The brilliant Cheri Huber, meditation teacher and author, offers a beautiful idea, summarized in her book “There is Nothing Wrong With You”:
Your self-improvement plans and projects are ego-maintenance projects.
They don’t accept this present moment here now. They argue with it. You’re this or that, and it’s mediocre, unacceptable, lacking.
What’s here now is wrong, bad, ugly, fat, grabby.
I will fix myself, and then later I’ll be right, good, attractive, thin, self-less.
The problem lies in “later”.
The mind that’s oriented to fear LOVES that later, you’ll be OK, but not today, not right now, not yet.
I’m reaching for the dangling carrot, and not getting it.
Constantly on the hunt, planning for a better future.
What a paradox to relax, now. To stop the planning, pestering, controlling, dictating in a rigid way.
Now, there’s nothing wrong with turning over a new leaf, and venturing out on a journey to health and vitality, or peace and joy. We love those things.
But the best way to receive these, to experience them?
Notice them….now.
If you really sit long enough in an uncomfortable moment, difficult feelings, hateful images, screaming inner voices, forcing, willpower, the mind freaking out and mad as a hornet….
….you may be surprised.
You may discover peace of some kind is actually possible here. And this moment is not FULLY filled with fear, dissatisfaction or powerlessness. Sure, the mind and thoughts are all riled up. But not everything, not the feeling of being alive.
In this video today, I’m calling that part that can feel peace now the self, perhaps the peaceful self, the true self…I don’t even know if I can say “true” (as if I would ever know).
This inner “I” however, this life force, doesn’t care about weight loss later on, and it also doesn’t care about compulsion in this moment, or severe cravings, or chaos or lack of knowledge.
It’s OK with not knowing, resting, relaxing, being still.
It’s been here the whole time, and it never abandons you despite your mind and your actions.
Much love, Grace