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Feeling not okay went hand in hand with deep loneliness.
because our habits of feeling insufficient are so strong, awakening from the trance involves not only inner resolve, but also an active training of the heart and mind.
As in a dream, we take our stories to be the truth—a compelling reality—and they consume most of our attention. While we eat lunch or drive home from work, while we talk to our partners or read to our children at night, we continue to replay our worries and plans. Inherent in the trance is the belief that no matter how hard we try, we are always, in some way, falling short.
Feeling unworthy goes hand in hand with feeling separate from others, separate from life. If we are defective, how can we possibly belong? It’s a vicious cycle: The more deficient we feel, the more separate and vulnerable we feel. Underneath our fear of being flawed is a more primal fear that something is wrong with life, that something bad is going to happen. Our reaction to this fear is to feel blame, even hatred, toward whatever we consider the source of the problem: ourselves, others, life itself. But even when we have directed our aversion outward, deep down we still feel vulnerable.
Our feelings of unworthiness and alienation from others give rise to various forms of suffering. For some, the most glaring expression is addiction. It may be to alcohol, food or drugs. Others feel addicted to a relationship, dependent on a particular person or people in order to feel they are complete and that life is worth living. Some try to feel important through long hours of grueling work—an a...
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The belief that we are deficient and unworthy makes it difficult to trust that we are truly loved. Many of us live with an undercurrent of depression or hopelessness about ever feeling close to other people. We fear that if they realize ...
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We yearn for an unquestioned experience of belonging, to feel at home with ourselves and others, at ease and fully accepted. But the trance of unworthiness ke...
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The trance of unworthiness intensifies when our lives feel painful and out of control. We may assume that our physical sickness or emotional depression is our own fault—the result of our bad genes or our lack of discipline and willpower. We may feel that the loss of a job or a painful divorce is a reflection of our personal flaws. If we had only done better, if we were somehow different, things would have gone right. While we might pl...
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They confide that feeling undeserving has made it impossible for them to ask for help or to let themselves feel held by another’s love.
Whatever the reasons, the failure to relieve this suffering through spiritual practice can bring up a basic doubt about whether we can ever be truly happy and free.
I mistrusted myself for the ways I would pretend to be positive when underneath I felt lonely or afraid. While I loved the yoga and meditation practices, I was embarrassed by my need to impress others with the strength of my practice. I wanted others to see me as a deep meditator and devoted yogi, a person who served her world with care and generosity. Meanwhile, I judged other people for being slack in their discipline, and judged myself for being so judgmental. Even in the midst of community, I often felt lonely and alone.
The playing field was larger than my earlier pursuits, but the game was still the same: striving to be a different and better person.
In retrospect, it is no surprise that my self-doubts were transferred intact into my spiritual life. Those who feel plagued by not being good enough are often drawn to idealistic worldviews that offer the possibility of purifying and transcending a flawed nature. This quest for perfection is based in the assumption that we must change ourselves to belong.
We may listen longingly to the message that wholeness and goodness have always been our essence, yet still feel like outsiders, u...
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Spiritual awakening is the process of recognizing our essential goodness, our natural wisdom and compassion.
Each time our deficiencies are exposed—to ourselves or others—we react, anxiously trying to cover our nakedness, like Adam and Eve after the fall. Over the years we each develop a particular blend of strategies designed to hide our flaws and compensate for what we believe is wrong with us.
We embark on one self-improvement project after another. We strive to meet the media standards for the perfect body and looks by coloring out the gray, lifting our face, being on a perpetual diet. We push ourselves to get a better position at work. We exercise, take enriching courses of study, meditate, make lists, volunteer, take workshops. Certainly any of these activities can be undertaken in a wholesome way, but so often they are driven by anxious undercurrents of “not good enough.”
we are comparing ourselves with an ideal and trying to make up...
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We hold back and play it safe rather than r...
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Playing it safe requires that we avoid risky situations—which covers pretty much all of life. We might not take on leadership or responsibility at work, we might not risk being really intimate with others, we might hold back from expressing our creativity, from saying what we really mean, from being playful or affectionate.
We withdraw from our experience of the present moment. We pull away from the raw feelings of fear and shame by incessantly telling ourselves stories about what is happening in our life.
Living in the future creates the illusion that we are managing our life and steels us against personal failure.
We keep busy. Staying occupied is a socially sanctioned way of remaining distant from our pain.
We become our own worst critics. The running commentary in our mind reminds us over and over that we always screw up, that others are managing their lives so much more efficiently and successfully.
Staying on top of what is wrong with us gives us the sense that we are controlling our impulses, disguising our weaknesses and possibly improving our character.
We focus on other people’s faults. There is a saying that the world is divided into people who think they are right. The more inadequate we feel, the more uncomfortable it is to admit our faults. Blaming others temporarily relieves us from the weight of failure.
