Original Goodness


One of the great attractions of Buddhist thought is that it functions very much like a spiritually-effective form of psychology, helping us to heal our wounds through the practice of mindfulness to return to what the spiritual writer Jack Kornfield calls ‘our original goodness’. Although Buddhism arose in the East, its approach is incredibly helpful for the uniquely Western condition of self-loathing, the malaise that lies at the heart of a lack of self-confidence.

The Buddhist writer, Pema Chodron, has spoken of being with the Dalai Lama at a conference with Western Buddhist teachers, where a meditation teacher brought up the subject of self-hatred. As Chodron recalls, “The Dalai Lama didn’t know what she was talking about. So he went around the room and asked the other Western teachers about it, and every one of them agreed with her. Self-hatred was something the Dalai Lama didn’t understand. The first noble truth of the Buddha is that people experience dukka, a feeling of dissatisfaction or suffering, a feeling that something is wrong. We feel this dissatisfaction because we’re not in tune with our true nature, our goodness. And we aren’t going to be fundamentally spiritually content until we get in tune … only in the West is this dissatisfaction articulated as ‘something is wrong with me’. It seems that thinking of oneself as flawed is more a Western phenomenon than a universal one.”

There’s comfort to be found in those words. If self-loathing is uniquely Western, it’s not part of who we are at heart, but simply a form of cultural conditioning. That makes it about as valid psychologically as a cultural preference for tea over coffee – just because it’s habitual doesn’t make it important. Part of the release from self-destructive habits comes in the form of recognition and detachment, by realising that they actually mean nothing about you. You may have a long-held story about your unworthiness or your unlikeability that you keep running in your head, but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily true. Knowing that self-loathing isn’t a universal disease is a helpful step in uprooting the belief that it’s normal to treat yourself that way.

Another step in releasing those kinds of demons is to face them. We spend our whole lives running away from what we fear and trying to do the opposite to convince ourselves that we’re OK. If we’re afraid that we’re bad, we try so hard to be good that we overdose on people-pleasing and have trouble setting boundaries. If we’re convinced that we’re weak, we’ll knock ourselves out trying to seem strong, putting up defences in all our relationships, afraid of the vulnerability of allowing others to see us as we are, lest they see our fragility. Those coping mechanisms just make the problem worse, however, as they reinforce the need for a false persona because we believe our true nature to be flawed. To shake free of these chains, we must face what we most fear – our own pain and self-loathing.

Describing her own experience of feeling deeply into an ancient pain, Chodron says “There was a recognition that I needed to relax into the pain. Until then I had avoided going to this place where I felt bad or unacceptable or unloved. No language could express how awful that place felt. But I just started breathing into it … but as I relaxed into that feeling, it passed through me. And I didn’t die. It passed right through. That was a big moment for me. I realised that resistance to the idea that I was unlovable only made the pain worse … I realised what a source of happiness turning towards pain actually is. Our avoidance of pain keeps us locked in a cycle of suffering.”

We’ll be held in the grip of a nightmare unless we remember that we’re dreaming. Any story you tell yourself about not being good enough is just a story, and an old one at that. When you can really face your fears about how bad you think you might be, on the other side lies the truth of your original goodness.

There’s plenty of evidence for the beauty of our original nature. The Tibetan Book Of The Dead instructs us to remember “O nobly born, O you of glorious origins, remember your radiant true nature, the essence of mind. Trust it. Return to it. It is home.” Recalling a mystical experience where he was shown the truth about humanity, the Trappist monk Thomas Merton wrote “Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret beauty of their hearts, the depths of their hearts where neither sin nor desire nor self-knowledge can reach, the core of their reality, the person that each one is in the eyes of the Divine. If only they could all see themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time. There would be no more war, no more hatred, no more cruelty, no more greed … I suppose the big problem would be that we would fall down and worship each other.”

