Searching all directions with one’s awareness, one finds no one dearer than oneself.
—The Buddha
The Raja Sutta
When I was a child, a strange fantasy troubled me from time to time. I imagined myself before birth, along with countless souls on rows of shelves, waiting to be selected for life on Earth. A giant hand—of God or His right-hand assistant—was reaching out for the soul next to me but by mistake plucked me up instead. So I was the ultimate fraud, not meant to be here at all, making it only by accident. Each time this image arose, I was left haunted by the feeling that I would be found out and sent back.
Although I grew up in a loving home, inside I often felt lonely and afraid. Being the quiet one in a family of extroverts didn’t help calm my fears. My sister was very pretty with a sparkling personality and wit that lit up a room. By contrast, I was chubby, wore glasses, and was shy and insecure. A familiar childhood memory is of watching my father, mother, and sister all boisterously engaged in witty repartee. Many a time, I would quietly mumble a contribution to the conversation, no one would seem to notice, and I would retreat into the bathroom in tears, wondering why no one listened to me.
As a teenager I had such a poor self-image that I actually winced when I looked in the mirror. Adults called me “cute,” which was the last thing I wanted to hear. My sister kindly tried to assure me that I’d be fine and well-liked, but I wasn’t convinced. No matter how much positive feedback I received from others, fear of being exposed as “not good enough” remained a familiar companion into my early adulthood. I felt like a loser with no chance of turning into the hip guy I dreamed of being. In short, I didn’t like myself. If somebody had told me it was possible to truly love myself, I wouldn’t have believed it.
In my experience of working with thousands of students and clients, rarely have I encountered those who easily love themselves. Most commonly I hear: “If only I were …” followed by some variation of “thinner, stronger, kinder, smarter, calmer, more successful.” Our assessment of ourselves is usually in comparison to others or to some ideal or standard we’ve adopted. If we have curly hair, we want straight; blue eyes, we want brown. If we tend to be quiet, we wish we were the life of the party. If we have a short fuse, we’re convinced we’d be lovable if only we were calm and patient. On top of assessing ourselves as falling short, we add yet another layer of suffering. We close our heart to ourselves. This is the predicament we’re often stuck in: We resist accepting ourselves as we are, yet this is what we’ve got. We can’t be somebody else, no matter how hard we try.
In my early years of teaching meditation, giving talks alongside some of the wisest and most gifted teachers left me wracked with painful comparisons. Joseph Goldstein would inspire the students with depth, wisdom, and clarity. Then Jack Kornfield would weave his magic spell, enchanting and moving them with poignant stories and stirring words. Sharon Salzberg would bring them to tears with her guided lovingkindness meditations. Then it would be my turn. I knew full well that if I was a student, I would be wishing this kid would get off the stage so that the senior teachers could speak again.
In desperation I tracked down my sometime-mentor Ram Dass to see if he had any advice. He did. “Don’t try to be another Joseph Goldstein,” he said. “There already is one. Just be the best Jamie Baraz you can be. There’s only one of those, and you’re it. What if you just let yourself be who you are and see what you have to offer those students? Who knows? You may even like what you see.”
There’s only one of you, and if you let yourself be the best one of yourself possible, you may also like what you see. In time you may even love yourself.
For many of us, the idea of loving ourselves may seem out of reach. But if you know how to love someone else, you have what it takes to love yourself. Think about what it’s like to love someone. For instance, when I think of our son Adam my heart naturally begins to open. I become aware of that distinct combination of traits I sense as his essence—his insatiable curiosity about how the mind works, his mischievous spirit, the “edge” as he calls it that is a counterbalance to his tenderness, his charming personality, the genuine goodness that radiates from his heart. Even the quirky traits that sometimes drive me crazy can seem endearing when I hold them in the broader context of his goodness and potential. If I were to focus only on the negative, I would lose touch with all the amazingly good stuff. My love for him is there no matter what. The secret is to offer this same kind of love to ourselves—to love and accept the whole package.
The capacity to accept and love ourselves doesn’t necessarily happen quickly or easily. Those negative voices from siblings, teachers, sixth-grade bullies, and disenchanted lovers still play in our mind. No matter how much positive reflection we’ve had, our brains are “like Velcro for negative experiences,” as Rick Hanson puts it. Even seemingly insignificant events can leave deep impressions that color our self-concept and our ability to embrace who we are.
You’re the One
Imagine meeting someone who laughs at all your jokes, has similar tastes, and really grasps your take on things. This person understands all your hopes and fears. In short, this is someone who really gets you. How would you feel? Probably ecstatic! There is only one person in this world who completely fits that description, and he or she is right inside your own skin. This is someone you can learn to love.
Learning to love yourself is a process that evolves over time. It begins with letting go of self-criticism and forgiving yourself for being who you are. In Step Five, we looked at forgiving ourselves for past actions and the confusion that produced them. Here we are forgiving ourselves for habits and behaviors we continue to get caught in that are less than wholesome. We forgive our bodies for how they look or for how they function; forgive our minds for being scattered or not being smart enough; forgive our personalities for not being witty or interesting enough.
As you stop focusing on what you don’t appreciate and start seeing yourself as a unique, mysterious, changing being, you allow your best self to shine through. And the joy of that radiates out to the world.
