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The biggest challenge to self-honesty is a belief in our own badness.
Yes, we judge others, but it's the fixation on 'something's wrong with me'
that keeps us from being honestly with what's deep down in us.
We think that, self-judgment, there's something a little bit like high-minded about it
like we're judging ourselves to improve ourselves and we're on our own case in a good way
but any judgment, any perfectionism, prevents us from seeing what's here clearly
it takes us away from our own being; we can't be honest.
One man that I was working with some years ago shared with me his deepest shame
where he just felt wrong and bad, and it was that he disliked his teenage stepchild.
It was very hard for him to tell me that.
He said that this young person had tantrums, still, was angry, was rude...
He cared about him, he had some compassion... but he really didn't like him
and he was tormented by his own feeling of badness
and he felt like his aversion hurt his wife, who had her own challenges, you know,
and trying to not be reactive, and he couldn't talk about it - to her, to anyone -
he even thought I would judge him, you know, to come to me and say, you know: 'I don't like my stepchild.'
And for me I was just struck with the sadness of his suffering
around something that's just part of our natural conditioning
you know, when something's really unpleasant we get aversive, we can't help it.
It's just the way we're wired. So, you know,
so many parents struggle with feeling dislike towards their children;
they can love them but not like them, and guilty about it.
And so many children feel guilty and bad about not liking their parents.
In fact the guilt gets in the way of touching the love that's there.
So anyway, with him I basically said what I'm saying now, I said: 'It's not your fault.
It's just happening.
Not like you decided to put it on the switch of 'dislike'; it just happens.'
And when I said that, it was like this release could happen he really started crying
because he had been living with this very toxic sense of shame.
So he talked to his wife and she had the same thing going on
so they were able to really hug and hold each other and, in fact,
by naming it out loud, by getting real, they had more space to then
respond with some equanimity through a very difficult phase of this young man's life.
Probably every one of us has had times of something we feel really ashamed about
whether it's some addiction or some way we've treated others
or an obsession or a failure.
We might have had the experience of confessing it to someone
and having them normalize it and the enormous relief,
the enormous relief.
So it's key to be able to start holding ourselves in that way
to be able to say 'really, this is what's happening and it's really okay.'
I mean I say to myself those words from that Hawaiian healer: 'I'm sorry
I'm sorry for all the suffering that's going on and I love you.' And I say it a lot.
I'm naming this out loud because we need to counter the self-aversion.
So when I come into one of those conditioned experiences
of trying to feel important or special or feeling jealous or lower or
falling short or whatever the current neurosis is
I try to say: 'okay, this is the trance, this is what's going on right now, this is the narrative.
This is the 'special person' narrative or this is the 'falling short' narrative
and I'm sorry, and I love you.'
And that combo of the honesty and the tenderness allows me to relax back into a bigger reality.
This is a poem by Dana Faulds, she says: 'There is no controlling life,
try corralling a lightning bolt, containing a tornado
damn a stream and it will create a new channel
resist and the tide will sweep you off your feet
allow and grace will carry you to higher ground
the only safety lies in letting it all in
the wild and the weak, fear, fantasies, failures and success
when loss rips off the doors of your heart or sadness veils your vision with despair
practice become simply bearing the truth
in the choice to let go of your known way of being
the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.
In the choice to let go of your known way of being, the whole world is revealed to your new eyes.'
So this is the practice, that requires real courage and intentionality because
our conditioning is to keep doing the old patterns
to not look at the places within us that are caught in a certain kind of trance
that are living behind the veils.
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