I’m my own worst critic. All the time. I don’t need enemies, because I do a pretty good job of sabotaging, belittling, and picking at my own insecurities until I just want to curl up into a ball and disappear.
So I’m trying to be kinder to myself, because when everyone else is gone and I’m alone, I have to live with myself! I’ve started taking the last 10 minutes of my morning sitting to practice tonglen, or giving and receiving, and/or metta or loving-kindness meditation. The first is about exchanging suffering energy for awakened, loving energy; the second is about developing an unbridled, unconditional friendliness.
In either practice, this is directed first towards oneself, to heal the “opened wound,” of insight practice; then to someone you have already positive feelings for; then a neutral person; then someone you have difficulty with, or really don’t like; and finally, your metta energy is directed in increasingly wider circles until it encompasses the whole world.
Being kinder to myself means treating myself with respect, speaking gently and affectionately to myself, giving encouragement. I catch myself swearing and insulting myself all the time. Why? That’s learned behavior, certainly, and I’m definitely not the only one who does that.
I belittle myself for not consistently cleaning my room. For not “being able” to keep things neat, not showing up on time, leaving dishes unclean for others to clean up, barely making rent, getting too distracted to get started, getting too distracted to finish, impulsively smoking weed instead of cleaning my room or any other housekeeping chore that’s not “diverting” or fun.
So how to reverse that? In his section of the Eightfold Path on “Right Effort,” the Buddha laid out four actions:
Restraint, of unwholesome thoughts and actions
Abandoning, of the same,
Development, of wholesome thoughts and actions
Preservation, of the same.
Clearly, I don’t need help being unkind to myself. I’m trying to unlearn this (restraint, abandoning). But maybe I need practice being kind to myself. It’s often easier to introduce and develop new habits than get rid of the old ones that are holding me back, I’ve found. And a shift in identity really helps. I decided (this morning) to add metta to the end of my morning practice, because it’s kind of like dharma candy: it’s something I can look forward to, that 10 minutes of unconditional friendliness with myself and the world. I want to be the kind of person who deliberately practices loving-kindness everyday. So I’m starting with 30 days, and then I’ll renew my contract with myself for another 30 days, and we’ll do this one month-challenge at a time. Moment-by-moment, morning-by-morning, I’ll relearn self-love and self-kindness.
So, here’s an exercise to do after your regular meditation practice:
First, breathe in, and smile. Breathe out, and smile. Breathe in, and generate a feeling of kindness and love, and as you breath out, feel and visualize that warm compassionate energy being pushed out to wash over your whole body. As you breathe in, visualize that you are inviting heavy, oppressive, suffering-energy into your lungs. As you reach the end of the inhale, visualize a brilliant, clean, clear, cool, white or golden light radiating from a sun in your heart center, and transform the hot and stuffy darkness into cool, loving, awakened, friendly, calming energy. As you breathe out, send that energy all over your body.
Then after 5 minutes of this, change: breathe in the same, and breathing out, send that loving energy out to the whole world.
Sometimes I read on Instagram these “positivity” posts, new-age kinda stuff, where someone is saying “only think good things,” or “only breathe in the good and breathe out the bad.” I think you may already be able to tell how I feel about that. It’s not bad, but not good (that’s me being diplomatic; in private I throw SO much shade).
Well, this practice is better than that. It’s like operating a great, giant spiritual vacuum cleaner. This vacuum cleaner has an air filter that takes in the bad juju and transforms it into love. Then you are taking that love and pouring it over the suffering of the world. How cool is that?!
“A calm, kind, compassionate person creates the conditions for a calm kind, compassionate family.
A calm, kind, compassionate family creates the conditions for a calm, kind, compassionate community.
A calm, kind, compassionate community creates the conditions for a calm, kind, compassionate city.
A calm, kind, compassionate city creates the conditions for a calm, kind, compassionate country.
A calm, kind, compassionate country creates the conditions for a calm, kind, and compassionate world.”
Isn’t that what we all need?
How do we encourage nonviolence and stop the war, if we can’t be nonviolent inside our own minds?
Words matter. Kindness matters.
Be kinder to yourself, asshole. Pass it on.