Meher Baba, the great Indian master, says, “Love is essentially self-communicative; those who do not have it catch it from those who have it.” Our capacity to love is awakened in us through having received love from others. Even if we’re convinced we’ve never known the experience of love, as Marian in the previous chapter believed, for very few of us is that true. Most of us—even those who had to build personal defenses in order to survive fearful circumstances in childhood—somewhere along the way received love from someone, whether that was a parent, a caring teacher, a kind relative, or a loyal pet. But until we are willing to recognize and accept that love, we block our capacity to give it to ourselves.
For me, a turning point in my ability to “catch love,” and really take it in, happened during one of those “experiences” common in the sixties. I was in my apartment in Flushing, New York, and it was 1969, the height of the psychedelic revolution. Like so many in that era, I was seeking change, release from the pain of being me. I longed to belong to something bigger, something filled with love and joy, and the social-spiritual revolution of the counterculture gave me hope. In that era, before meditation and other more grounded ways to explore the mind had entered our culture, chemistry seemed to hold the key to what I was looking for. One evening, without a great deal of thought or preparation, I “dropped acid,” eager to find out where it would take me. Unfortunately, that was to the brink of hell. While this experience was a turning point in my life, I would say it was a dicey strategy for transformation. Compared to others I know, I was very lucky. I managed to return from hell—but I didn’t do it alone, and that opened me to an important revelation.
That night I wouldn’t have been able to put my private nightmare into words, but looking back I remember that everything—inside and outside—was spinning around so fast that there was no ground anywhere. I was in uncharted territory with no guidance or wisdom to draw upon. I felt like I was teetering on the edge of the Void, about to be overwhelmed by something horrifying and incomprehensible. I knew I was about to lose my mind. When people talk about “abject terror,” I can honestly say I know what that is like.
Not knowing if anyone could hear me, I started screaming for help, and my roommate and his girlfriend, who were in the next room, arrived as my saviors. Taking my hands, they sat on either side of me for what felt like an eternity.
“Don’t leave me! Don’t leave me!” I’d cry out from time to time.
“It’s okay. We aren’t going anywhere,” they’d tell me again and again.
As they kept assuring me that they were present and would stay, something unfamiliar began to happen inside me: I let myself gradually open to their caring and attention. Instead of feeling awkward and unworthy, I let myself take in the warmth and support they were offering. At some point the thought occurred to me that here were two people I knew and respected, taking their time to be with me. At that, something switched inside me, the resistance stopped, and the love and connection began to feel natural. Even more remarkable, I stopped feeling like I didn’t deserve it—a radical turnaround for me.
The next day, after the impact of the drug had worn off, I was faced with a sobering but delightful insight: For the first time in my life I directly questioned my belief that something was wrong with me and that I was unlovable. If that was true, then how could these friends have cared so much?
Taking in the love of my friends actually awakened a little love inside me for myself. Later that day when I passed by the hallway mirror, I stopped to take a look at the person reflected there. I still wasn’t exactly thrilled at what I saw, but something was different in the way I was reacting to that image. A tiny smile seemed to hold the faint message that maybe I wasn’t so bad after all. Maybe there was something there to at least like a little bit. That was the beginning.
All of us can find something in ourselves to at least like, but it may be a long step from like to love. What’s the difference and how do we take that step? Over the course of a few years I’ve watched a young woman, Alexa, gradually make that shift. I first met her when she came in for a scheduled interview during a meditation retreat. I was immediately struck by her vitality and sparkle. When Alexa told me she’d been in theater, I could easily imagine her feeling at home in the limelight. I had no idea, at the time, of the pain that accompanied her enjoyment of being on stage. As Alexa continued working with me as her meditation teacher and spiritual counselor, I came to understand how deeply self-judgment had penetrated her life.
Over the next few years, as part of her healing process, Alexa kept a journal and eventually wrote a thesis for her master’s degree tracking her journey. There she reflected:
I’m realizing that all my life I’ve compared myself to everyone else. Fatter, prettier, smarter, more creative, less intuitive, the list goes on and on. I have hated myself so much that I’ve clung to make-believe personas and addictive substances and behaviors. Anything to avoid the depths of my self-hatred. …
Alexa told me she hadn’t always felt that way. Until she was seven years old, her childhood had been “silly and sacred.” But when her parents divorced, she was left with “an emptiness I couldn’t name. I began to do what most people in our culture do. I began to search for ways to fill the empty void.” Part of that meant turning to food for comfort, which didn’t really work.
“I began to view my body as my enemy,” Alexa wrote in her journals, “and as the years leading up to high school went on, my self-loathing worsened.” Unless she weighed one hundred pounds and looked like a Calvin Klein model, she hated her body. Unless she got top grades in classes, she concluded she wasn’t smart enough. Less than the starring role in a play must mean she wasn’t talented. By the end of her freshman year in high school, Alexa was so stressed and felt like such a failure that she began to binge and purge, and starve herself. Always a litany of self-judgment ran through her mind: I hate my stomach, I’m too aggressive, I’m always depressed, I loathe myself.
