why i decided to embrace and love my imperfection

I have been getting in touch with my imperfection.

It has been a heart-opening experience and I highly recommend it. 

I don't know where this belief comes from that says we have to be perfect. We have to be perfect to be lovable. We have to be perfect to be worthy. It's like we have to justify the air we breathe and the space we occupy. Maybe it's from growing up and growing into competition that we learn we have to beat out other people to get the things we want, or even to fulfill our basic needs in life. Can we unlearn this lie in time? Can we know that we are innately deserving?

Like so many people, I have a drive within me to be perfect. For me specifically, the belief that I need to be perfect manifests as trying to always say the right thing, do the right thing and be a "good person." Or even, I hate to say it but I have to be honest, to appear to others as if I am a good person. It's like, if I can just prove to everyone that I am good then they will like me and then I will deserve good things that come to me. (Or, on a darker level, then I can continue to play the innocent victim of the bad things that happen to me.) 

I acknowledge the benefit in continuously trying to improve myself, however when that is attempted through judgment and scolding of myself it is ultimately self destructive.

The consistent self-dialogue that assesses everything I do and say, and judges whether or not I am a good person because of it, is draining. It is very draining. It feels like there is always someone watching me and pointing out my flaws. Ouch.

I reached the point the other week when I made (what I perceived to be) a mistake (one that apparently proved to me once and for all that I am a bad and unworthy person [laughs]) and the negative reaction that I had in my mind completely brought to light this pattern of self-talk within me. I could see how I was judging myself. 

What did I do about it? 

Well, I got very self-absorbed for a couple of days, trying to piece together some sort of acceptable self-image that my ego could hang on to for dear life. It didn't work. Then I finally fell apart. I decided to accept what had happened and I decided to forgive myself. 

Then a great thing happened. I decided to forgive myself for everything.

This overwhelming forgiveness of myself played out as acceptance of every imperfection I could see (and there were many). I noticed something I did poorly and I forgave myself. I noticed a characteristic I have and I forgave it. As I held different aspects up to the light, I realized fully that I am, believe it or not, not perfect, and that that is normal and OK. Woof. What a revelation! (by the way, one that I've had many times before, but always manage to forget, and will likely forget again because, you know, I'm not perfect).

Then another beautiful thing happened. I began to recognize the same imperfection I saw in myself in everyone else. 

We are not these isolated pods that go about our lives in static separation. (who knew?)

As I unveiled my own vulnerability, I was privy to the vulnerability of everyone I encountered. This brought about a feeling of connectedness, community and empathy that was so fulfilling and that I too often miss out on when I am trapped in my internal dialogue.

If we come to our lives from a place of imperfection and acceptance we are open to see, to learn and to experience.

So here's my new practice. Each day and each moment I remember, to shave off any pretense and ground myself in joyful imperfection.

Love,

R

the pursuit of perfection will always be a pursuit

"Nothing stops the forward march of any creative endeavor like the need to do it absolutely perfectly. And who is to judge what is 'perfect' anyway? What I have judged full of flaws so many others have called terrific. Maybe the definition of Perfection is something that actually gets done."
~ Neale Donald Walsch

I have often been paralysed by the fear of getting something wrong. 

This is the reason why I hid my creative side away for many years. I couldn't show it to the world until it was "perfect," until it was "ready." I thought, surely I have talent. I could catch glimpses of it here and there, but it wasn't good enough yet. It wasn't ready to go out into the world until I could know for sure that it would be admired by all who saw it. 

What I realised when I started putting myself out there is that, for all your anxiety and pining over perfection, other people simply don't care as much as you do about whatever it is you're doing. And this is truly a great and liberating recognition. I realised that all I can really ask of people is that they allow me a space to do what I do, to wiggle around, squirming awkwardly into my "art." Maybe some people will like it, maybe they will care, but the vast majority won't even notice. What power this is, really, what freedom!

