Cultivating Compassion for Ourselves

Mothering gives us daily opportunities to practice being gentler with ourselves. After spending most of my life with perfectionistic ideals, and a lack of patience in response to my perceived failings, mindfulness has opened up a path to compassion. I have longed for a way to be more accepting of myself. I could never “figure it out” despite years of therapy and spiritual seeking. I have always been a thinker, thinking and analyzing my way through everything. I remember in graduate school being told I was too hard on myself. I’d get angry with myself for being so hard on myself. Ugh.

So here’s where my practice has led me now. When I practice disengaging from the mind and centering myself with the breath, I notice the incessant chatter of the mind. I hear what it’s saying and how it’s panicking or criticizing or expecting or assuming. It’s compelling, after a lifetime of overvaluing my thoughts--thinking and journaling and talking about them. Instead of going that route (“doing” mode) I turn my attention back to my breath. Again and again I return to the breath. I notice what’s going on in the mind, but I have begun to change my relationship to it. I am no longer sitting in the midst of it, I am sitting by it instead. I am not caught in it. I use my breath to stay next to it, instead of in it. I am more careful, as my practice continues and my life unfolds, about that urgent question, “But what should I do???”

The practice of mindfulness is exactly that: a practice. This means we never get it perfect, we continue to practice. It is not an ideal; it is not about striving to be “in the moment” or “non-judging” all the time. It’s about allowing where we are, who we are, right now. It is not about being “good,” or feeling or thinking (or not feeling or thinking) a certain way. Being in the moment is not always enjoyable. Sometimes it hurts, as when there is physical pain or loss. Being in the moment is allowing by staying open to all that is true, just this moment, as best we can.

Practicing mindful awareness enhances our ability to choose how to respond to mental events (thoughts). We can observe our self-critical thoughts after we’ve done something the mind judges we “shouldn’t” have done. We can observe our fear, our guilt without needing to make our experience of these feelings be any different. Though we will feel pain and loss in this life, we can cut through a lot of the suffering that is self-induced.

Wisdom comes out of compassionate and open awareness. I know this now. A lot of the time there is nothing “to do” right away. There is accepting and allowing “to do.” There is simply “being with” which is nothing like thinking and thinking, spinning hypotheticals and “what ifs” on auto pilot.

We can tell ourselves we “shouldn’t” feel or think a certain way, trying to change what is in our minds. Investigate this for yourself: changing the contents of the mind doesn’t give the same freedom as stepping back to change our relationship to the mind.

Our thoughts of “I can’t accept this!” are, sadly, useless because IT IS (any given situation) whether we give our permission or not. Releasing arbitrary rules about reality (e.g. “shouldn’ts” and “not okays”) makes room for more compassion because there is less judgment.