You might not feel as self-deprecating as Alexa, but perhaps you have your own litany of perceived shortcomings. Maybe you feel shame at how impatient you are with your partner or child. Or your face is covered with acne. Or the brilliance of a friend or colleague leaves you feeling worthless in comparison. From there you can easily build up a case against yourself and end up, like Alexa, focusing only on what’s wrong.
The good news is: We don’t have to like everything about ourselves in order to love ourselves. Ajahn Sumedho, the American who became a monk in Thailand, says that as you learn to love yourself, you don’t have to “pretend to feel approval towards your faults.” You just don’t want to “dwell in aversion to them.” Instead of getting caught up in judgment and self-hatred, which only feeds a negative state of mind, you can begin by shifting your focus to more positive ways of regarding yourself. For Alexa that kind of shift was the beginning of opening to let the love in.
As the retreat went on, one morning Alexa came in for an interview, looking dejected and hopeless. “I know I’m supposed to be practicing kindness toward myself,” she began, “but I just can’t pretend I love my body. I don’t. I wish it were different. And I feel so stupid that I just can’t get past that.”
I knew that feeling very well myself and the prison she felt locked in.
“Alexa,” I said softly, “you don’t have to pretend anything, but if you focus only on what you don’t like, you cut yourself off from seeing all the beauty and goodness that are also part of you.”
I shared with her one of my favorite stories that my colleague Jack Kornfield likes to tell. The Babemba people in southern Africa have an approach to dealing with the personal shortcomings of tribal members. When someone acts recklessly, he or she is brought before all the villagers. Everyone stops working and gathers around for a ceremony that can typically go on for days. As Jack tells it in his book The Art of Forgiveness:
Then each person in the tribe speaks to the accused, one at a time, each recalling the good things the person in the center of the circle has done in his lifetime. Every incident, every experience that can be recalled with any detail and accuracy, is recounted. All his positive attributes, good deeds, strengths, and kindnesses are recited carefully and at length.
When the ceremony has ended, everyone celebrates and embraces the person as once again part of the tribe.
When I finished with the story, Alexa remained silent and thoughtful. After a few moments, I said, “What if you were to do some version of that for yourself and shift the focus to all the good things there are to appreciate about yourself?”
I asked her to close her eyes and let an image come to mind of herself just as she is.
“Now let yourself be one of those villagers and tell Alexa all the good things she has done in her brief lifetime. And tell her about all the good qualities you see in her.” After a few minutes I could see a tenderness come over Alexa’s face. Tears flowed down her cheeks as she spoke.
“She’s so sweet, and she just wants to see everyone happy. She’s kind, and she’s creative.”
“Let yourself take in those good feelings, and when those thoughts of hating your body arise, see if you can shift the focus just a tiny bit. As you practice this perspective, you might begin to see this person as worthy of your love.”
GIVING GENUINE AND EFFECTIVE APPRECIATION
“Saying to yourself, ‘You’re wonderful. You’re great,’ may not be the most effective way of loving yourself. A little voice inside says: ‘Not always,’ and underneath there’s a gnawing feeling that you’ll get found out. Effectively appreciating yourself is about acknowledging the specifics of how you are great. The more specific you can be about what you appreciate, the more you get in touch with the gifts you have to offer others and the resources you have to tackle challenges.
“In her book Mindset, Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck talks about what she calls a ‘growth mindset’ in contrast to a ‘fixed mindset.’ When we say, ‘I’m so great and wonderful,’ we are encouraging a fixed mindset, which means we believe we’re supposed to know it all already. Therefore we give up easily when faced with a challenge. We avoid negative criticism that might be helpful. We negatively compare ourselves to others. When we hear about amazing people doing amazing things, we feel worse. We end up looking at what’s wrong with ourselves instead of what we appreciate.
“With a growth mindset, when you’re faced with a challenge, you say to yourself, ‘I’m still learning. I may not do this perfectly, but I’m learning how to do it.’ When we hear criticism, we say, ‘Thanks for letting me know, because I can get better based on what you’re telling me.’ We’re inspired by people who are doing great things, ‘because they’re giving me something to go toward. I can try to do that too.’ As a result, people with a growth mindset tend to reach more of their potential.
“If you want to appreciate yourself, or encourage others to appreciate themselves, this is what you can do: Praise efforts, choices, and strategies, and do it with specifics. When you do this, you’re telling the brain: ‘Do more of this. This is important, remember this in the future.’ You’re learning a lot of strategies in the Awakening Joy course. Whenever you use one of them, appreciate yourself, remind your brain, so you can continue to choose good strategies in the future.”
—M. J. RYAN, AUTHOR OF ATTITUDES OF GRATITUDE AT AWAKENING JOY COURSE, BERKELEY, 2008
Even the tiniest opening of seeing the goodness in ourselves can begin to break through a lifetime of self-judgment. By inclining our mind toward looking for what is good and wholesome in us, we stop feeding the negative and start bringing our positive qualities to life. As we do this, we cultivate a new way of regarding ourselves, so that over time the old voices inside that belittle us are replaced by others that are kind and supportive.
