Three Truths and One Wish

Paradigm: A conceptual model that is used…to understand complex phenomena. A paradigm includes assumptions, concepts, values, and practices that determine how something is understood. New paradigms develop when observations cannot be explained by current assumptions and beliefs, (source).

I am undergoing a paradigm shift. It is difficult, scary, and slow, but necessary. As I “live into” this change, there are some things I am discovering, finding to be true.

1. Truth: Paradigm shifts usually don’t happen quickly. At the very least, they probably won’t happen as fast as you’d like. For most of us, it’s not like flipping a light switch. We have to ease into it, take it slow, give it time and space, stop and start, over and over, again and again, take a few do-overs, wait almost to the point of boredom or giving up–because the full shift doesn’t happen all at once.

2. Truth: Your intellectual understanding of the new paradigm will happen before you are able to fully embody it. You know, but find yourself still acting in those old ways. You move through your habitual patterns and ways of being, watching them with a new awareness, but still stuck in them. It’s tempting in this in-between to think it would be easier to go back to ignorance, to wish for that blindness, to see it as a sort of bliss, but there’s nothing there for you anymore. Once you see a new way, a better, more sane way, you can’t unsee it.

3. Truth: “Love is always in the room with you.” You’ve got this. It’s so certain, it’s as if it’s already happened. You don’t need to be afraid of freaking out or falling apart. The things you are afraid of either won’t happen or won’t be nearly as bad as you’d imagined. You can soften, surrender, let go, relax. Allow yourself stillness, silence, solitude, and space. Shine your light, sink into and manifest your truest self, embody supreme confidence.

One wish: If you want to shift your paradigm, may it go quickly and without obstacle. If you are lost in a fog of confusion, about yourself and the world, or in the midst of change, may you awaken to the light of your true nature. May you know your basic goodness, your innate wisdom and compassion and strength. May we all soften and relax and maintain good cheer, no matter where we are on our path.

This morning, I finished reading “There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate” by Cheri Huber. As a way of helping me process some of what I learned, I’m focusing this post on truths from the book.

1. Truth: As children, we learn that love, acceptance, and approval are “out there” and must be earned somehow. I heard this idea first in one of Brene’ Brown‘s books, that when we are young, 0-5 or so, we view love and attention as survival issues, because we are aware that we are dependent on others to have our needs met–unless we can get others to love and care for us, we’ll literally die. We believe we must earn our very survival, get others to meet our needs.

Me and Dressy Bessy, Early 70's

Then, even later in our lives, we don’t look to ourselves for love or care, don’t see them as needs we can meet. “Without feeling full ourselves, what looks like generosity and kindness is often a backwards plea to get our own needs met. A silent, ‘If I meet your needs, you must meet mine,’ ” (“Start With You” by Nona Jordan). Some of us, without even being conscious of it, stay stuck in this way of being. Stuck in looking to others for love, acceptance, and approval, we don’t learn to love, appreciate, accept, care for, or trust ourselves, we try to earn it.

2. Truth: Stuck here, we believe if our needs aren’t met, it’s because we’ve failed. We need others to meet our needs and when they aren’t, when they don’t, it’s because we aren’t good enough, we’re flawed or broken. If only we could please or perform, be perfect, we would get what we need. We don’t believe we can provide for ourselves. We become self-hating, self-destructive, self-denying, and smash ourselves to bits to try and be what we think others want. We believe we aren’t loved or accepted because something is wrong with us. We spend our attention, time, effort, and energy trying to be good, earn approval, get permission, please others by being perfect. It’s like that cellphone commercial where the guy keeps saying “can you hear me now?” but instead we are saying “do you love me now?”

3. Truth: The way out of self-hate is to learn to love and accept yourself, exactly as you are. No need for self-improvement or change, no need to earn this. We can simply drop the trying, the smashing ourselves to bits, and accept ourselves–simple in theory, but hard to do when something is so old and deep and sticky, but it’s workable, and worthwhile to try. And the good news is:

We already have everything we need. There is no need for self-improvement. All these trips that we lay on ourselves–the heavy-duty fearing that we’re bad and hoping that we’re good, the identities that we so dearly cling to, the rage, the jealousy and the addictions of all kinds–never touch our basic wealth. They are like clouds that temporarily block the sun. But all the time our warmth and brilliance are right here. This is who we really are. We are one blink of an eye away from being fully awake. ~Pema Chödrön

One wish: That we all know our basic goodness, remember it, have faith in it, trust it. “If you are ever going to be free, you must be willing to prove to yourself that your inherent nature is goodness, that when you stop doing everything else, goodness is what is there,” (Cheri Huber). Goodness that is loving and accepting, that can provide everything you need. “We think we are rocks, but we are gold.” May we all embody and manifest this truth.

There’s so much more truth in Cheri Huber’s book, 300 rather than just three. I put folds in the top corners of 37 pages, the places where something shimmered, the brilliant glittery light of truth almost burned through the page, made my eyes tear up. Letting go of self-hate is important work. For those of us working with it, (here’s your bonus wish), may we accomplish it quickly and without obstacle so we can get on with the good work of loving ourselves and being of benefit to others in their struggle, so that we can ease suffering in the world.