I dislike the term, “self-help.” The best help we can give ourselves is to recognize who we really are, underneath all the ideas we have about ourselves. Self-help material tends to reinforce the ideas we have about our identities, because they take the identities we create for ourselves and treat them as though they’re our real identities, as though they’re who we really are.
Unfortunately, this is a model that puts brokenness at its center. It works only as long as you continue to believe you’re broken in some way. The belief that we’re broken or missing some key characteristic everyone else seems to have is what often leads us on what can be a life-long spiritual quest for peace and well-being.
When we look outside of ourselves for the peace and well-being that led us on this spiritual quest, we never find it, because we’re looking in the wrong direction. What’s more, it’s as though we’re looking through a lens that distorts our view. I’m speaking about the lens of brokenness. This is a lens that can never give a true view of what we’re seeing.
The grace we experience in our lives is a direct reflection of the grace we’re able to show ourselves. This will sound strange, but it follows that if we’re unable to be graceful, or grace-filled, toward ourselves, we have no hope of experiencing the peace we yearn for.
In this context, grace is simply a willingness to be a little easier on ourselves, but when we attempt to take a hard look inward, it’s common to double down on being merciless with ourselves.
We can only see what we perceive as our own brokenness or deficiencies.
“Going inward” is misunderstood to mean examining the contents of our personal psychologies. If our thinking about our personal psychology is rooted in a sense of brokenness, that’s all we’ll see. That’s because what I’ve described as a lens of brokenness is the lens of our ego. The ego’s job is to prevent us from seeing who we really are. So, instead of glimpsing the radiant spiritual creatures we are, all we can see is what appears to us as brokenness and deficiency.
What going inward really means is looking beyond our personal psychologies. We’re not looking to see what’s wrong, we’re looking to see what’s there. Thinking won’t help with this, in fact, thinking is what’s getting in the way of a clear view.
There’s a world of difference between a sense of ourselves that is held in a thought we happen to be thinking, and a felt sense of ourselves. The way we can experience a sense of peace and well-being is to pay attention to this felt sense.
Here’s why: who you really are is too vast to be held in a thought.
This is why a sense of peace and well-being doesn’t come from thinking. It presents itself as a settled feeling in the body, a feeling of relief.
It’s a reminder that you can’t really think about yourself and be yourself at the same time, which is why the less you’re thinking about yourself, the more like yourself you seem. Thinking about yourself obscures your being. There’s an easy way to test this. Think of the times when you’re most relaxed, most calm, and at ease. I can guarantee that feeling won’t come to you when you’re thinking about yourself.
Next time you experience peace, you might notice that you have very little on your mind, least of all thoughts about yourself. In other words, you’re not racing at a million miles an hour. These times are valuable to you because they’re a clear demonstration of where peace comes from: it comes from you, not to you. These are times when you can start to recognize that peace and well-being can’t be taken away from you by circumstances because you are made of peace and well-being. Peace and well-being can only be taken away from you when your thinking is focused in a direction that makes you believe you’re broken. You’re not. Your essence, who you really are, is unbreakable.
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