One of the participants in the online Awakening Joy course wrote: “What I truly want to feel is the love of a holy person, like Dipa Ma, a love so vast it can forgive and embrace every storm everywhere.” Dipa Ma was a simple and renowned meditator and spiritual teacher living in Calcutta. She radiated such a powerful field of compassion that in her presence one did feel loved without limit. But this great teacher herself would say that we are all capable of such love. If we are to be the ones to give this kind of love to ourselves, rather than waiting for someone else to come along and do it, how do we begin?
Seeing What You Like
Spend a little time in front of a mirror, looking deeply at the image you see reflected there. Notice any judgments or habitual reactions that may arise. Instead of believing or feeding them, just acknowledge them and let them go. In a heartfelt way, say aloud or to yourself at least three specific good qualities you know you have. For instance you might say, “You really care about others” or “You’re a terrific dancer.” Don’t try too hard. Even a glimpse of self-appreciation is a good start. As you acknowledge your positive attributes, notice the feelings that arise in your body and mind. Be sure to pause and take them in.
As Dipa Ma taught, the capacity to love that is inherent in every one of us can be awakened and developed through the practice of lovingkindness or metta, which refers to a state of mind that radiates kindness, wishing well without wanting anything in return. It helps you awaken love when you’re not feeling it, and deepen and amplify it when you are. We begin with ourselves and continue opening our hearts to eventually include all beings. Traditionally, the practice is done in meditation, directing loving thoughts to ourselves or others by silently repeating certain phrases. Typical phrases for sending lovingkindness to ourselves include: May I be happy, May I be peaceful, May I live with ease. Each time we say these words, we are planting seeds that will eventually blossom into love.
“[M]etta … is defined as the strong wish for the welfare and happiness of others. This isn’t exclusively a Buddhist concept; in Christianity, the term for this kind of unconditional love is agape. In Judaism, rachamim is the love that motivates us to give to others and includes empathy and care. This same ideal of love is expressed in Islam with the word mahabba, which means spiritual love for others and the divine.”
—MARCI SHIMOFF WITH CAROL KLINE, FROM HAPPY FOR NO REASON
When I first learned lovingkindness practice, I was taught that, in addition to repeating the phrases, it’s helpful to engage the imagination in relevant ways. As you say a phrase such as May I be happy, you might visualize an image of yourself with a glowing heart. With May I be peaceful, you might imagine yourself on a hike in nature or relaxing on a sunny afternoon. As each image arises, I imagine that the thoughts and feelings linked with the words I’m saying are being splashed over that particular image of myself. Whenever a strong feeling of genuine well-being arises, let yourself sink into that feeling. Take in the love you are offering yourself.
The more fully we can embrace the meaning of these simple good wishes, the more effective they are. When we open and take in the good wishes we are offering to ourselves, the transformation can be profound. At Awakening Joy courses, I introduce participants to lovingkindness practice by gently speaking various phrases, encouraging them to repeat the words to themselves, and to feel and take in the meaning. After one class, Sandy sent me a note relating what had happened to her during that simple meditation:
As the phrases were spoken, I let myself deeply feel each one. There was no analysis, no thinking about it, just a simple nurturing message I was giving to myself. A strong sense of compassion for myself arose, and then compassion for others. Since that time, whenever I say the words to myself, which I often do, I feel the same nurturing, compassionate, and happy feelings, like a warmth throughout my being. The experience that one night has changed my life.
The practice of lovingkindness is often preceded by self-forgiveness. This helps clear anything that might block warm feelings we could have for ourselves. When I ask participants at a course what they need to forgive themselves for, I receive lots of responses. People seem to readily know their faults. Good thing this is asked in the context of learning to love themselves! Some of the responses include:
Being unkind to myself in those moments when I most need kindness.
Chickening out sometimes, giving up before I start.
Being so opinionated.
Blowing up at others.
Stuffing my emotions with food.
Making bad choices.
Not being perfect or even good enough.
It’s striking to see how often that last one comes up. The tendency to perfectionism is merciless, but forgiveness allows us to let go of any ideal standard we measure ourselves against. You can’t be anyone other than who you are right at this moment, and that’s where you have to start if you want to forgive and love yourself. On my Really Awful Deeds retreat, that realization that all of us are doing the best we can showed me what a huge misunderstanding this drive to perfection is. If any of us could have grown into different people, “more perfect” human beings, we would have.
Forgive yourself. Now is the only time you have to be whole. Now is the sole moment that exists to live in the light of your true Self. Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain. Please, oh please, don’t continue to believe in your disbelief. This is the day of your awakening.
—DANNA FAULDS,
excerpt of “Awakening Now,” from Go In and In
Back in seventh-century China, the Third Zen Patriarch said that to live “without anxiety about non-perfection” is the key to genuine happiness. We don’t have to get rid of our shortcomings before we love ourselves. Seeing non-perfection as part of our shared humanity, we don’t have to take our flaws so personally, although we can take them as a gift to learn from. While granting ourselves forgiveness takes patience, as we practice lovingkindness, we plant the seeds that will flower in their own time.
Embracing the totality of who we are means having compassion for our difficult-to-accept aspects. What we’re doing is pulling out the second dart talked about in Step Four: When we’re angry, not getting angry at our anger; when we’re afraid, not being afraid of our fear; when we’re jealous or petty, not getting caught up in condemning ourselves. Of course you’ll make mistakes, but you don’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater. With understanding and compassion, let yourself be just as you are. Forgive yourself as you’d forgive someone else who is trying to do the best they can.
