Self-Full Rather Than Selfish

Every year, a friend of mine is laid off from her job for 3 months in the winter. As she contemplates returning to work in less than a month, she shared with me that she is feeling guilty for “taking it easy” and hasn’t gotten much done around her house while she has been off work. Her mind says, “I am lazy and selfish. I watch too much Animal Planet when I should be doing house projects.”  I suggested to my friend that she change the word she is using to describe herself from ‘selfish’ to ‘self-full’ because she is learning to recharge herself by stepping out of the busy mode so she can relax into life.

We humans are so busy doing that we have forgotten how to just be.  As a society, we don’t see the power of just being because we measure our success and value by how much we accomplish.  The Vietnamese Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hahn, really understands the importance of just being.  At Plum Village in France where he lived, the people in his community celebrate ‘Lazy Sundays’ and if you see someone working on a Sunday, you are encouraged to say, “Excuse me, are you being lazy enough?”  I also love that he changed the phrase “Don’t just sit there. Do something,”  to “Don’t just do something. Sit there.”

I shared with my friend that her mind, like most people’s minds, has been very busy doing her entire life, and so it is scared of just being. It doesn’t know that the safest thing she will ever do is relax into life again.  Also, her Judger is laying a guilt trip on her (something the Judger loves to do and is so good at) because she is not accomplishing all the things her mind thinks should get done. I helped her to see that it is important to recognize the Judger and allow it to be here. It is a part of the storyteller in all of our heads that is trying to whip us into shape so that we will be what we think we should be in order to make life okay. And yet that is saying we are not okay as we are. In fact, the belief that says we are not okay as we are brings great heartache into our lives.

Just imagine instead what it would be like if you accepted yourself just as you are? Your mind might get scared and resist this. It might say that would mean you would not accomplish what you should accomplish, or your life will be out of control. Both are not true. Life does life very well, much better than we can, and as we ground and open to it, we become a part of its creative flow. And rather than doing Life, we become life!

Know that with everything you long for, what you are truly longing for is the ability to simply be, the ability to live your life without struggling with it. How do you come home to life? One of the essential steps is to see and relate to what is going on in your head all day long rather than following thought wherever it goes. And of all the voices in your head, the most important one to discover how to unhook from is the Judger with its stories. As you begin to notice your own Judger, understand that whatever it says is not true. I know it can be very convincing, but it doesn’t know the truth. It is just a young part of you that is trying to whip you into shape so you can finally be the ‘right’ kind of person, the person who deserves to be loved.

My Judger convinced me at one time in my life that I wasn’t even worthy of living anymore. But now it rarely comes and when it does, I simply say “hello” and tuck it into my heart. It is absolutely possible to heal the Judger in your head. When it is judging you unmercifully, what it is really saying is, “Listen to me, please listen to me.” The Judger just wants to be seen and heard. It is just like you when you are having a bad day; you need someone to listen to you rather than judge you, giving advice or trying to change your experience. My friend might say to her Judger, “Oh, I see you are here. Thank you for coming. I know that you think I should be doing more around the house while I am not working, but I am taking care of myself right now. I am enough exactly as I am and if the house projects don’t get done today, it’s okay.” The more you befriend the different voices in your head, the more they calm down, making it so much easier to open back into life, right here, right now.

As you free yourself from your Judger by getting to know its world, you will see that you are already lovable, always have been, and always will be. You will also see that when the Judger says you are being selfish, you can remind it that you are being self-full. Then it will be much easier to take time for yourself and just be. And if that means doing some ‘couch time’ and watching Animal Planet, it’s okay.