundations of his or her being.

You are putting love on such a plane that you divorce yourself from your real feelings, and do not recognize the loving emotions that are the basis for your discontent. Your affection has fallen short of itself in your experience because you have denied the impact of this emotion, for fear that the beloved — in this case the race as a whole — will not measure up to it. Therefore you concentrate upon the digressions from the ideal. If, instead, you allowed yourself to free the feeling of love that is actually behind your dissatisfaction, then it alone would allow you to see the loving characteristics in the race that now escape your observation to a large degree.

(Long pause, eyes closed, at 10:55.) The very term, “Love your neighbor as yourself” (Matthew 19:19, Mark 12:31), was an ironic statement, for in that society no man loved his neighbor, but distrusted him heartily. Much of Christ’s humor has been lost, therefore.