Self-Punishment

I didn’t intend to write this today. If you read AWIP regularly you know I blog on Thursdays and today is Monday but here I am writing anyway. I’m writing because some things are coming up and I think it might be fruitful to share them.

On Saturday I hosted an EFT workshop through the meetup group I started as a real-life extension of this blog. (P.S. Thanks to everyone who attended!) Anyway, one of the attendees became really upset because I neglected to tell the group the event took place at a yoga studio and thus people would be sitting on the floor. It ended up being fine because not only does the studio have bolsters, yoga mats, blankets, and pillows, but there is also a bench and a few office chairs. So the attendee didn’t have to sit on the floor, it all worked out, but I am still feeling upset about it two days later.

What I’m doing is I’m punishing myself. I’m whipping myself for not telling people about the space even though I had the thought to do so. I’m beating myself up because, “I should have known better! Why didn’t I tell them! I’m a horrible person!” but really the event is a stand in for all the other mistakes I’ve made in my life. The incident is a stand in for when I cut in line seven years ago to hear the Dalai Lama speak at the National Cathedral. It’s a stand in for when my sister and I wrote letters to a pair of brothers when I was 12 (me asking to be friends, her to profess her crush) and the mother came up to me saying how inappropriate it was. The incident is a stand in for that one time in 5th grade when I changed the answers to my test as we went over it in class so I could make an A. The list goes on.

For me, whenever I make a mistake I always feel so bad about it – I blow it way out of proportion and then I try to rationalize it away by saying, “Well I didn’t know any better.” Or, “I did the best I could at the time.” Or, “We all make mistakes, I’m only human.” What I learned from the workshop this weekend is it’s important to acknowledge the mistake or bad feeling or whatever, so I can move past it.

Why am I writing this blogpost? I guess because the other thing I learned from the EFT workshop is to say to myself, “Even though I did/did not __________, I deeply and completely love and approve of and accept myself.” Somewhere in my life I picked up the message mistakes equals bad and how can you love a bad person?!?

As I write this I want to weep because it’s true – I really have been thinking the only way I deserve love is if I’m perfect. The past few months have produced cracks in that thinking but it’s there nonetheless, otherwise I wouldn’t still be upset I forgot to tell people they would be sitting on the floor. I also know this whole incident is an opportunity to expose this, to shine the light of day on something I’ve wanted to avoid. Because I am still deserving of self-love, no matter what I do, no matter what I say, no matter what I think. This isn’t license for me to run around harming people – I take a daily oath not to do so – but it is a license to allow myself to be human, to make mistakes and say, “I love you anyway.”

I dream of a world where we can all love ourselves unconditionally no matter what. Where we allow ourselves to make mistakes, to grow, to become masters. A world where we dust off all things that do not serve us so the diamond within may shine. A world where we can acknowledge our faults and not expect ourselves to be perfect. A world where we look in the mirror and say, “I love you no matter what.”

Another world is not only possible, it’s probable.