Although opening up to receive my friends’ love many years before was a major milestone, its main effect had been to diminish my self-judgment. As important as that was, it was just the beginning. It’s one thing to not beat yourself up; it’s quite another to truly delight in who you are, and I still had a ways to go. The door to self-love had opened a crack, and eventually I would find the way to throw it open wide.
Once again the significant change happened on a silent retreat, this one focused specifically on the practice of lovingkindness. Hour after hour I sat in the stillness of my room earnestly following the instructions, beginning with sending caring wishes to myself: May I be safe from harm. May I be happy. May I be healthy. May I have inner peace. I knew that days later we would be moving on to sending thoughts of lovingkindness to others, and this would be the foundation.
After three days of continued repetition of the lovingkindness phrases, I had to admit that I was experiencing a kindly self-acceptance and friendly appreciation for myself… but nothing more. “Well,” I thought, “as the Supremes sing, ‘You can’t hurry love.’ “Though I noticed a slight frustration over the lack of juice, I trusted that with each phrase I was planting the seeds of lovingkindness for myself, and that they would eventually bloom. What I didn’t know was that those days of mechanical repetition had led me to the doorway I was looking for—and it was right around the corner.
As I sat there, the fall sunlight making its way through the leaves into my room, I found myself musing about the fact that others often can find us lovable far more readily than we ourselves can. If only we could see what others see, I thought to myself, it would be so much easier to love ourselves. I decided to try an experiment: What would I see if I tried looking at myself through someone else’s eyes?
Who really loves me? I asked myself. Immediately the image came to mind of a certain friend whose love for me was strong and never in doubt. I could see his smile of delight as he beheld me, and feel his open heart beam me with affection. As I took in that love, I began to experience a buoyancy and uplifting in my own heart.
Continuing the experiment, I asked: Why does he feel that way about me? What exactly does he see? I imagined being him and looking at myself from his perspective. Without any effort, I became aware of the kindness that so wants to be there for others, the playful spirit that loves to sing and have fun, the good heart that enjoys seeing others shine, the years of earnest and sincere spiritual practice. Without any squirming or pretending, I took some time to drink myself in, to really “get” what my friend was seeing.
May you learn to see yourself with the same delight, pride, and expectation with which God sees you in every moment.”
—FATHER JOHN O’DONOHUE
Intellectually I knew those things about myself; the particulars were not surprising. But as I saw myself through my friend’s eyes, there were none of the “yes … buts” that I would typically throw at myself. All at once I got the essence of who I am. The unique expression of “Jamesness” became apparent to me in a way that it never had before. I wasn’t just a collection of good qualities and “yes … buts;” the whole was greater than the sum of its parts. And I began to understand and see for myself that James, this person my friend was looking at, was enough—more than enough just as I was. It was a moment of genuine and deep self-love, completing the circuit of an impulse that had been set in motion that fateful night twenty-seven years before when I’d finally opened up and let in the love of my friends.
I could also see and understand that loving myself in this way wasn’t being on an ego trip. While I had made certain choices that allowed me to develop ways of being that I appreciated, I couldn’t take credit for the raw material. Essentially “being James” was something that had happened as a natural unfolding of life. I had broken through self-assessment and understood the beauty and wonder of my true nature, the same true nature that is the essence of everyone. Each of us is a unique and beautiful expression of creation. Huang Po, a ninth-century Zen sage, said that “in a flash” it’s possible to comprehend what and who you are, and it is so much bigger than what you might have expected.
Staying in contact with the qualities I had seen through my friend’s eyes, I let my consciousness slowly move back inside me. Now those hours of planting seeds of love were bearing fruit, and a sweet loving energy fueled the phrases as I said them. I was sincerely sending myself kind thoughts of well-wishing, and at last feeling fully deserving of them.
Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, “A mind stretched by a new idea does not shrink back to its original dimensions.” Something shifted that day which has remained ever since. For years I had been looking for love and fulfillment outside myself—loving others, looking for love from others. I now understood that no matter how much love came to me from “out there,” until I could truly love myself, I couldn’t really take it in.
In the Awakening Joy courses, I invite participants to do the same exercise I did on the retreat. Just the process of recognizing a few of their good qualities is challenging for some people, but the real stretch happens when I then ask them to turn to one of their neighbors and share aloud those good things they saw. At first there is a lot of discomfort. Many people squirm at the thought of saying such positive things about themselves to another. After a few minutes, though, the room begins to light up with enthusiasm.
Seeing Yourself with Love
Bring to mind someone who genuinely loves you. Imagine yourself as that person, and look at yourself through his or her eyes. What qualities do you see in yourself from that perspective? Pause a few moments to fully take in what you see.
Now shift your perspective back and feel what it is like for you to have those qualities. Appreciate them, delight in them. Write them down in your Joy Journal and share them with your Joy Buddy or with a trusted friend. For one week remind yourself each morning of the qualities you saw in yourself through loving eyes.