Not only will I never be perfect, I never have to be perfect. No one expects that of me.

I also realised that I'm never going to get it done completely. There will always be something I wish I said or did better, and you know what, that is exactly the inspiration for the next piece and the next piece and the next one: trying to touch something more and more real. 

I will often be reading something from a writer that I love and I will think, "wow, this is truly great, I never could have come up with this." And it's true, I couldn't have. Those thoughts and those words are uniquely theirs. It is their precious gift to the world. 

I also have a unique and precious gift to share with the world, but more importantly, I now understand that the only way I can do that is to actually do it. Like, Neale Donald Walsch says, stop worrying about perfection and just act, create, put it out there. The consequences can't be as bad as if I stifled that creativity.

Maybe we pursue perfection or truth or beauty as an ideal goal in our creative endeavours and the actual pieces that are born into reality are just symptoms of that pursuit. This one might grasp some little kernel of what we are reaching for, and that one something else. Or maybe we missed the mark on that one, but at least now we can see it. It doesn't matter. 

Everything we create are merely offshoots of something greater that is within all of us. What we create doesn't make us great or loveable or perfect. It is our innate greatness, lovableness and perfection that makes whatever we pursue, whatever we give form to, great if we can tap into it. 

Like many failed experiments, we hone in closer to discovering something about ourselves and our lives. No more hiding. No more excuses.

Love,
R

this path is a tight-rope

I have been walking fine lines lately.

Fine lines between security and disaster, honesty and self-importance, coming clean and hiding it all away, stating my truth and giving in to re-activity, being kind and being a doormat.

Equanimity seems continuously just out of my reach. 

I seem to be forever saying things in the wrong way, losing focus, and blurring the boundaries of myself. A wobbly top spinning on its spindle, its balance of motion and weight, all centred and focused on one point - the point of action in the present moment. 

I want to be a good person but feel like I am failing miserably. And this obsession with perfection is what's holding me back from really experiencing myself. 

Despite all the work I have done on myself to clear the crud away there is always more. I think I am stable and that is exactly when something happens and I come apart again. Well, I don't really come apart. My self-image comes apart and then I have to painfully recall that that was all it ever was, an image. 

The real Me is very flawed, and perfect, and whole in its humanness. In my clearer moments I know I will never be perfect and that is perfect. 

When I really know this in my body, like an open wound, I come from a more raw place. But I have to watch myself because the sentiment can easily become an intellectual construct wherein the words are believed and repeated like a nice-sounding aphorism, but if they are not really felt in the body, they become a symbol or shadow of their real meaning. When this happens I believe that I've got it all figured out, and inevitably this is when something (disastrous) happens that shows me I am worshiping a false idol...again. My ego burns up in that moment and I begin again. 

Rumi says, 

Be melting snow
Wash yourself of yourself

Maybe it never ends - this cycle of breaking down and coming home, hardening and breaking down again. And so my path unfolds...

I suck at life sometimes. but I just keep practising. 

And I guess this is why we can never judge another's path. We all ebb and flow towards enlightenment. 

Love,
R

excuse me sir, there's past in this present!

"I can go outside and pick up a rock as old as the oldest song you know and bring it back here and drop it on your foot. The past didn't go anywhere, did it? It's right here. It's right now..." ~Utah Phillips


We are often told that we need to let the past go and try our best to live in the present moment. I agree with that. We can't allow what happened in the past to stop us from moving forward with our lives; trying something new; being something new.

At the same time, I also agree with what Utah Phillips has to say about the past, "it's right here. it's right now." 

How can it be that we both leave the past behind and simultaneously it's right here and right now.

