The Journey Is Self-Acceptance

There’s a Hasidic story about a poor rabbi who kept dreaming of a treasure buried beneath a bridge in Prague. So the rabbi traveled there, only to find the bridge guarded by a soldier who laughed at the rabbi's tale. “If I believed my dreams,” the soldier said, “I’d follow the one I had last night and dig for gold beneath the stove of a man named Levi ben Yitzhak.” The rabbi’s heart leapt up — that was his name! He rushed home, dug beneath his own stove, and found a treasure waiting there.

We’re always dreaming of a pot of gold somewhere else. A new achievement. A new partner. But the real treasure is always beneath our own stove, for fulfillment only ever comes from accepting what we resist within. The parts of ourselves we reject — our lonely parts, bitter parts, scared parts — keep returning as failure and frustration, till we see that self-acceptance was always what was missing.

Self-acceptance isn’t self-pity or arrogance. It’s simply the recognition that healing comes from holding both strength and vulnerability at the same time. When you're struggling, one part of you feels pain while another part knows how to comfort the first part. We tend to choose between our strong and vulnerable parts, but what we need to do is hold both in duality.

And yet, we outsource this duality to others. Sometimes we play the Caretaker, pretending to be 100% strong and wanting others to be vulnerable. Or we play the Victim, pretending to be 100% weak and wanting others to save us. In both roles, we fail to see ourselves clearly and become at odds with our lives.

So when you find yourself fighting your experience, ask: "What part of me am I not yet willing to accept?" Treat each struggle not as bad luck, but as an invitation to greater wholeness. This is what Joseph Campbell meant when he said, “Where you stumble, there lies your treasure.”