What if you don't actually need fixing?
Dropping the self-improvement project and connecting to our underlying wholeness
As I write this week’s post, I’m sitting on the balcony of an Air BnB apartment in Gold Coast, Australia – an area that truly lives up to its name, with spectacular golden sands stretching towards infinity and dazzling rays of winter sunshine bouncing off the glass of high-rise buildings. It’s winter solstice here in the Southern Hemisphere, but with my sleeveless vest and sea-matted hair, you’d be forgiven for thinking it’s mid-summer. The locals tell me they only have 2 seasons here – summer and very hot summer.
I’ve always loved how visiting new landscapes can introduce us to different aspects of ourselves and shake up our perspectives on life. Expansive views especially seem to lend themselves towards expansive thinking, so this seems like an ideal spot to contemplate the underlying perfection of everything.
I’ve just completed a week of meditation study and practice with two of my favourite teachers, Fuyuko Toyota and Stephanie Lopez of the iRest Institute. I thoroughly recommend practicing with either, or both, if you ever get the chance. IRest (short for Integrative Restoration) is a contemporary incarnation of the ancient practice of yoga nidra – a practice of meeting our true nature and dissolving the layers that obscure this in day-to-day life.
One of the themes from this week was stepping outside of the urge to fix and change ourselves and others. Quite a challenge for someone who has essentially devoted her whole life and career to self-improvement in one form or another.
I started young. My teenage journals were filled with lists of things I needed to do or change or buy in order to become more like the cool kids in school – fashions to adopt, bands to listen to, make-up to wear, in a quest to become more interesting, more popular or more likely to attract the attention of boys at the school disco.
Through my 20s, this took on a different form as I acquired two degrees in psychology, a couple of therapists and a library of self-help literature. In my 30s I became something of spiritual seeker, adding qualifications in yoga, and later meditation teaching, to my ever-expanding toolbox. All of this driven ultimately by the underlying desire to polish my rough edges, become a better version of myself, reduce my suffering and search for an elusive inner peace (and to be able to offer this to others in turn). I’m guessing you might relate to this quest at least a little bit, since you’re here reading a page called ‘The Therapy Room’.
I don’t regret a single thing about the journey. This path and these practices have brought invaluable skills and resources into my life. But there’s just one small problem. The underlying message that we send ourselves when we’re on this quest towards self-improvement is that we are somehow fundamentally broken, inadequate or not good enough as we are. We’re continually chasing a carrot on an ever-moving stick towards some imagined future sense of a perfected self. It can be a subtle form of violence towards yourself.
Have you considered the possibility that you’re not actually broken and you don’t need fixing?
What if there’s nothing you need to know, achieve or obtain that could make you more whole than you already are?
This is what the teachings of yoga (and yoga nidra in particular) point towards. That there is an underlying essence, in you, in me, and in everyone and everything, that is already complete and whole and perfect.
The reason we don’t immediately recognise this in ourselves in daily life is because it has been temporarily obscured by layers of accumulated life experience, including wounds and hurts that have been stored as tension in the body, restriction in the breath, thoughts, stories and emotions. In yoga we take a journey through these layers, known as koshas. The practice of yoga nidra teaches us to work with them systematically, tuning in, shining the light of awareness onto them and then releasing them one by one. We often tend to pull away from these aspects of ourself, as it can be where we experience suffering. But the paradox is that as you move towards and engage with each of these layers fully, they start to dissolve and sometimes reveal themselves as illusions. What you’re left with underneath is the pure essence of your being, uncontaminated. We can catch glimpses of a state in which nothing is lacking, and there is nothing to fix or change or acquire to be more fully who you are. Through repeated practice we can begin to trust more and more that it is there. Always. In the background behind whatever your attention is fusing with and placing in centre stage. A little like how the sky is always there in the background behind the different weather systems that pass on through. The sky remains, perfect, untouched and undisturbed, no matter what may temporarily arise in the foreground.
Of course, it is possible to take this too far and get caught in the realm of ‘spiritual bypassing’ where people become attached to chasing the love and light, and end up denying or avoiding the very real struggles of emotions and relationships. But at the other end of the spectrum there is also a form of ‘psychological bypassing’ where we can become so fused with our flaws and dysfunction that we deny the reality of our underlying essential nature. I’ve tended to lean towards the latter end of the spectrum, always seeking the next thing to fix, learn or heal. This week I was challenged to shift that perspective, and I felt something soften. It can be a relief to let go of the self-improvement project for a moment and just simply be. And the paradox is that once we can accept ourselves exactly as we are, then we often begin to transform.
If this post resonates with you, please share it with friends or on social media, and I’d love to hear your comments below.
Totally agree. I have been on the personal development wheel for over 20 years and the thing I have been seeking still eludes me (ie: healing from IBS). I have arm fulls of qualifications. But have now stopped training in anything as I allow my true essence to trickle up into being. For too long I have held away the pain, trauma and other yucky bits of my life that I didn't want to integrate into myself. And I am learning to embrace the bits I have been trying to hide. ;-)
This resonates very deeply