Today I stand here as a beauty-full woman. I look at myself and am blown away with who I see before me: a strong, confident, powerful and truly beautiful woman.
Not something I pictured for myself when I was a teenager. Riddled with insecurities and self-doubt, all I had to go by was how I looked on the outside.
Did I fit the picture of beauty everyone was looking for? Often not. But worse, I didn’t fit my own picture.
I felt miserable on the inside. Lost and unsure of who I was. There was a time I would look in the mirror and all I saw was pain and confusion. And often, an ugliness that I didn’t know the source of… who was that looking at me?
Today, I glow and radiate an inner confidence and inner strength of knowing exactly who I am – a truly beautiful woman. And more than that, I live the loveliness of that every day.
Recently I read an article that said only 4% of women feel they are beautiful… how truly sad. How is it that this kind of miserable statistic can exist when we are all truly beautiful… what happens?
You only have to look into the face of a child to know we are all truly divine and precious. How then is it possible for some of us to be able to look into a mirror and see nothing but ugliness and criticism?
So what changed for me?
Thanks to the work of Universal Medicine and Serge Benhayon I heard about the simple yet sometimes not so easy steps to self-care and self-love – both very foreign concepts to me at the time – however, they made sense, so I was willing to give them a try.
What I learned was I was being driven by a world telling me how to be, look, act and think. Thanks to being more self-loving and caring I was given the space to feel for myself what was true for me or not. So today I stand free of most of those impositions and as a result no longer feel ugly from living what is not me.
Today I stand as me… in the beauty and joy of that… and now show a different way, not ashamed or afraid to say I am truly beautiful.
As I have been inspired by Serge Benhayon and Universal Medicine to love and care for myself and claim my own beauty, today I inspire others to also claim their beauty as they too will inspire another… and so on it goes, ‘til one day we all know how truly amazing and truly beautiful we are!
By Caroline Raphael, Goonellabah, NSW
766 Comments
“Today, I glow and radiate an inner confidence and inner strength of knowing exactly who I am – a truly beautiful woman” So true, you can feel this all over from your photo. There is nothing more beautiful then a women knowing her worth.
“But worse, I didn’t fit my own picture.” Painting our own mental picture of how we think we should look is to be in comparison with an imagined ideal and is certain to make us feel less. When we connect to who we truly are inside then our innate beauty shines out for us to feel and all to see.
Learning to reconnect to our essences so we develop to understanding what it is like to behold the Loving-Wisdom that exudes from within, becomes a self-loving choice and this is available to us all through the presentations of Serge Benhayon, then once reconnected we can all reflect the beauty the same as you Caroline.
It doesn’t matter how many times we are told we are beautiful, if we don’t feel this truth for our selves – it’s just words, albeit very loving words. When we choose to connect with our inner beauty there is a radiance about us which is felt by all – there is nothing more beautiful than a woman living the fullness of her own beauty.
‘You only have to look into the face of a child to know we are all truly divine and precious.’ Yes, in our essence we all are beautiful without exception. When we live it, our essence just blossoms through our body, and the we simply shine no matter what shape we have.
Over the years of attending Universal Medicine presentations, it continues to be an absolute joy to see how the people at the events have changed dramatically. As you are Caroline – all are looking younger and emanating a very natural and delicate beauty from within.
Making the choice to live true to ourselves allows our beauty to radiate out to all – clear of imposing ideals and beliefs about how we should be, act and look.
We choose to buy into outer ideals and beauty myths rather than backing ourselves all the way from within, something you are obviously doing, without fanfare and hooha but with a solid steadiness and assuredness.
Too often we sell out to ideals and beliefs that are not who we truly are which is why it is so inspiring to read how Caroline has re-imprinted this pattern and now reflects her true beauty to all.
We sell out because we are never given the confirmation by our families or society as to who we truly are in the first place. The problem is that we can only confirm our children if we are first confirmed ourselves. If we are not (as indeed we haven’t been) the cycle keeps continuing. It is only through the reflection of someone who is confirmed that we learn any differently.
We choose to be guided by ideals of what beauty is supposed to be rather than back ourselves from within and claim our true beauty.
Yes no one in the world can make us truly give up on ourselves, it is us who ultimately choose this. Which also means that we can choose to come back and self-love and self-care are beautiful tools to support us with that. Because I found that how I feel in my body does govern what I will say yes or no to and how much I accept of disrespect and abuse around me.
Bringing more self-love and care to ourselves has many benefits, ‘Thanks to being more self-loving and caring I was given the space to feel for myself what was true for me or not. So today I stand free of most of those impositions and as a result no longer feel ugly from living what is not me.’
Thanks for the point about learning to care more deeply for ourselves and love ourselves and how this creates more space to feel what is true and what isn’t, for us. When we live life at 100mph and cram it full of activities from morning to night, there is no space to feel what’s truly needed, and the bigger picture. We are, at best, functioning through life and making it look good, but there’s no joy in that, or at least, not any that truly lasts, sustains and nourishes us on a fundamental level.
Until we come to a place within oneself that notices that this beauty is given to us because we are all from it – inside out, and that by noticing this simple thing – we can willingly get ourselves out of the creation to the best ability we can. Now, is that not truly beautiful?
Beautiful Caroline, one day we will stand in the fire of our love and who we truly are. We need to start building towards it now, for it only starts with our permission to surrender and move on.
The way you are and live is the reflection we all deserve to have as it represents the potential of the true power we all can live when we live in connection to the innate beauty, sacredness and divinity that we all are in essence. Thank you for living your light, that which we all are and are here to live.
