Bring Your Whole Self to the Experience
Watching the moon
at dawn,
solitary, mid-sky,
I knew myself completely:
no part left out.
—IZUMI SHIKIBU
Imagine you had a photo of yourself printed on thick, stiff cardboard. Now imagine that the photo was not just of your face or even the length of your body, but somehow represented a multi-dimensional image of your whole being, including all the parts of your personality. Suppose you fed that board through a laser-cutting die to make it into a jigsaw puzzle. Visualize spreading all one thousand interlocking pieces out on a table and starting to assemble the puzzle.
You might begin with the corners, or an easily recognizable part like your hand or ear, or perhaps your eyes since they are said to be the windows to the soul. But as you progressed, you might come upon a puzzle piece you didn’t like—for example, your fear. You might muse, “I think I will leave this piece out.” Or you might come upon your lust and say, “No, my spiritual teacher told me that lust is no good. I can’t include this piece.”
And so it would continue, with you deeming certain aspects of yourself acceptable and other parts totally unacceptable. After a while, you wouldn’t be able to recognize yourself in the puzzle because you would be looking at such a fragmented image. You wouldn’t be able to see the full picture.
We all like to look good. We long to be seen as capable, strong, intelligent, sensitive, spiritual, or at least well adjusted. We project a positive self-image. Few of us want to be known for our helplessness, fear, anger, or ignorance, or want others to know that sometimes we are more of a mess than we’d like to admit.
Yet more than once I have found an “undesirable” aspect of myself, one about which I previously had felt ashamed and kept tucked away, to be the very quality that allowed me to meet another person’s suffering with compassion instead of fear or pity. My own experience of abuse allowed me to empathize with both the abused and the abuser, to help each find forgiveness for their anger and open toward their fear. It is not our expertise, but rather the wisdom gained from our own suffering, vulnerability, and healing that enables us to be of real assistance to others. It is the exploration of our inner lives that facilitates us in forming an empathetic bridge from our experience to theirs.
To be whole, we need to include, accept, and connect all parts of ourselves. We need acceptance of our conflicting qualities and the seeming incongruity of our inner and outer worlds.
Wholeness does not mean perfection. It means no part left out.