Be gentle with yourself. It was a ‘message’ I received a few years ago during an attempted meditation that was going something like this: “Why do you always screw up your relationships? What is wrong with you? Here we go again, idiot!” You get the idea.
And then something arose suddenly and completely and serenely that said, “Be gentle with yourself.” My mental battering came to an abrupt halt as I searched my mind for the origins of that thought. Where had it come from? Who or what said it? It was so out of place, so out of context. And as always happens in such instances, a quiet joy spread through me and I laughed despite myself. It is a message that has never entirely left me.
I bring it up because during my recent attempts to help someone in considerable pain it became abundantly clear just how much she is beating the tar out of herself. In ways large and small she tells herself, again and again, that she is insufficient, that life is going to screw her at the next turn, that events are overtaking her and she can’t possible manage.
All of us do this to one degree or another, courtesy an egoic mind that is either defending or attacking us on a regular basis. If you listen closely you can hear it in the words of others. But far more important, you can hear it in yourself.
For me, once that message was received I started inventorying my thoughts, particularly on those days when I’d be “absent-mindedly” driving somewhere or waiting for someone or otherwise temporarily unoccupied. What became clear was the negative tone that so often permeated my thoughts (either toward myself or the world around me).
But while we usually are taught not to judge another, to be charitable and compassionate toward our fellow man, how often are we reminded to extend that same generosity of spirit to ourselves? And doesn’t charity start at home? How, precisely, can we be gentle with another when we are wreaking such havoc on ourselves?
None of us asked to be here, to be born to these bodies, to be assigned our parents and culture and environment and on and on. All of it was thrust upon us including the very “I” each of us imagines ourselves to be. So rather than criticize ourselves might we not instead reach over and pat the other shoulder and say something along the lines of, “You know, for someone thrust unknowingly into the role of a lifetime, you’re doing pretty damned well.”
