Your mind can be a powerful and\u00a0splendid ally. It can be a motivator, a planner and a supreme puzzle solver.\u00a0But it\u2019s not necessarily your friend.<\/p>\n
I was in the grocery store when I\u00a0passed the ice cream section. I saw boxes of chocolate ice cream bars covered\u00a0with dark chocolate. Hagen Dasz. My favorite. I hesitated a moment. \u201cGo ahead,\u201d\u00a0a voice in my mind encouraged me. \u201cBuy some. They\u2019re delicious.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re bad for you,\u201d another\u00a0voice said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou eat healthy,\u201d the first voice said.\u00a0\u201cIt\u2019s one little ice cream bar. You deserve it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Remember those cartoons where\u00a0someone has an angel on one shoulder and a devil on the other and they\u2019re\u00a0battling? Guess who won? I put a box of ice cream bars in my cart and I hurried\u00a0home so they wouldn\u2019t melt. Then I removed the paper covering on one of them\u00a0and took a bite. My taste buds flooded with pleasure as I kept on eating \u2013\u00a0until the first voice began singing a different tune. \u201cYou shouldn\u2019t be eating\u00a0that,\u201d it told me. \u201cIt\u2019s unhealthy and it\u2019s fattening. You know better. Now\u00a0you\u2019re screwed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those of us with loud, persistent\u00a0inner voices (isn\u2019t that all of us?) are faced with daily obstacles that are so\u00a0familiar, they seem like old acquaintances that cause us suffering. I must not\u00a0be doing this right, we tell ourselves. What if I\u2019d made a different choice? Is\u00a0it better to deny myself or to feel guilty? How about making a third choice \u2013
doing what we want and feeling good about it?<\/p>\n
\u00a0When I was a kid, I thought that by \u00a0the time I was in my third chapter of like I am now, I\u2019d have it all figured\u00a0out. The inner critic would have gone away and a sense of all knowing would\u00a0have replaced it. I was wrong. I was in a Stephen Levine workshop years ago,\u00a0when he said that he was out in nature one day, feeling good about himself when\u00a0a big glob of self-criticism hit him in the face. It was something he had been working on for years, so he had learned not to blame himself. Instead he said,\u00a0\u201cHere it is again. Big surprise.\u201d And he turned to his practice of being loving\u00a0and compassionate with himself.<\/p>\n
If we think we\u2019ve overcome our\u00a0obstacles for good, that isn\u2019t a sign of enlightenment. It\u2019s a sign that we are\u00a0expecting perfection. But it doesn\u2019t exist like that. The act of staying with\u00a0ourselves in the face of fear or sadness carries its own kind of perfection.\u00a0It\u2019s a commitment to stop abandoning ourselves and start appreciating\u00a0ourselves, even if we think we don\u2019t deserve it. It\u2019s a commitment to stop\u00a0judging when an old wound comes up. If we don\u2019t recognize it and use it to
grow, our lives will be filled with suffering. If we recognize it and accept it\u00a0as it is, our lives will be filled with acceptance and compassion.<\/p>\n
Diane Von Furstenberg says, \u201cYou\u2019re\u00a0always with yourself, so you might as well enjoy the company.\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
If we can be kind to ourselves when\u00a0we feel shame and embarrassment, life will be gentler. When something difficult
appears in my psyche that I\u2019ve dealt with over and over, I try to recognize it\u00a0as my life\u2019s work. Stephen Levine said \u201cTo heal is when we touch with love that\u00a0which was previously touched by fear.\u201d I try to follow Mr. Levine\u2019s suggestion\u00a0to be with myself in kind way. I don\u2019t expect the obstacles to disappear but they\u00a0will get dimmer. Less powerful. \u00a0I expect to keep learning from them and I hope I never stop. With all the spiritual work I\u2019ve done in my life, I\u2019ve learned that I\u2019m not the only one dealing with these things. I\u2019m not that special. If I feel something like that, so do you. We may have different stories, we may have had different experiences but the way we feel is the same. No one is better or worse than anyone else. We are all fellow travelers walking along the same path together.<\/p>\n
During my life, loneliness, fear\u00a0and judgments have been constant companions. They\u2019re like visitors who never go\u00a0home. As I\u2019ve confronted them daily, I\u2019ve learned that when I make a commitment
to treat myself with respect, when I don\u2019t burden myself with judgments and\u00a0self-abuse, my life lessons don\u2019t seem so insurmountable. \u201cHere I am again,\u201d I\u00a0tell myself, \u201cneeding to make choices. Big surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n
When I accept this as my life\u2019s\u00a0work, I welcome it. As long as I have something to work on that helps me grow,\u00a0I have meaning in my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Your mind can be a powerful and\u00a0splendid ally. It can be a motivator, a planner and a supreme puzzle solver.\u00a0But it\u2019s not necessarily your friend. I was in the grocery store when I\u00a0passed the ice cream section. I saw boxes of chocolate ice cream bars covered\u00a0with dark chocolate. Hagen Dasz. My favorite. I hesitated a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":2707,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2708"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2709,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2708\/revisions\/2709"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.andreacagan.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}