Accept Yourself as You Are

I saw an old Star Trek episode that teaches a powerful lesson about self-acceptance.  In it, Captain Kirk was beaming up from an obscure planet and something went wrong with the transporter.  It seems like something was always going wrong with that transporter.  In his pretend-Scottish accent, Scotty would say: “The bloody thing is jammed and I can’t control it.”

Somehow when the Captain beamed back to the ship, he was divided into two distinctly different individuals.  Now there were two Captain Kirks dividing his character and personality in half.  One got all of the kind and gentle qualities like compassion and love, the “good” Kirk.  And the other got all of the aggression and passion, the so called, “bad” Kirk. 

Over the course of the episode, it was discovered that the “good” Kirk was filled with so much sympathy for everyone that he was completely inadequate as a leader.  He was incapable of making decisions.  To put it bluntly, he was a wimp!  Without the passion and aggression of the “bad” Kirk he couldn’t function.

So they put them both on the transporter and turned some knobs and through the skills of Mr. Scot and the magic ofHollywood he came back as one person, with the qualities of both the good and bad Kirk fully reintegrated.

And the lesson is:  We need all the parts of who we are to make up what we are.  We can’t just take out the things we like and pretend the rest doesn’t exist.

The truth is:  There’s a part of each of us that’s really good and honorable, pure and loving.  But there’s also a part that’s not kind, a part that’s sometimes impatient or rude.  There’s a part of everyone that wants to don a white robe and walk on the beach barefoot, releasing peace-doves into the air.  And there’s a part that wants to throw on a pair of tight, leather pants and jump on a Harley!

One minute we can be in church saying “Namaste” to everyone, recognizing God in all that we see and the next minute in the car cursing at the person who just cut us off in traffic yelling out the window, “Get out of the way you asshole!”

When it comes to a spiritual being trying to live in a human world, we are a collection of contradictions and that’s a good thing!  That’s exactly the way our creator designed it to be.

Someone said the true test of intelligence is the ability to consider any idea without being offended.  But I say:  The true test of wisdom is to be able to live with paradox, without insisting that it be one way or another.  Sometime it’s not one way or another, sometime it’s one way and another!

We’re not good people or bad people.  Things just aren’t that black and white.  We’re good people who do bad things sometimes.  There aren’t geniuses or idiots.  There are geniuses that act like idiots sometimes and idiots that are capable of great genius.