“The most courageous thing you can do is claim your own perfection.”
— Priya Ishaya
Keeping it real! Being authentic – how wonderful and fresh.
Except when it’s not. Except when it keeps you trapped in a loop of seeing only wrong and making your mistakes and unconscious habits far more important than they are.
I hope I can convey what we do to ourselves in a way that does justice to this topic. It’s important, so you can find true balance and peace, as you are.
Now, please don’t get me wrong.
I get keeping it real. I get not trying to appear to be something you’re not. I get owning your imperfections. I’m not talking about being arrogant here.
However (and social media makes this so apparent) there are vast numbers of people who constantly self-depreciate and go on about how imperfect they are.
But why?
What’s the point?
Except as a kind of punishment, as a kind of penance for not yet achieving perfection?
Our problem isn’t not yet being perfect.
Our problem is our idea of what perfection is, and the difference between who we are and our judgements of who we think we should be.
Do you see?
Our problem is only judgement and belief.
What if you were already perfect?
What if you were perfectly aligned, perfectly formed, perfectly in the right place at the right time, not late, not slow, not behind … what if you were perfect regardless of what your shoulds and expectations and judgements said?
Hmmm … okay so:
Experience your perfection by going beyond judgement.
Get rid of a goal. Stop becoming.
Love yourself enough to embrace your seeming imperfections so actually you can see the beauty of who you already are.
At the very least, focus on how far you have come. Celebrate that, and don’t dwell (even in a humourously self-deprecating manner) on what you aren’t.
What you focus on, grows. Focus on your shadow, even with the intention of getting rid of it, and that’s all you will see.
Stop trying to attain. Stop judging. Start being.
Life is not a journey.
It’s this precise moment in front of you – and that’s all we have. Just now.
When you make it all about getting somewhere and measuring progress … you lose the moment. You lose life.
Don’t do that.
Love yourself enough to begin again.
Not because that makes you better, but because you can then commune with Reality, and with Life, exactly as it is. Fresh, new, here.
When you begin again, you have a chance of arriving. You have a chance to realise that you never left.
Alrighty?
Now, just as Priya says up top in the quote, it will take courage to stop judging yourself as lacking. It will take courage to simply be 100% accepting of your existence, exactly as you are.
But give it a shot. Practice this. What have you got to lose?
Go well!
Arjuna