All you need is already within you. Only you must approach yourself with reverence and love. Self- condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign you bear of love for yourself. All I plead of you is this: make love of yourself perfect. Deny yourself nothing, give yourself infinity and eternity,and discover you do not need them. You are beyond. All I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect.
Sri Nisargadatta
As I have been writing about my little woes and how they have been affecting me, I come across a video by Tara Brach....and it is almost as if I listened to this before I wrote what I wrote over the last two days but this is actually more of an after the lesson confirmation and validation of the insight I gained ( Of course Tara Brach has influenced me very, very much over the course of my awakening so far...so much of my "insight" recently is due indirectly to her teachings as well. )
Trance of Unworthiness
She always speaks to something called the, Trance of Unworthiness, and I see how that has been a part, not only of my writer's block, but of this stuck feeling I had in regards to my own healing. Most of our obstacles in life, at the deepest level, have to do with a sense of unworthiness...an inability to love ourselves perfectly.
Loving Self Perfectly
She offered the above quote in her video and it resonated with me . What does it mean?
Loving the life that is expressing itself through us is loving self perfectly. And by self, "you", "me" we are not referring to the narrative of self, the story of self, the personality, the ego, or to the idea of a "separate self" but to the deeper Self. If we learn to love ourselves unconditionally, to open up and feel whatever we feel without judgement, the false self, this notion of us as separate, falls away and we fall into the reality of who we are.
What stops us from being kind to ourselves...not loving who we are?
Many of constantly judge ourselves harshly, taking over where someone or something in our past left off. We fear that if we don't judge ourselves we will never improve...we will never become the person who we are striving to be. Of course, that is foolish...normal... but foolish.
No one has ever judged themselves into enlightenment
Why We can't Love Ourselves or Feel Worthy
We often have a very challenging time directing love towards ourselves because it is too far from what we are feeling and because we feel so undeserving of our own love. Self affirmations of love ...like "I love you...me" can often seem so uncomfortable and unrealistic, like a lie...but we would benefit greatly by practicing replacing our self-contempt and self-condemnation with something more loving, or at least more neutral on a daily basis.
We can start this cognitive restructuring slowly , taking small steps...like just waking up each moment with a hand on the heart, "Hello you" or "Good morning, you". The point is to make it a committed practice with a sincere intention...a willingness to put away our critical judgments of Self as we go through the motions, faking it util we make it, experimenting with ways that feel safer to us as we advance to the outward and sincerely felt, "I love you...Self".
Not Letting Love and Worthiness In
Truth is the inner place of vulnerability often has a hard time letting love and a sense of worthiness in. I know that is my case. What is stopping me from letting it in? My mind always says, when someone professes love or care towards me, something like: They mustn't see me for who I am...if they did they would see I was not worthy of their love. This crosses over into my health seeking experience. Even though I certainly was not looking for love or even a sense of caring from the professionals I seen, part of me wanted them to validate my worthiness for being in their office... but the thing is...even if they did, I was not able to let their view of my worthiness in. So it became, almost a self fulfilling prophecy.
Tara Brach guides the listener into a little guided reflection by asking the question Who do you trust loves you? Most people's minds will come up with someone who they believe loves them even if it is a pet.We can do this conceptually, but if we are then asked the question Can you let that love in? or How does it feel to let that love in?, we may realize that we do not know what it feels like to let it in because we can't. That love that we conceptualize as being ours may hit the resistance of our protective armor. It may not be able to get past it. We, therefore, do not have the felt experience of being loved, or the felt experience of worthiness. Can you let that experience of being loved into your vulnerable place?
We all get stuck, Tara Brach reminds us, giving out love or letting it in.. What we can do if we realize that it is not getting in...is to feel our longing for it to come in, pray to let it in. "Please can I let this worthiness in. " Please can I let this love in." and just feel what it feels like to want that.
Who or what are we praying to when we do such a thing? We are praying to our heart that is already awake and loving. " Love is always loving you."
Pray???
Prayer is the bridge between longing and belonging."
We can love ourselves into feeling loved. We just need to learn what it feels like to let love in. It too is a practice. We can close our eyes and think of someone or something we "assume" loves us...and then we see if, first of all, we are letting it in, and if we are not...we pray, "Please let this love in, please let this worthiness in". ...and we experience that longing until the heart opens a bit more, a bit more, and a bit more.
Practice
We can start with safe love objects like a pet or a child. I thought of my dog that has been gone for a few years now. Conceptually, I knew she loved me as much as a dog can love a human. Closing my eyes on reflecting on her love for me was not a conceptual experience. At first I had a hard time letting that love in but I kept praying and longing for the feeling of her love for me inside me, her love for me finally made it past the armor and I felt a nice warmth. That helped me to feel what it is like to be worthy of love...to be worthy in general.
I know that talking to the person I spoke to yesterday about my health seeking experience helped me to see how worthy I was for that which I barely received . Allowing that worthiness , I was unable to let in for so long, in felt so exhilarating and healing and uplifting.
Opening With RAIN
Opening up directly to the suffering /trauma of not belonging, being undeserving, unworthy etc can be done by using RAIN . R. recognize; A. allow; I. investigate, N. nurture. This is what I did over the last couple of days as you will see reflected in my most recent entries. . We need to first of all create warmth and space before we open to vulnerability. As we proceed we must be aware of any signal in us that says "This is too much!" and go back to grounding, to a feeling of safety and peace.. There has to be some sense that we are ready and that it is safe for us to proceed. A practice of meta kindness meditation can create this space.
Each step of RAIN helps the identification with ego to dissolve. Through the process we sense the story and then let it be a portal to explore the "felt sense" with generosity and curiosity. Brach tells us we need to get to a place of "ouch" in our investigating...to a "this hurts" which leads to nurturing. We can experiment with ways to nurture self. I got to that sense of ouch in exploring my recent experience and though it stung it ws also so freeing.
The end result of this is transcendence. After the rain...after we let in love we realize we are the love that is holding our being, that has always been holding our being...that is the shift.
Oh so cool but you really need to listen to Tara Brach in the below link, not me.
Oh, of what avail is it if we can travel to the moon if we cannot cross the abyss that separates us from ourselves. This is the most important of all journeys, and with it, all the rest are useless.
Thomas Merton
All is well!
Tarca Brach (April, 2021) "Make Love of Your Self Perfect",with Tar Brach. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p70x2ztQ4m4
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