After that transformative experience, I had to reorient the way I thought of myself. Instead of my self-concept being “I am flawed and there’s some good stuff in me,” I knew instead that “I am good and there are some flaws.” In time, this warm and tender love would also learn to hold, as we hold a suffering child, those aspects of myself that are harder to accept.
All those little blips of “what’s wrong with us” can so easily get magnified into what seem like glaring faults. They suck all the oxygen out of the room of our psyche, and we come to believe that’s who we are. By seeing yourself through the eyes of love, all the “buts” become like little clouds passing through a vast sky.
Embracing the totality of who we are is not about loving only our goodness and disregarding the rest. And it’s not about being fond of just that part of us that is always sweet and kind. True love comes whole and unconditional. Loving the whole package means leaving nothing out. Unless we can do that, our love and joy are compromised. You might think, “I love 85 percent of myself, but if only I could somehow get rid of that other 15 percent.” That thought keeps a lid on your joy. The love that embraces the whole package encompasses both compassion for the confused parts and love for the goodness.
An image from the brilliant PBS nature series Planet Earth sticks in my mind as an apt metaphor for the naturalness and perfection of all aspects of ourselves. The scene features a watering hole on a vast African plain. At various times we see the approach of giraffes, antelope, zebras, elephants, wildebeests, lions—some prey, some predators—all of them bound together by one simple fact, the need for water. Within each species are mothers and fathers, babies and the elderly. Watching them, I realized how it would make no sense to say, “Too bad that antelope is not a zebra,” or “If only that giraffe were taller it would look better,” or “That elephant is too old, it would be more beautiful if it were younger.” Each animal comes to the watering hole with its own distinctive character and life.
Endless variation is part of the way life expresses itself. All of us, as human beings, are part of a vast and changing movement that is greater than any one of us. Just as sickness and death, volcanoes and earthquakes are part of what we might call the overall perfection of life, our confusion and ignorance are part of the totality of what it means to be alive. To feel wrong, bad, or not worthy of love because you’re an elephant and not a giraffe is to see reality from a limited perspective. Even the tiger that attacks and eats the gazelle at the watering hole is not bad or wrong but simply part of the whole process, part of the way things are.
In the Eastern philosophy of Taoism, everything is part of the tapestry of life. And that includes you with all the unique qualities that make up who you are. Our tendency to believe that we, among all the other “elephants and giraffes,” have something wrong with us and aren’t good enough is—to borrow a phrase from Albert Einstein—“an optical delusion of consciousness.”
In saying good-bye to someone we love, we often use the phrase “Take good care.” This phrase holds a clue to cultivating love for ourselves. Love is taking good care—of your body and your mind, nourishing them with healthy foods, kind and effective healing methods, enough exercise, adequate rest and quiet time, creative self-expression and play. But the key to awakening joy is how we do that.
Loving ourselves by taking care of ourselves doesn’t necessarily mean we always feel a lot of love while we’re doing what we have to do. A devoted parent isn’t deliriously happy about working long hours, shopping, cooking, cleaning, driving, supporting, and helping in all the countless ways necessary to raise a family. If the actions are done with resentment, they can leave everyone feeling confused, closed down, and disconnected. Remembering, even for a moment, that you’re doing all these things because you love that child opens the way for joy.
The same is true when caring for yourself. Doing it out of love instead of obligation has immediate benefits. Before I go to the gym to work out, a little voice inside sometimes (or often!) says: Do you really want to do this? Why not kick back and take it easy? At that point I can either force myself to go and get onto the weight machines because “it’s good for me,” or I can remember that I’m doing it because I love and appreciate my body. One way can make me feel a bit resentful, at least until the endorphins kick in. The other can open my heart to make room for even a little glimmer of joy. When you take care of yourself out of love, your love for yourself increases.
When I ask participants in the Awakening Joy course what it feels like to be kind to themselves, their answers include:
Relaxed and contented.
Spacious and light.
Grounded.
A welling up of joy in my chest, sometimes tears of joy.
Like I’m in the key of C.
Like I’m holding a baby in my arms—me!
You can bring this kind of tenderness and harmony into your own life by paying attention to what you need in order to really nourish yourself, and letting yourself have that—even if it means getting over that little hump of resistance and going down to the gym to work out. Pay attention to how good you feel when you’re done, and acknowledge yourself for taking good care.
Alexa’s struggle to move from self-hatred to self-love went on for several years. One day she came to me to ask how it could be possible to treat yourself kindly when you see so much wrong. Where do you start?
“I’ll share with you one of my practices, one I did for nearly two years,” I answered, hoping to assure her that she wasn’t the only one who felt that way. I asked her to close her eyes and let one of the negative thoughts she had about her body come to mind.
“Not hard to do,” she answered with a wry smile.
“Now place your hand on your cheek and gently caress it as if that hand belonged to the kindest grandmother, or some other wise and compassionate being. Silently say to yourself in the most tender voice possible, ‘That’s okay, dear. It’s just a judging thought.’”
