Respect Yourself and Others Will Respect You
Your Higher Self is calling you to truly honour yourself as a divine creation.
If you have chosen this card you are learning about respect – respect for yourself and respect for others. What is respect? Respect is the energy of acceptance. Acceptance in its pure form is an energy of awareness – we learn to accept what is. We can accept when we are aware. Awareness can be a projection, the moulding of two-as-one, or it can be a heightened sensitivity. Awareness brings us in contact with boundaries that are the point of contact for respect. Therefore:
The feeling of respect equals the feeling of acknowledgement (of the boundary), the feeling of acceptance (of the boundary), the feeling of connection (to the boundary), which will connect you to your inner core and facilitate flow.
We set the boundaries of our identity in place through our feelings. Identity is the key to your inner core. Awareness and acknowledgement of the boundaries of respect is what forms your mindset and core identity and creates a channel for flow. Choosing this card means you are standing in front of a doorway that is the boundary of respect. You are being asked to acknowledge this boundary of respect for self and others. You are now ready to honour yourself and others as divine creations.
The journey to respect is through self-respect, which is an active form of honouring one’s self. Your Higher Self is showing you all the gaps in your boundaries, the places where you presently do not feel respected. The lack of respect you may be aware of is in the disregard for your feelings when someone acts and thinks they know better than you or as simple as a friend who is continuously late. A lack of emotional and physical support can also reflect a lack of consideration for your boundaries of respect. Finding the respect you seek is through recognition of your boundaries.
Think of your boundaries as a map of your personal planet. At the core is the very substance of you, made up of your pure potential and your abilities.
The core includes your values as well as aspects of self, such as being funny, quirky, serious, responsible, creative, and so on. Dotted around the surface of your personal planet map are the oceans, coastlines, lakes, mountains and meadows. These are landmarks of your significant life experiences that also include your culture, education, career and community. Signposts on the map include your preferences such as spicy or sweet, hot or cold, late nights or early mornings, loud or quiet, and so on. In awareness this combined information creates a user’s manual that guides the boundaries of self, which include boundaries of respect. Emotions set the different points on your map and help you locate each point. Respect (from ourselves and from another) is one of the key emotions you use to detect the boundaries of the signposts and landmarks that make up your map.
Where this map of coastline starts and ends forms your boundaries. Boundaries are your points of contact with self, another person or situation. Boundaries define and explain what is in front of you. The act of respect occurs when the awareness and acknowledgement of self, a situation or person (acknowledgement of the boundary) brings acceptance. You don’t park over your neighbour’s boundary line because you respect their property. Sometimes, however, the boundary isn’t clear. For instance, when attending a funeral, one form of respect is through the active acknowledgement of a boundary around attire. You might be crossing a boundary (an act of disrespect) when you wear a brightly coloured dress to a funeral at which black is the only acceptable colour of dress. Some may say that you have not honoured either the tradition or the person whose funeral you attended. What those who judge are commenting upon is that you have not acknowl-edged or accepted that a tradition or cultural boundary is in place and have therefore not practiced respect.
The boundaries of self-respect take many forms whether dealing with the physical and emotional self. The proper setting of boundaries around the care of your body through exercise, getting enough sleep and eating the right food are all ways to respect your physical self. When we are children we are learning to operate one of the most powerful machines on the planet, coordinating our brains and physical bodies to work together, aligned and unified. We often feel despondent about our abilities; criticising ourselves for not being better at the skills we undertake, not fully understanding that the human machinery is more complicated than a MiG fighter plane. No one masters that machine in their first attempt. Pilots undergo many years of training before they use complicated machinery. We use our physical machinery from day one! It’s an owner-operated affair, so we have to learn as we go. Think of the beauty of your childhood body, even in its awkwardness, learning to run, taking its first fall in the playground. See the beauty in your young effort that other children laughed at as you coordinated different limbs to learn new skills for sports or dance, and so on. As you respect yourself and your learning process you begin to see the beauty of the creation that is you – and you develop skills through the setting of boundaries to better respect your physical self.
Along with our body we have powerful emotions that drive many of our behaviours. Setting boundaries around not judging yourself and your path in life is also a form of self-respect on the emotional plane. We judge ourselves for not learning the skill of managing these emotions immediately. Strong emotions such as anger or powerlessness express themselves in so many ways – through our weight, our jobs, frustration with family, and addictions. If you are not able to express yourself as fully as you wish, don’t judge yourself. Similar to our experience with physical machinery, learning to operate our emotional machinery takes years – even a lifetime. Give yourself some credit. Do not judge yourself when you come up against an emotional boundary you have yet to learn. The ‘How-To’ emotional manual is very thick. We move one boundary at a time. Respect yourself by acknowledging your own strengths and the progress you have made.