I find that astonishing that only 4% of women find themselves beautiful. By any yardstick, even the most conventional one, more than one in 25 women are beautiful.
It just goes to show how people feel about themselves. I have read before how top models have thought of themselves as ugly so it just goes to show it is how we feel about ourselves within and actually has nothing to do with how we look!
So true Caroline ! We need to surrender back to that beauty in us, than our whole world will blossom, men and women equally.
Yes Danna, surrender back to the beauty in us; I love how Caroline claimed her beauty, ‘Today I stand as me… in the beauty and joy of that… and now show a different way, not ashamed or afraid to say I am truly beautiful.’
I am impressed with how beautiful you feel and are able to express this so openly.
‘I didn’t fit my own picture’ – it is crazy how we can tear ourselves to pieces over not fitting a picture we have of how we think we need to be – when no one else is judging us for it at all. Even crazier is often the fact that we’re not aware of how we’re relating to ourselves of the kinds of thoughts we’re having about ourselves – we just feel incredibly negative and heavy about ourselves without really knowing why. How amazing then, to know that this way of being isn’t our natural way of being, and that it doesn’t have to be this way: we are amazing, sometimes it just takes a reflection of another person to remind us of that. And that is all of our responsibility: to keep reminding one another of how beautiful and amazing we all are, from the inside, out.
Only 4 % think there are beautiful – that is shocking! Just shows how much we have allowed ourselves to be fed lies about what beauty is.
In truth there is nothing more beautiful then a woman knowing her worth.
I love the opening paragraph you are so beautifully and powerfully claimed without an ounce of falseness or big headedness, truly inspirational, to someone who has often been plagued with self doubt.
It would seem that there is disconnection from that knowing of our own inner beauty and worth to comparing ourselves to outside pictures of beauty and success which allows for self doubt and low self worth to come into our sense of self.
And perhaps even outright lies as well, denying what is obviously there.
It’s incredible how we play so small in comparison to the might that we truly are.
An inspirational awareness that is essential that everyone gets… Otherwise we are all simply driven by pictures that can never be matched.
Truly inspirational Caroline and reading those statistics, we as women have to claim our beauty and I also say this to myself as there are days I claim my beauty and feel awesome but there are some days, and they are becoming less frequent where I choose to not feel and see how beautiful I am. I do not want to contribute to these statistics any longer and take my responsibility as the beautiful woman I am.
It is a total crime all the impositions laid on us to make us feel that we are not beautiful in every way. All the billboards and magazines that portray images and the pressure to look a certain way or be a certain weight. There is nothing more beautiful than someone totally connected to themselves free of these images that are so important to those only concerned with outer appearances.
It is so true that children have a freedom of expression that is just gorgeous, they allow themselves to be seen and express in full- they know their loveliness and this radiates from them. It is only when they are imposed on that this is no longer held in the same way.
Self – love is a true medicine for healing and one that when embraced can heal so many in reflection.
When we let the world tell us our worth, then we are reliant on the current state of the world – which is in disharmony. If you look at any other animal species, we know something is up when it gets overweight or underweight. We are quick to sort out our dogs if they are eating too much but not ourselves. The body shape comes in so many sizes and yet we don’t live to be vital and the right size for who we are. We strive to look different and in that we cause a disharmony. So for us to start to confirm who we are – without the world telling us how to be but rather confirming the amazing person we are first, we start to set a new foundation of love and appreciation.
“Who was that looking at me?” This is a very telling line. Sometimes it’s as though the person looking at us in the mirror is not ‘us’ at all but an imposter tormenting us. When I see my own beauty I feel present and at home in my own body and there is no room for imposters.
If we truly appreciated just how loving, beautiful and awesome we are it would change everything!
Before finding the simple steps to being at-least self-loving there is a key and that is to start with gentleness. Then we can build a platform or foundation that will support our way of living towards being more loving.
When you know who you are inside nothing can come along and take away that shine, nothing can deny your gorgeousness – you can only choose to forget. Difficulties, complexities come when we do – but it’s just a matter of time till we return to the truth. Thank you Caroline for sharing your sparkle and spunk here.
Striving to live up to the images of what beautiful means from the world around us for most of my life, always left me feeling anxious and never enough. Yet as with you, I also now know the truth to be that the essence of who I am within is agelessly beautiful and living from this connection is a joy that is too much to contain. When we live our innate beauty the truth is known for all to see that this is who we are as such our right to live.
Inspiring each other is the true way forward.
When I stop the self critique thoughts and just let myself be and move in a way that is lighter in my steps it changes how I feel about myself and I can reconnect back to the beauty and grace that I am.
It is a big support if we stop to compare ourselves with other women or pictures the world puts around us how to look.
And we start to honour and appreciate ourselves. Also all our forms of the body, the face. And to enjoy all our differences, the unique beauty each of us brings.
It is so true that ‘You only have to look into the face of a child to know we are all truly divine and precious’. How come we decided to travel so far from this point that we end up with so much disregard for who we are? We have lost a sense of God in our lives living in a way that discounts all that is truly magical and wonderful.
‘And more than that, I live the loveliness of that every day.’ How gorgeous is this to live our loveliness everyday without needing permission or to measure ourselves against some ideal that isn’t even possible or real!
It is so true, when you look at a child, all children are beautiful, what is it then that makes this changes as women can often judge and critique each other. When does this come in and why? Why do we let go of this knowing and sell out to ‘pictures’ of beauty without determining the quality that comes with it.