Hello and welcome to this insight.
I'm Jelena.
Today's topic is let yourself be celebrated.
So last year I got a birthday card from my lovely daughter and among other wishes there was a note that really got my attention.
It said let yourself be celebrated and this message so simple and so beautiful felt really confusing to me and I really wanted to celebrate myself and find a way to do that but there were so many thoughts that revolved around that whole message.
So I kept this message on my vision board and I observed it,
Then I observed my thoughts and all kind of things that came up.
So here are a couple of things that were on my mind.
Does it speak of pride or even arrogance if I celebrate myself?
Do I deserve to be celebrated?
And what does it mean to celebrate someone?
And how can I do it?
So finally what is that self to be celebrated?
So usually I would look for the answers with my mind but this time I allowed time to pass,
I let the question sink in and within a couple of months answers started coming back to me and revealing themselves to me.
So a few things that came to me are the few things that I would like to share with you.
So every life including my own and your own deserves to be celebrated.
We are all expressions of universe in different shapes and different sizes,
All unique but ultimately all the same and all equally valuable and significant.
To celebrate someone,
To celebrate myself,
Celebrate yourself is to respect,
To cherish,
To accept someone.
But all these words are actually just derivatives of a much more encompassing word and emotion of love.
So to celebrate means to love without conditions,
Without limits and with deep gratitude for someone's existence,
For your existence,
For my existence,
For what we are expressing in this life,
In this world,
In this moment,
In each moment.
And speaking of which self to be celebrated,
We come to a little bit of more complex question of self and we know if we asked ourselves who am I,
That self is an ever-changing concept of our mind and if we look at all our parts,
Stories or our histories,
Our personalities,
Emotions,
Failures,
Decisions,
Achievements,
We will find that nowhere there we can find one stable sturdy thing called self.
Self is fleeting and basically nowhere to be found.
It does help us exist in this world to interact,
To work,
To raise ourselves.
And it is as real as it is unreal.
And this is what Buddhists mean when they talk about no self.
So should we celebrate self or no self or both?
And I say yes,
Let's celebrate both our self as a concept and self as the parts and self as the sum of our parts and self that's beyond that sum and celebrate no self and basically ultimately celebrate that universal self that is ever-present,
Consciousness,
Calmly observing from behind our eyes as Rumi said beautifully many,
Many centuries ago.
So let yourself be celebrated fully unconditionally in each moment.
Namaste.