In most of this chapter we’ve focused on how, out of fear, we turn on ourselves and make ourselves the enemy, the source of the problem. We also project these feelings outward and make others the enemy. The greater the fear, the more intense our hostility. Our enemy becomes the parent who never really respected us, the boss who is preventing us from being successful, a political group that is taking away our power or a nation that threatens our lives.
Whether it is a family schism or a generations-long war between ethnic groups, creating an enemy imparts a sense of control—we feel superior, we feel right, we believe we are doing something about the problem. Directing anger at an enemy temporarily reduces our feelings of fear and vulnerability.
This was his first noble truth: Suffering or discontent is universal, and fully recognizing its existence is the first step on the path of awakening.
all suffering or dissatisfaction arises from a mistaken understanding that we are a separate and distinct self.
When our sense of being is confined in this way, we have forgotten the loving awareness that is our essence and that connects us with all of life.
We interpret everything we think and feel, and everything that happens to us, as in some way belonging to or caused by a self.
Our most habitual and compelling feelings and thoughts define the core of who we think we are. If we are caught in the trance of unworthiness, we experience that core as flawed. When we take life personally by I-ing and my-ing, the universal sense that “something is wrong” easily solidifies into “something is wrong with me.”
true freedom is being “without anxiety about imperfection.”
You might find it useful to pause for a few minutes to consider the parts of yourself that you habitually reject and push away. Do I accept my body as it is? Do I blame myself when I get sick? Do I feel I am not attractive enough? Am I dissatisfied with how my hair looks? Am I embarrassed about how my face and body are aging? Do I judge myself for being too heavy? Underweight? Not physically fit? Do I accept my mind as it is? Do I judge myself for not being intelligent enough? Humorous? Interesting? Am I critical of myself for having obsessive thoughts? For having a repetitive, boring mind? Am
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Often we perceive the trance most clearly by recognizing how we want others to see us—and what we don’t want them to see. Bring to mind someone you’ve spent time with recently—someone you like and respect but don’t know well. What do you most want this person to see about you (e.g., that you are loving, generous, attractive)? What do you not want this person to perceive about you (e.g., that you are selfish, insecure, jealous)?
As you go through your day, pause occasionally to ask yourself, “This moment, do I accept myself just as I am?” Without judging yourself, simply become aware of how you are relating to your body, emotions, thoughts and behaviors. As the trance of unworthiness becomes conscious, it begins to lose its power over our lives.
Last night, as I was sleeping, I dreamt—marvelous error!— that I had a beehive here inside my heart. And the golden bees were making white combs and sweet honey from my old failures Antonio Machado, translated by Robert Bly
The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change. Carl Rogers
The way out of our cage begins with accepting absolutely everything about ourselves and our lives, by embracing with wakefulness and care our moment-to-moment experience.
“I have to do more to be okay” or “I am incomplete; I need more to be happy.” These “mantras” reinforce the trance-belief that our life should be different from what it is.
Our enjoyment is tainted by anxiety about keeping what we have and our compulsion to reach out and get more.
The wing of clear seeing is often described in Buddhist practice as mindfulness. This is the quality of awareness that recognizes exactly what is happening in our moment-to-moment experience. When we are mindful of fear, for instance, we are aware that our thoughts are racing, that our body feels tight and shaky, that we feel compelled to flee—and we recognize all this without trying to manage our experience in any way, without pulling away.
We can’t honestly accept an experience unless we see clearly what we are accepting.
The second wing of Radical Acceptance, compassion, is our capacity to relate in a tender and sympathetic way to what we perceive. Instead of resisting our feelings of fear or grief, we embrace our pain with the kindness of a mother holding her child. Rather than judging or indulging our desire for attention or chocolate or sex, we regard our grasping with gentleness and care. Compassion honors our experience; it allows us to be intimate with the life of this moment as it is. Compassion makes our acceptance wholehearted and complete.
Maybe my compulsion to appear strong and together was a way of avoiding those same currents in myself. Was I even a caring person? Maybe helping clients or friends was merely a way of getting appreciation or recognition. All my striving—to get my doctorate, to be a good yogi, to be good—all fit into this story of an insecure and defective person. Nothing about me felt pure or trustworthy.
Fear of being a flawed person lay at the root of my trance, and I had sacrificed many moments over the years in trying to prove my worth. Like the tiger Mohini, I inhabited a self-made prison that stopped me from living fully.
Radical Acceptance is not resignation. The greatest misunderstanding about Radical Acceptance is that if we simply accept ourselves as we are, we will lose our motivation to change and grow.
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.” Our deepest nature is to awaken and flower. I have discovered again and again that bringing Radical Acceptance to any part of our experience is the fundamental shift that opens the way to genuine, lasting change.
Radical Acceptance does not mean defining ourselves by our limitations. It is not an excuse for withdrawal. Maybe we tell ourselves, for instance, that we don’t have the credentials or experience to suit a job we really want, so we’re not even going to apply.