This week, live as if you remember your original goodness. Know that wherever you’re habitually attacking yourself, you’re telling yourself a lie. When you have some quiet time, step into the lie more fully. Really feel all the dreadful things you believe about yourself deep down. Feel them as deeply as you can until you pop right through to the other side. Release yourself from the bondage of an old, outdated story that never was true in the first place. When you’re no longer afraid of what you might find, you can embrace exactly who you are with love and compassion, with no need for defences. When you have nothing to defend, the paradox is that you’ll become incredibly strong, with an unshakeable depth of self-acceptance and confidence. How else could you be if you knew the fabulous truth about yourself?

For the Coach Fabulous archives, go to www.coachfabulous.blogspot.com and for the I Am Fabulous archives, go to www.fabcentral.blogspot.com. You can email me at coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material ©2008 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 16 Jun 08)

Feet Of Clay

I’m not entirely sure what set me off on this train of thought, but I’m noticing a lot about hero worship cropping up in various ways. It probably started a couple of weeks ago when I was mucking about with a MySpace page because a friend had sent me a link to his new blog at www.myspace.com/chriscrudelli – well worth a read if you want the lowdown from a true martial artist – and one of the required formats on the page was to list your heroes. That got me thinking that I don’t actually have any. I have inspirations, for sure – people whose work, spirituality or integrity is something I value and admire, but I just don’t go in for the whole hero worship thing.

Having met many of the major figures in the self-help and spiritual arena over the years, I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that there’s no-one who’s got it totally together, whose life works seamlessly and who behaves impeccably every single day. That’s an illusion – and a very real danger spot for those who begin to believe their own publicity – as well as being pretty much a human impossibility. We all have our vulnerabilities, our blind spots and our bad hair days and it’s a cruel joke we play on ourselves when we think everyone else has got it together but us. If you’re alive, you’ll have issues. That’s just the way the story goes. Life is about letting go of the stuff that gets in the way of knowing that there’s a divine perfection within you. In that process you’ll need to have compassion for yourself as you work through your human frailties – it’s about aligning yourself with an inner truth, rather than trying to create an outer facade through rigid control and perfection obsession.

The Brand Beckham phenomenon is a perfect case in point. They are both subject to an almost unimaginable amount of hero worship, not only for their careers, but also for being an allegedly perfect couple (until the wheels fell off in the shape of Rebecca Loos et al). Yet whenever I see them appear in the media I just feel exhausted. Victoria Beckham is the epitome of someone who is dedicated to the ‘trying too hard’ school of style and she never, ever looks happy. Control and rigidity are written all over her face and the staged ‘togetherness’ pics – particularly when their marriage crisis was in full swing – simply smack of desperation to uphold an image rather than a genuine attempt at togetherness. We seem to have reached a societal nadir where we value image above all else. We hero-worship people who are little more than just famous for being famous and a whole generation of children is growing up with the idea that fame is a goal in itself, rather than a by-product of success in your chosen field.

Couple this with the explosion of glossy magazines showing airbrushed celebs with cosmetic enhancements creating a kind of dubious beauty that doesn’t exist in nature, and we’ve created a seriously poor breeding ground for self-esteem, not only for ourselves, but for children who are too young to know any better. At least we’ve accumulated a little life wisdom that allows us the perspective to realise that no-one’s perfect, but what chance do they have when calculated imagery is all they see? Stars have always existed, but they were escapist figures, remote from daily life, and there wasn’t the modern pressure to meet those impossible standards in real life.
I wonder if we’re all yearning for a time when perfection wasn’t the byword and people were more raw, honest and interesting. The huge popularity of the BBC TV show Life On Mars with its unrestrained, testosterone-fuelled 70s detective Gene Hunt, played with gloriously unashamed machismo by Philip Glenister, makes me think so. Of course Gene Hunt’s a complete git and every feminist’s nightmare, but it’s wonderful to see a real character come to life, full of flaws and utterly beguiling in his humanness.

