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From The Book of Awakening: Having the Life You Want by Being Present to the Life You Have.
Yet, how do we love ourselves? It is as difficult at times as seeing the back of your head. It can be as elusive as it is necessary. I have tried and tripped many times. And I can only say that loving yourself is like feeding a clear bird that no one else can see. You must be still and offer your palmful of secrets like delicate seed. As she eats your secrets, no longer secret, she glows and you lighten, and her voice, which only you can hear, is your voice bereft of plans. And the light through her body will bathe you till you wonder why the gems in your palm were ever fisted. Others will think you crazed to wait on something no one sees. But the clear bird only wants to feed and fly and sing. She only wants light in her belly. And once in a great while, if someone loves you enough, they might see her rise from the nest beneath your fear.
I don't…
…and haven't for a long time. It's simply what is, and I don't expect any sympathy for it or anything. What I want is to find it again. I can't do anything else really until I have. Like the author of this book, I've tried, and I've started, but it's like one step forward and two steps back, because of insecurities that have been ground into me so much and for so long that shaking them off is proving harder than it should be.
It's like I'll be sitting quietly with the invisible bird, which in my case is a butterfly, quietly and still with my palm out offering the heart of myself like nectar in my hand, all my secrets laid bare, and something startles me, and like the very butterfly I'm trying to feed I fly away… or like a young deer grazing in the forest, I'll startle and flee, and what I'd begun is lost and scattered… and I'm left crying to a deafened universe, 'What's lost? Where did I go wrong? What can I do?'
I ask for help, even though I know I'm the only one that can do this. Only I can learn to love myself again, as only 'you' can learn to love 'yourself.' Still I ask. Still I trust… and still I try.
But I stay silent when I should speak, because I should not burden others with what I feel, or think, or need. It is not my place. Yet I sulk like a child when I am not noticed.
But I speak when I should not, because I fear that others will think me ignorant if I do not. For I feel ignored if I am not acknowledged.
And I weep from self pity and at my own troubles, and rarely any more with the understanding and compassion that was once one of the gems I carried in my heart.
Have I been so burdened that this gem has been crushed? Have I become what I was repeatedly told, time and time again that I am?
All of this shows me someone that I do not like, how can I love me? It's hard when friends I loved and trusted pour scorn on my character. When someone I loved told me that I think only of myself, and then abandoned me – seeking comfort that he once found in me in the person of another. And when I do not understand why someone I was close to cut me off completely – and forbade his wife, who is a member of my family from ever having contact with me again – what am I to think? How am I to think well of myself when my own mother has called me selfish?
I am fortunate though. I have, in my life, someone that loves me. Someone that I know has seen the clear butterfly and knows that she hides still buried in my fears, even though I myself have lost sight of her, though I try… I'm afraid to fail and so then I constantly end up proving all these things by behaving in exactly these selfish ways with the one person that means more to me than anyone or anything in the all the worlds.
And I hate that behaviour, and though I know it should only be the behaviour that I reject. I reject myself, and so the descending spiral of finding it hard to love myself and become myself again continues. It's not even as if the one I love and who loves me points it out to me either – in fact more often than not she tries to protect me from that… from myself? Maybe… not sure on that one.
I just know that I've needed for a long time, and need more than ever to find that stillness inside, to find the love and the trust that's in here somewhere, in all this fear, and lift the burden weighing the little butterfly down so she can come and drink the nectar from my hand.
When we believe in what no one else can see, we find we are each other. And all moments of living, no mater how difficult, come back into some central point where self and world are one, where light pours in and out at once. And once there, I realize, make real before me – that this moment, whatever it might be, is a fine moment to live and a fine moment to die.
I begin to realize that in inquiring about my own origin and goal, I am inquiring about something other than myself...In this very realization I begin to recognize the origin and goal of the world.
--Martin Buber
Yet, how do we love ourselves? It is as difficult at times as seeing the back of your head. It can be as elusive as it is necessary. I have tried and tripped many times. And I can only say that loving yourself is like feeding a clear bird that no one else can see. You must be still and offer your palmful of secrets like delicate seed. As she eats your secrets, no longer secret, she glows and you lighten, and her voice, which only you can hear, is your voice bereft of plans. And the light through her body will bathe you till you wonder why the gems in your palm were ever fisted. Others will think you crazed to wait on something no one sees. But the clear bird only wants to feed and fly and sing. She only wants light in her belly. And once in a great while, if someone loves you enough, they might see her rise from the nest beneath your fear.
I don't…
…and haven't for a long time. It's simply what is, and I don't expect any sympathy for it or anything. What I want is to find it again. I can't do anything else really until I have. Like the author of this book, I've tried, and I've started, but it's like one step forward and two steps back, because of insecurities that have been ground into me so much and for so long that shaking them off is proving harder than it should be.
It's like I'll be sitting quietly with the invisible bird, which in my case is a butterfly, quietly and still with my palm out offering the heart of myself like nectar in my hand, all my secrets laid bare, and something startles me, and like the very butterfly I'm trying to feed I fly away… or like a young deer grazing in the forest, I'll startle and flee, and what I'd begun is lost and scattered… and I'm left crying to a deafened universe, 'What's lost? Where did I go wrong? What can I do?'
I ask for help, even though I know I'm the only one that can do this. Only I can learn to love myself again, as only 'you' can learn to love 'yourself.' Still I ask. Still I trust… and still I try.
But I stay silent when I should speak, because I should not burden others with what I feel, or think, or need. It is not my place. Yet I sulk like a child when I am not noticed.
But I speak when I should not, because I fear that others will think me ignorant if I do not. For I feel ignored if I am not acknowledged.
And I weep from self pity and at my own troubles, and rarely any more with the understanding and compassion that was once one of the gems I carried in my heart.
Have I been so burdened that this gem has been crushed? Have I become what I was repeatedly told, time and time again that I am?
All of this shows me someone that I do not like, how can I love me? It's hard when friends I loved and trusted pour scorn on my character. When someone I loved told me that I think only of myself, and then abandoned me – seeking comfort that he once found in me in the person of another. And when I do not understand why someone I was close to cut me off completely – and forbade his wife, who is a member of my family from ever having contact with me again – what am I to think? How am I to think well of myself when my own mother has called me selfish?
I am fortunate though. I have, in my life, someone that loves me. Someone that I know has seen the clear butterfly and knows that she hides still buried in my fears, even though I myself have lost sight of her, though I try… I'm afraid to fail and so then I constantly end up proving all these things by behaving in exactly these selfish ways with the one person that means more to me than anyone or anything in the all the worlds.
And I hate that behaviour, and though I know it should only be the behaviour that I reject. I reject myself, and so the descending spiral of finding it hard to love myself and become myself again continues. It's not even as if the one I love and who loves me points it out to me either – in fact more often than not she tries to protect me from that… from myself? Maybe… not sure on that one.
I just know that I've needed for a long time, and need more than ever to find that stillness inside, to find the love and the trust that's in here somewhere, in all this fear, and lift the burden weighing the little butterfly down so she can come and drink the nectar from my hand.
When we believe in what no one else can see, we find we are each other. And all moments of living, no mater how difficult, come back into some central point where self and world are one, where light pours in and out at once. And once there, I realize, make real before me – that this moment, whatever it might be, is a fine moment to live and a fine moment to die.