This acceptance of self (self-respect) is an example to show others how to treat you. If the core of you is accepted and respected then this is what you will experience in your world. If you are not honouring the boundaries of respect you will see this projected in the world outside. This is because your energy field moulds to form what you create in your dreams, thoughts and feelings and people in turn react to your energy field. The world that you experience reflects your mindset: your beliefs, your joys, hopes and dreams for the future. The world you experience can also reflect all of your fears, a fear of loss or fear that you are not good enough. It reflects a chaos of thoughts and feelings within your heart and mind. What you create is dependent upon how much energy you place on each thought. Emotions power up or power down thoughts so the areas you are looking at today are the areas where your emotions are powering your thoughts.
Look to your mindset to find where you currently respect or don’t respect yourself. Each area in which you experience respect or lack of respect rep-resents where boundaries were laid successfully and where boundary gaps exist. Each area where you struggle to receive respect identifies a boundary gap. These boundaries are yours now to set for you. If someone disrespects you understand that you have already disrespected yourself. Therefore the road to respect is to look first at how you disrespect yourself perhaps by making jokes about your abilities. You may make a joker of yourself to hide your insecurities.
In this journey of respect you will understand how by meeting your own boundary of acknowledgement and acceptance you can connect to what is true of you and then it becomes irrelevant how strongly another person is set in their ways. You will respect your own boundary. If you respect your boundary first you will not require another person to respect it. When you suffer from disrespect (from others) it is because you have not acknowledged or accepted yourself first. The disrespect you feel is your own. You cannot understand why that person thinks they know better than you and so you struggle with self-doubt. You think, ‘Does that other person know more than me? Is their way better?’ If you have a self-respectful mindset you will understand that the two ways can exist together. Those who have a porous definition of self will believe that their way is better (because they need to be reinforced) or they will feel that the other person’s way is better (lack of identity). You now understand how in the cycle of this journey you are coming to know who you are through the boundaries that you are learning to forge, and once you have forged them you will feel the power of that respect.
As a child you were not given the tools to set these boundaries because boundary gaps existed in your caregivers and were passed on to you. Perhaps your parents were not able to teach you how to overcome ethnicity or gender difference. Perhaps in your childhood you felt you did not possess the aspects that your community favoured or respected. Identifying where you currently experience the violation of boundaries around respect and the origin of that experience is the doorway to self-acceptance. Those who are fully respected as a child understand respect at a depth beyond explanation. They expect respect. This understanding and expectation of respect is expressed through their bearing and manner. They are respectful of other’s rights and rules, and these rights and rules have been set emotionally and they feel safe and secure inside the boundaries that were set for them. You have that same birth right. Your journey is to understand where the lack of respect was created in your childhood and own that it is time for you to acknowledge and accept this birthright as yours.
Respect is the most powerful gift you can give to yourself and to another. It is the honouring and the acknowledgement of all that you see, of all that is in your awareness. Through self-respect, through the acknowledgement, the acceptance and connection to self, you then acknowledge, accept and connect to the different levels/layers of boundaries of respect that links all of us to everything around us. You are able to confer that gift of respect to the next person and the person beyond them, and the person beyond them, and in this you see this connection through your core to your society, your friends, colleagues, family and beyond. When you connect to your core you connect to everybody. When you heal and respect yourself you then heal and respect those around you. The more you acknowledge others without judgement, especially those who are the most challenging, the more you connect to the flow that exists in your relationship.
Respect is free of judgement and filled with the acceptance of another as having full rights, the same full rights that are given to you and that you expect for yourself. Through this doorway of respect you see all the different doorways – the boundaries of family, friends, community, nation, and so on, and are aware that they are all linked by the universal rights we all have, including the right to a safe home, the right to education, food and a clean water supply, the right to be different, the right to be heard, the right to self-expression and to be acknowledged for who we are in all our beauty and difference. These rights, as experienced by an individual, a society and community, are all the same as yours. There is no difference between one country and another. In terms of commerce every human being deserves the right to a job, to be treated well at work, to have their needs met, receive good pay, work in a safe environment and be given regular coffee breaks, etc. In relationships we all expect the same rights to loyalty, caring, safety, being listened to, and so on. The rights of a child are universally based on safety, provision, creativity, stimulation and consistency. Each of these rights represents a boundary that sets the safety and creative growth of the person, community or child. We bundle these rights under one word called respect.
You have been hiding away from the thing you need. Unable to protect your boundaries of respect you have withdrawn from connection rather than moved toward connection. When you experienced a lack of respect you would then see that lack of respect throughout society. By acknowledging, accepting and connecting to your boundaries of respect you will connect to your inner core and facilitate flow. In wholeness of yourself, connected to your deepest self, you will see the world as whole and connected, and this will change your mindset. The beauty of creation lies within you and you are now ready to extend the boundaries of your self-definition. Through this doorway of respect for self and others you create the framework of trust and safety. You are now ready to see without judgement all the possibilities and potentials in front of you and truly honour yourself as a Divine creation.