In following metaphor he offers a concept of the past I hadn't thought of before:

"Time is an enormous long river and I'm standing in it, just as you're standing in it. My elders were the tributaries and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to and every song they created and every poem that they laid down flows down to me. And if I take the time to ask and if I take the time to seek, if I take the time to reach out I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world. Bridges from my time to your time, as my elders from their time to my time. And we will put into the river and we let it go and it flows away from us and away from us 'til it no longer has our name and our identity. It has its own utility; its own use. And people will take what they need and make it part of their lives." ~Utah Phillips

Traditionally we think of time in a linear sense. Linear time moves from point a to point b. The 1980s to the 1990s to the 2000s, etc. In this view of time, I am a point that moves from one moment to the next to the next along a (time)line. 

In Phillips' river analogy, however, I am a stationary point or vertical line, and time is the thing that moves. It is a field that moves through us and around us. 

Can you picture a vast river of all experiences, collective karma as it were, spread out around you, flowing to you, through you, and then from you, on to the next one? 

From our point in the river we have access to all else that has ever been. We only need to "reach out", as he says, for those experiences that are useful to us in our lives. Reusing and renewing them. We give them our own meaning and they become ours (for a time). And what is ours also flows down that vast river, ready to be scooped up by someone standing further downstream.

This image shows me the power of the past that we hold in our hands in this very moment. Our lives are folk songs once sung by our elders, now sung by me (albeit off key), and on to our children.

So let us not deny or forget the past, let us use it as a tool in our present.

Love,
R

what is my gift?

~ Leonard Cohen

Only from the careful and ongoing deconstruction of our selves can we bring anything true, honest, and helpful to the world and our fellow humans. 

Each time I judge my personality as worthless, uninteresting, friendly, kind, spiritual, smart, special, different, inherently bad or inherently good, I must try to catch myself and remember that I am not a personality. I am not what I think I am presenting to the world. In fact, my very perception of myself as a personality is taking me out of the connection I have with my real (capital) Self.

If I then shed those already threadbare layers of words I have been identifying with, discarding them glibly like a towel tossed in a laundry pile, I can come back to focus. 

The focus is not to make myself into something. That would be a fruitless endeavour. That is, again, in the realm of personality.

The focus is a quality of being. This quality of being is known in my body already. I know it as that which feels good. That which feels right. 

As I focus, I allow that quality of being to grow within me and then allow it to flow from me/through me into what I am doing. 

Therefore the focus is to know what I already am. To ground myself there.

It doesn't matter so much what action arises out of that grounding. Implicit in the action will be my unique gift.

The gift is given through me to the world as the one and only thing of value I can offer. Quite simply, I am all I have to give.

My job in life is to toss aside artifice and give the most of mySelf that I can.

That is what those lines mean to me:

From bitter searching of the heart

we rise to play a greater part.

Love,

R

a conversation with my body

I really have been to that place where I love everybody. Lately I am there more and more often.

But today I am not there. I feel kind of out of sorts and that really bothers me because I really like to feel happy. So I go about the business of searching for the feeling so I can feel it and in feeling it let it go.

I sit quietly and ask my body what it wants. It says, "sugar." 

"OK, are you hungry?"

"No"

"Are you low on energy?"

"No"

"What are you really feeling that you are trying to sugar-coat?"

"Anxiety."

"Please tell me more."

"I feel a bit lost and I want to reassure myself. Hold myself and tell myself it's OK. I want to feel safe."

"You are safe. Remember how safe you felt yesterday?"

"Yes, I remember but today everything feels different."

"How so?"

"Today I feel frustrated at some people. I feel like they aren't respecting me the way they should. I feel like they are in a bad mood and want to take me down with them. Why can't they see the effect they are having on me?"

"The question is why are you letting yourself be affected? You know these relationships are mirrors. Darling, what is really troubling you?"

"I'm tired today and the house is a mess and everything is feeling a little out of control."

"And that is why you feel others have control over you right now."

"Yes, I can see that."

"Breathe. You are going to be OK."

"I am OK."

"Yes, you are."

...

...

...

"Now, release control entirely."

"Bless this mess."

Love,

R

dear rikki, please remember this if you ever doubt

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2013/10/i-am-you-a-message-from-a-writer/