The 70s were fertile ground for recognising that heroes had feet of clay, with the most infamous tale coming from John Lennon’s lengthy sabbatical from his marriage to Yoko Ono, the ‘lost weekend’ period with girlfriend May Pang. One night, drunk on Brandy Alexanders, Lennon was at a gig at the Troubador in LA when – with the kind of twisted genius that alcohol is known for – he came across a clean sanitary towel on the floor, which he decided to wear as a headband. When the waitress refused to serve him, he pulled the “Don’t you know who I am?” card, to which the waitress rather dryly replied, “Yeah, you’re some asshole with a Kotex on his head”. She later went on to muse about what a bummer it is to find out that your hero is an asshole. That’s the downside of hero worship – it’s ultimately going to come a cropper because sooner or later we all do something stupid, no matter how famous we become.

One of my favourite inspirational authors has pushed the boundaries of acceptable behaviour recently. I’ve followed the work of Caroline Myss from the early days before Anatomy OfThe Spirit became a runaway success and was particularly looking forward to her latest work, Entering The Castle, based on the writings of St Teresa of Avila’s extraordinary treatise on the soul, El Castillo Interior. I’m still working my way through the book, but I found her meditation CDs based on that work almost impossible to endure, due to the berating, judgmental and condescending rants that accompany them. Sadly, for me it’s kind of up there with the John Lennon incident – there’s a point at which it might be prudent to realise that perhaps you’re taking yourself a little too seriously and that being contemptuous of your core audience could turn out to be a risky strategy.

This week, take a look at those you might be hero-worshipping, even on the mildest of scales. If you’re comparing yourself to them, by assuming they’ve got it all together and you haven’t, take a closer look. Things are not always as they seem and none of us is perfect in every way. That doesn’t mean you need to look at them negatively or judge them, but that you can see that they have their own struggles and you can love them for that as much as their achievements. A lot of greatness comes from people who are driven to achieve extraordinary things because they’ve had to overcome real difficulties. Know that having compassion for others helps you to have compassion for yourself. Having a blind spot isn’t the problem – not being willing to face it and do something about it is. We may not always get things right and we should just get comfortable with the idea that we’re not meant to be perfect all the time, but it’s the willingness to move forward that really counts. Be kind to yourself this week, learn to love your own frailties and have compassion for those who can’t relax long enough to let themselves just enjoy their own lives, however imperfect they may be.

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 16 Apr 07)

The Pursuit Of Happiness

This one’s been percolating in my mind for a few weeks. It was only just a passing comment by someone at a party, but for some reason the way it was phrased rang alarm bells like Big Ben on acid. Along with the general chit-chat that goes with the canapés, we were discussing the meaning of life, the universe and everything when my cocktail companion said “I’m just trying to find what will make me happy”.

That probably doesn’t sound like a lot to you, but what rang clear and loud to me was just how fundamentally that concept is flawed. So its outcome, like the fruit of the poisoned tree, must be doomed to failure. If you’re on a quest to find your happiness, the underlying assumption is that the answer exists outside yourself, as something to be found in the world. Equally, if you need to search for your happiness, then something must be wrong with you and, again, the cure is expected to come from an external source. Both of these assumptions force you into a position of helplessness, of being at the mercy of unhappiness until the remedy is found. They’re ultimately very self-destructive, because they imply that who we are is not enough, that we’re damaged goods and that only something that arises from outside of us can save us.

This is a classically Western psychological malaise that is at odds with Eastern spiritual perspectives. In the Dzogchen Tibetan lineage, as described by Lama Surya Das, we are already whole and complete and life is our journey back to that awareness. He says “Dzogchen means the innate great completeness. It points to our own innate wholeness, our own true Buddha nature, our untrammelled spirit, perfect and pure from the beginningless beginning. It is what we call the Buddha within – not an oriental Buddha, not an historical Buddha, not one of stone, not male or female, but the Buddha nature within each of us, true and wise, loving and compassionate. We want to come back to that, awaken it, cultivate it – that is what the path is about. We don't get it from outside, from someone or somewhere else, or even from our own ideas of what we are. The Havajra Tantra says we are all Buddhas by nature but must, through our own spiritual work, awaken to ourselves.”

