Hannah,

It is one thing to know the path, it is quite another to walk it. Many of your books and posters all say “you are great, you are wonderful” and you respond, “yes, but..” as though there is a part of you which is ugly. This is not the case. When we were kids, we knew the alphabet when we were born? Hardly! It was through repetition, setting the letters to song, drawing them over and over, sitting in a circle with other kids and making games out of it. Spiritual development is the same, living a life of peace is the same.

But, you might ask, how do the pieces fit together? How do we embrace the light and love the dark? Said differently, how do we cultivate the peace we wish to have when parts of our personality are painful?

This is far more simple than we want to believe. We give up grasping, making it about “us”. For example, when things are going well, and the mind is fluid, awake, present, such as sitting on a beach and listening to the waves… we think “how great it is to sit on this warm sunny day, pleasant sounds, beauty all around me.” We falsely assume that the day is what is bringing our happiness. This is not the case. We are seeing beauty, and so the mind is able to rest, open to the truth of what is there, and we become aware of the present. From that resting in the moment, happiness arises.

Then we go home and the boyfriend calls us ugly. That is painful, and our mind immediately bounces around in the head, restless. “Am I ugly, does he love me, what can I do, where can I go.” The mind does not easily rest when it is feeling pain. We think that the boyfriend caused our unhappiness, but it was our disturbed mind, pulled away from the present that removes the joy. Said differently, the boyfriend is like the ocean, sending waves on to the shore. If we sat at the beach and hoped the waves were different than they were, here would be no happiness there either. So when the boyfriend sends waves to us, wishing they were different closes down the joy.

We would like to reject this idea, thinking that “no, the boyfriend should not have said those things.” and for awhile that might even work. However, you can’t hide from your own mind. You can push away the people and objects that you consider painful, but you can’t push away the thoughts. No amount of posters on the wall, no amount of reading positive words will help.

What must happen for inner peace is an acceptance that you’re learning the alphabet. Yes there is anger, yes there is happiness, yes there is shame, yes there is the mask you show to others. Those are part of you, part of the waves, and totally acceptable and reasonable. First we learn A, then we learn B. First we find acceptance of who we really are, and then we find out how to drop the parts of ourselves that bring us pain. If we are scared of the pain, we can’t look clearly at the thorn. Said differently, if you can love all of who you are, ignorant Hannah and wise goddess Hannah, you can absorb and put to use all of the books and posters. Until then, they are only pictures, hopes that somewhere in the future you’ll love yourself… ways of trying to use your mask on yourself. Which you have noticed doesn’t work.

That being said, going from beach to ugly to beach to ugly is much like the cycle of the sun and moon. The sun is up and it is bright and cheery. Then the moon comes up and shadows deepen and the inner-hannah comes out. Said differently, the pain makes us alert, sculpts our intuition. As we look deeply at how the words “ugly” triggered our mind to bounce away from the present, we can begin to remove the attachment to being seen as “pretty”. Then, we are happy and peaceful when people call us pretty, and happy and peaceful when they call us ugly. Either way, they are just waves on the shore, have a lot to do with the ocean, with the people who say those words, but very little to do with us.

The same is true internally. The anger and mask (suppression) are just a wave, arising for a reason, and will recede when the reason dissolves. It has very little to do with you… not something inherent to Hannah, it is just you working out the ABCs of inner peace. Flaws, bah. I reject that notion. Who blames kids for not knowing the alphabet?

With warmth,
Matt