I’m finding myself naturally slowing down and seeing that I’m easily present, because I’m not on ‘high alert.’ My pace walking down the street to work is slower; I drive at a more relaxed pace, meaning with the flow of traffic and leaving plenty of distance between vehicles instead of rushing up on the car in front of me. Even my cardio workouts are done with an ease that is independent of the actual pace/speed I’m running. Now that I think about it, being kind to myself actually is a reduction of internal violence. Stress and tension are a form of self-inflicted harm.”
—A COURSE PARTICIPANT
Though Alexa was at first skeptical and resistant, after giving it a try, she began to let herself feel the kindness coming through her hand. As it melted her frustration, compassion arose, and with it tears filled her eyes.
We all long for kindness and care, and we are the ones who can give that to ourselves at any and every moment. Cathleen, a course participant, said she was learning to pay attention to herself in the same way she is used to paying attention to other people. “That means I let myself notice the little thoughts and feelings I might have about something I need and take them seriously rather than dismissing them,” she wrote. As Cathleen recognized, being kind to ourselves includes not condemning ourselves for the feelings that arise. It doesn’t make sense to say, “I shouldn’t be feeling what I’m feeling.” Feelings arise in response to a complex of conditions. You don’t say, “I could go for some fear right now” or, “How about a little self-hatred for a minute?” It’s not like you have a choice about what pops into your mind. But you do have a choice as to how you respond to the fear or self-hatred when they’re present. And that’s where you can either deepen your suffering with self-criticism or hold the suffering kindly.
As discussed in the guideline for wise speech in Step Five, speaking kindly to yourself is one of the most important ways to bring more joy into your life. A dear friend of mine often exclaims, “Oh, I’m so stupid!” when she makes a mistake. Every time I hear it, I cringe at how painful that must be for her. Learning to recognize the harsh voice of judgment inside your head, and in its place cultivating the gentle voice of compassion and support, can help you stay in touch with what you need in order to love and care for yourself.
Jill said that when she began bringing a kind attention to herself as if she were a beloved child, her life began to change. One Saturday she awoke ready to do her normal routine: “a very full day of shopping and cleaning and working.” As she was stretching out her breakfast with a final cup of tea, something inside called her to stop and take a bit more time that day to connect with herself. To her surprise when she just let herself relax and listen to her heart, a message came through loud and clear. Instead of doing a list of chores, she wanted to visit the Humane Society. For seven years Jill had been considering adopting a dog. That day she realized that being kind enough to herself to stop and listen opened her to a new, more joyous phase of her life.
I needed that permission and “free” time to realize I could have something I wanted sooner rather than later. I could choose the happiness of living with a dog, instead of the more familiar belief that getting happiness takes a long time, and maybe I’m not ready enough or worthy enough to have it right now. Making that choice was a way of taking care of myself that has brought me tremendous joy.
An important way of caring for yourself that can get overlooked is developing your unique gifts and talents. Like a gardener lovingly tending a beautiful garden, we can delight in appreciating what we’ve been blessed with and bringing our potential to fruition. Whether your natural abilities lie in music, art, logic, intelligence, a sense of humor, kindness, connecting with people, or working with animals, great joy is found in identifying these gifts and sharing them with the world. This is not a matter of inflating your ego or falling into the trap of grandiosity. It’s about honestly recognizing your particular gifts and abilities and expressing them. This is what leading a fulfilling human life is about.
Having doubts about our abilities doesn’t mean we don’t have gifts or skills. Nor does trying to get over our doubts mean that we’re deceiving ourselves. Everyone has some special abilities, and allowing them to blossom is the true expression of self-love. In her book The Life and Work of Martha Graham, choreographer and dancer Agnes de Mille relates a conversation she had with Graham, the renowned pioneer of modern dance. De Mille, who as a child had been told she wasn’t pretty enough to be an actress and didn’t have the right body to be a dancer, was questioning her own talents, despite a recent success in choreographing a show. In response Graham offered her this wisdom and advice:
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and it will be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares to other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.
There are many ways to take good care of ourselves, and we can offer them to ourselves as we would to someone we are deeply in love with. This begins with shifting our focus away from what we think is wrong with us and toward a genuine appreciation of our very existence. It was this shift that led Alexa to a major turning point. One day, after all her efforts to let go of her self-criticism, something inside shifted, and Alexa saw herself at last.
I just sat there, silently weeping. I wept for the sadness I’ve carried, the shame, the unworthiness, and I wept in painful joy and visceral gratitude. … I am grateful to my body and my muscles and my lungs, my beating heart… I am falling head over heels in love with myself. …
How can our little fragmented and conditioned self manage to get big enough to offer ourselves unconditional love? In truth, it can’t. Einstein wisely said that a problem can’t be solved on the level at which it was created, and to embrace ourselves fully requires realizing we are bigger than who we think we are.
Howie Cohn, a fellow teacher of mindfulness meditation, tells a tender personal story about how he came to know who is really doing the loving. During one of the many retreats he attended before he became a teacher, Howie found himself feeling unusually restless. He sensed that the pervasive feeling of discontent meant some deep discomfort was rising to the surface of consciousness and would have to be faced. As the days went by, a great feeling of isolation and loneliness came over him. The more intense the feeling, the more restless he became, wanting to do anything other than sit and be present with the pain.