In Dzogchen, as indeed in the Christian-inspired teachings of A Course In Miracles, who we are at essence is loving, peaceful and joyful. What stands in the way of knowing the truth about ourselves are the illusions we carry about who we are and how we see the world. Our lack of self-worth and the belief that a change of circumstances will make us happy drive us into the outer world to seek a fulfilment that paradoxically cannot ultimately be found there, because it is already within. That’s not to say that you won’t have fun with the shoes and the cars and the holidays along the way, just that these are incidental to true happiness, not the actual cause of it.

As you’re probably aware by now, I’m hardly an advocate of the ascetic lifestyle. In fact, if shopping were an Olympic sport, let’s just say I’d have a fine little collection of gold medallions. What I have come to know, though, is that collecting stuff is entertainment, not the main event. It’s like indulging in a serious sugar hit – you know you’re going to get a temporary lift in energy, but after that it’ll leave you feeling even more like you’re running on empty than before. What’s required for sustained energy is something a little more substantial and that applies equally to the art of happiness.

When you discover that wellspring of joy, peace and fulfilment within, then the outer stuff is still fun, but it’s not what drives your life. The focus then becomes on how to live in alignment with who you really are and life can become an experiment in creativity, of finding ways in which to express yourself, rather than a treasure hunt for an external form of happiness. Everything can become a form of joyful exploration, instead of desperate pursuit.

As a Zen Buddhist text puts it, “The person who is a master in the art of living makes little distinction between their work and their play, their labour and their leisure, their mind and their body, their education and their recreation, their love and their religion. They hardly know which is which. They simply pursue their vision of excellence and grace in whatever they do, leaving others to decide whether they are working or playing. To them, they are always doing both.”
This joyful vision of a life lived in integrity with the true self has much in common with the views expressed by two figures who were totally polarised in their religious beliefs – or lack of them: the deeply spiritual Mahatma Gandhi and the existentialist writer, Albert Camus. For Gandhi, “Happiness is when what you think, what you say, and what you do are in harmony.” Camus wrote “But what is happiness except the simple harmony between a man and the life he leads”. Clearly no religious belief is required, but a sense of integrity between the self and the way that life is lived is essential.

This week, spend a little quiet time so that you can pay attention to what arises from within you that makes you happy. It can be as simple as just being peaceful for a few minutes or stopping long enough to let a creative idea pop up in your normally over-occupied mind. Take a look at how well your life reflects your values. We tend to think that our purpose in life is a job, but it's actually the totatlity of how we live. Where are you in alignment with what you value and where are you way out of whack? What are you doing that you feel uncomfortable about? If something feels unfulfilling to you, what's missing? If it feels right, what about it is in alignment with who you are? What qualities are the people around you expressing and how well does that sit with you?

The key to becoming aware of your own essence of completeness and joy is to know yourself and to live in alignment with what is true for you. Happiness is an inside job and that’s always going to be impossible to achieve without some good old-fashioned introspection. I’ll give the philosopher, Aristotle, the final word on this one. As he put it, “To live happily is an inward power of the soul”. If you want real happiness, it’s time to drop the outer search and start looking on the inside. Know your happiness – don’t try to find it!

Click through to the Coach Fabulous advice column by using the link in the Favourite Sites section on the right or by going to http://coachfabulous.blogspot.com. For alert emails on new postings, email subscribe@iamfabulous.co.uk. To contact me, email coachfabulous@iamfabulous.co.uk. All material © 2007 Alison Porter. No article may be reproduced in full or in part without the express permission of the author. (Originally posted 19 Feb 07)