“Be kind whenever possible.
It is always possible.”
Dalai Lama
I have been counseling people since I was in high school, in the early 70s, after which I took a break for a few years to hitchhike around this country, Europe and North Africa, live at an ashram and pursue a degree in journalism and broadcasting in college. Finally, in the late 70s I found myself once again sitting with people in pain, hearing their tales of deep suffering, sadness and fear. In 1980, I entered graduate school, earning a doctorate in psychology in 1984. With over 35 years of experience, I have learned a few things.
One lesson I’ve learned is that we can have what we want, if what we want is peace of mind and a rich, rewarding, fulfilling life. We can get what we need. And the only one who can stop us is us. This is true. We get in our own way. How do I know this? Because I am a human and prone to the same challenges as my clients. I struggle with unwanted experiences and difficult feelings like anyone else. We aren’t responsible for what happens to us but we are responsible for our suffering.
How do we do this? We argue with reality. We refuse to accept what was, is or will be and we chase solutions to our problems outside the self. We feel lost and in trying to get found, we get more lost. We are like a man dying of thirst with water up to his chin. We are like the woman searching the world looking for her horse while riding her horse. We have what we need. We have direct access to what we deeply want. We just have to pay attention and notice. It helps to trust and believe.
What do my clients want? Same thing you want. Same thing I want. Love. Understanding. Support. Acceptance. Truth. In his book, The Reality Slap, Russ Harris writes, “We want to know there is someone there for us: someone who truly cares about us, who takes the time to understand us, who recognizes our pain and appreciates how badly we are suffering, who makes the time to be with us and allows us to share our true feelings without expecting us to cheer up or pretend everything is okay, who will support us, who treats us kindly and offers to help, whose actions demonstrate we are not alone.”
What Harris wants us to understand is what I have come to learn repeatedly over the years. Think about a child, perhaps your child or a child you know or knew once. Imagine that child crying. Someone has hurt her and she has come to you for support. What do you do? What do you say? What is your attitude? How do you respond? Imagine the child being comforted by your warmth, kindness and love. Imagine her tense, little body relaxing as she soaks up your sincere, genuine and heart-felt words and hugs. Imagine your love flowing out of you in a continuous stream of golden energy and filling this child up until she is shining and shimmering with your boundless love and concern.
Now if you can imagine doing this for a child, can you imagine doing this for another adult, perhaps your spouse, a sibling or a special friend? And why not? For what is an adult, but a grown-up child? Do we stop needing love just because we are no longer young?
And if you can imagine comforting a friend, spouse or sibling, perhaps you can imagine comforting your most special friend, the one person who has been with you from the moment of your birth and will be with you at your death; the one person who has seen all that you’ve seen and understands you better than anyone else. You.
Many, if not most of my clients struggle to like, let alone love themselves. Why is this? I suggest to you that it is the mind’s fault. It doesn’t mean to hate you. It thinks it is helping. Just like a parent who is overly critical in the hopes that such harsh words will motivate the child to do better, we often lash out at ourselves for the same reason.
The judgmental mind can’t stop judging. The evaluative mind can’t stop evaluating. And when it turns on the self, it can find plenty to criticize. Our minds want to solve us like a complicated math problem instead of admiring us like a breath-taking sunset over blue-gray ocean that seems to stretch on and on until it melds with the sky.
What I love most about learning Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) over the last ten years is that it finally gave me methods to deal with my own self-hatred. I have spent my life persecuting and feeling persecuted by me. Am I one person or two? If I can have a relationship with myself, I must be at least two, right?
I can be the lover and the beloved in the same way I can be the hater and the hated. Which one are you right now? We can “think” we are not worthy of our love and hold ourselves in contempt. Or we can choose to love fully and completely, even if we don’t think we deserve it.
What stops us? Who is this person within us who attacks us so viciously? And why? When we think thoughts, we are operating out of our thinking mind. Very useful for dealing with the external world but ineffective in dealing with the self.
The better part of us – our true part – is our observing self. This is the part of me and you who does not judge. It is your true you. It is the part of you that never changes or ages. When an old friend sees you again after twenty years and recognizes you, it isn’t just visual cues that guide the memory in the mind. It is your essence. It is essence connecting with essence.
Like an actor on a stage who gets lost in her role, the true self remains quietly present, even if not seen. We get to choose which self we act out of. When we get swept up by our thoughts, stories, memories, emotions, feelings, images and urges, we lose contact with what I call our God-self or diamond-self. This is the pure awareness from which “we” enter into the world and are seen.
Each of us possesses an animating force within our physical bodies. We may have trouble connecting with it because our stories and thoughts clamber about us like a hyperactive child, convincing us of lies that make us feel diminished and sad. But that limitless force of life, love and truth courses through us like the electricity that lights up the cities of the world. Are we ready to connect with that force? Are we ready to identify with this point of awareness? Are we ready to do that now?
Everything we have ever done or will ever do in life depends on this deeper (and more real) self. The thoughts won’t stop. The deep feelings of hurt will come and go. The parts of us that want to quit will plead for relief. We can feel afraid, resentful, guilty and full of rage and remorse. Emotions may batter us like a category 5 hurricane and shred us like a tissue in a storm but deep within the chaos we find a place of peace that is precious and profound.
If we are honest, we prefer others to be kind to us and we prefer to be kind to them. But how often do we take a few moments to hold ourselves kindly? How often do we get still and silent and shower ourselves with warmth, compassion and forgiveness? Why must this be the one thing we never do? Why is it so difficult to allow ourselves to feel valued, cherished and appreciated? If you can love another, why not the self?
When we are willing to offer and receive compassion to and from ourselves, we are on a special road. We don’t have to wait for someone to come along to give us this ride. We can quench our own thirst. When we give up resisting reality and let it be as it is, we can sit in the holy confines of our unjudged self and let the healing in. We can do that now. Shall we?