One afternoon in his room as he was finishing a session of silent meditation, Howie opened his eyes and looked around. Neatly folded in one area was a large pile of his fashionable sweaters. His first impulse was to admire the collection and pride himself on his good taste, but he found himself instead wondering, Why do I have all of these sweaters? Then he began to notice all the stuff he had brought along to the retreat—handsome shirts and trousers hung in the open closet, several upscale toiletries lined the shelf above the sink, and a few gadgets he’d brought along that had seemed so essential covered the bedside table.
As he recalled the hours and hours he had spent searching for that “thing” that was just right, he began to understand. All around him was inescapable evidence of his futile attempts to run away from the feeling of emptiness that always lingered somewhere in the background—and was now filling every moment. This time he couldn’t go out shopping to escape the great void. Added to that was the pain of self-judgment: Why is comfort such a big deal for me? Why do I need so much stuff? Now, here in the safe container and silence of a retreat, he knew there was only one way to respond to that emptiness, and that was to go into rather than away from it.
As Howie stayed present with the loneliness, he could feel the deepening ache in his heart, the bottomless hollow in the pit of his stomach. When the pain crept through his entire body and loneliness turned to fear, Howie found himself curling up on the floor and sobbing. “I felt like a desperate child,” he recalls. “I put my arms around my body and started rocking myself.” Surprisingly soothed by the loving energy of this caring action, Howie began to notice a curious shift taking place inside him. Now he was no longer the small frightened child needing to be held but rather the compassionate and wise one doing the holding. He was literally embracing the part of himself he had been so afraid to face. And he knew that what he felt wasn’t “Howie’s love,” it was unconditional love itself, able to accept and hold with compassion every part of who he was in that moment.
As we’ve seen before in this course, running away from difficult feelings doesn’t make them go away. When Howie let himself stay in touch with the painful loneliness, he found himself carried through it to a new perspective. While Howie had the supportive atmosphere of a retreat, the transformation he went through in loving himself unconditionally can happen in other ways as well. Psychotherapist Linda Graham points out that if you’ve never felt loved, the presence of an “empathic other” can serve to awaken the loving presence inside you.
In whatever way you begin this process, you will come to understand that what you experience as “negative emotions,” when addressed with wisdom and support, unfold into a broader knowing of who you are. You are not just the loneliness, anger, fear, or envy that might be overwhelming you. You also have within you the benevolent presence that can tenderly hold your confusion like a mother holds a child.
I think of this presence as our basic nature, as goodness itself. We all get glimpses of it in a moment of gratitude or generosity, or in the joy we feel when we hear about or witness a noble action, or behold an object of beauty. When we quiet down enough and listen carefully, we find it is there all the time, beneath the confusion and static in our minds. The way I see it, this pure force is the impulse inside us that wishes for our happiness, that roots for our well-being. The process of learning to love ourselves means accessing and then empowering this force, so that it directs our choices and our life.
Your ability to love yourself evolves as you evolve, but when you finally love yourself, you have passed a watershed point in your spiritual practice. You no longer are trapped in looking to others to prove that you are okay. When you are unhooked from that need, you can simply open to the love coming your way from others without feeling unworthy or deflecting it. You can just let it join the love inside you.
In Awakening Through Love, writer and teacher John Makransky suggests a practice of being present for all the acts of kindness that come your way each day. When your partner gives you an affectionate hug, really take in the love. When a co-worker expresses appreciation, she is sincerely sending positive energy your way. Be there for it. When a dear friend greets you with genuine delight, he’s communicating his love for you. Don’t miss it. A stranger holds a door for you or smiles as you pass on the street. That is a communication filled with warmth and friendliness. Let yourself feel it. As Makransky puts it, if you’re looking for all the small and large expressions of goodwill, you’ll see that life is letting you know how deserving of love you are. If you’re really present for all this kindness, you will be continually nourished by the benevolence around you. The more you open to receive all that love, the more you attract it to you. And you’ll find that you become both a beacon and a magnet for love.
On the Lookout for Goodness
Be on the lookout for those moments when something good expresses itself through you—a spontaneous urge to call a distressed friend, an impulse to give a donation to a charity. Be sure to pause and let those thoughts, feelings, and sensations register in your awareness.
Following my own path has led me a long way from the adolescent wincing at seeing himself in the mirror. Over time the glimpses I’ve had of loving myself have become more of a consistent outlook. It’s true that if the right button is pressed, I can still find myself back in the third grade, a mass of insecurity. But those thoughts don’t last very long anymore, nor do they run my life, and I’m not so dependent upon the feedback of others to prop up my self-love. Even when stressed and confused, before long I can find my way back to that sense of compassion for my own humanity.
Loving ourselves means not only remembering who we are, but appreciating our particular way of being as one of life’s infinite expressions. It means understanding that all the confusion and pain and shortcomings are part of the process of waking up. Alexa, who had been so deeply caught in self-hatred that she thought there was no way out, beautifully articulated this realization:
On some days I am so full of love for myself and everything around me that it is all I can do to stop my heart from exploding with joy. I honor my pain, I bow to my capacity for change and growth that has manifested by pushing through the difficult times, and I rise in pure joy for the gift and blessing that is my life. As I rise in love for myself, I open to the myriad blessings in the universe and on Earth.