Lately it has come to my attention that I’ve been very hard on myself in so many different ways. I have been wanting to be perfected already, be enlightened already, be on the ‘perfect’ high-vibrational diet already, be at my goal weight when the weight has not been coming off despite eating light and healthy, be doing this and that, etc. Yesterday I reached some sort of breaking point with that thinking and subsequently received healing. My mind would alternate one moment with stillness and peace, then switch over to negative, unproductive thoughts, worries and fears and even paranoia. So, there I was, driving along in my car, listening to a beautiful song, and suddenly it hit me like a ton of bricks: I have a lifetime of thinking and being to transform, and I’ve already come SO far. I. need. to. give. myself. a. break!

Not only that, but I deserve to be kind to myself – as kind and loving as I have been with other people! I deserve that same level of kindness and care too. Lately I’ve been projecting a lot of love onto people, but somehow leaving myself out. For instance, I hug people, I use kind, uplifting words with them, I honor them and love them. But with myself… somehow it has been missing.

All of these thoughts and realizations flooded through my mind, one after another, and I could see images along with words. There was an outpouring of love from within. A huge weight of self-judgment and self-criticism was lifted from me. That fear-based “I have to be perfect and fixed already” went away – dissolved into thin air. I realized that right at that moment, I was/am already perfect. I was/am already who I am meant to be, in that moment. And the present moment is all that matters.

Since having that awakening yesterday, I have felt very serene and much of the paranoia and fear over certain issues has disappeared. I have found myself being more patient with myself and actually being nice to myself, as nice as I’ve been to everyone else. My goodness, what an obvious [but often difficult] concept! We deserve niceness and love too. There are so many of us that want to make everyone happy, want to nurture others, but then… we somehow think we ourselves don’t deserve it.

The peace and kindness carried over into this morning. I woke up early today, did 30 minutes on my bike and then some Hatha Yoga. I intuitively chose 11 poses to work on for the next week or so. The best thing about it is that as I was doing some of these poses that I can’t really ‘do’ fully yet, it hurt, but it felt so natural! I’m very flexible in some ways – for instance, I can do a full lotus (and have always been able to – the half lotus position is the way I sit most often and have ever since I was a child), but some of the really simple poses were a bit… difficult. And afterward I felt amazing, despite some lingering pain (not caused by the yoga).

So I have to wonder… why is it that we are so hard on ourselves? I sit in many 12-step meetings listening to people put themselves down over and over, and talk about their good days and joy as though it won’t last. Of course, part of the recovery process is a deflation of ego… but why does that have to mean that we cannot be kind to ourselves or believe that we are actually recovering? That we are actually OK and wonderful just as we are? Being happy with who we are in the moment doesn’t mean we are done improving ourselves or our lives. We can still bring changes into our lives and upgrade our ways of thinking. It just gets easier and more fun when we become truly happy with where we are currently.

Anyway, this realization is nowhere near from being completed… I know I have more to learn on this! I’ve been keeping a private journal that I’m filling with all of my spiritual awakenings and experiences. There are so many things happening in my life these days that are amazing or awesome that it’s hard to write about them all publicly. I do share most of the experiences with spiritual friends, but am not ready to publicize them all. I have a feeling that will change one day.