There Is Nothing Wrong with You: Going Beyond Self-Hate

Aren’t we then quite foolish to maintain the tension? Because with this tense/no control situation, we have two problems: 1. tension/stress and 2. no control over life. In a no tension/no control situation, we would have only one problem: no control over life which can be experienced as frightening or freedom.

If you take the most frightening thing in the world and invite it in, put your arms around it, and sit still with it,

Pay attention. Self-hate is slippery. It will even say things to you like, “You shouldn’t believe the voices of self-hate. If you are still believing them, there really is something wrong with you!”

Anytime a voice is talking to you that is not talking with love and compassion, don’t believe it!

We are never going to “get” something— a philosophy, a formula, a fixed point of view— that will make us forever different.

Suffering cannot be healed through self-hate. Only through compassionate acceptance can suffering be healed. If we accept, if we open ourselves, life will transform us. If we resist, if we try to run away, pain and suffering are reinforced, and we deepen the conditioning that causes

GUIDE: Yes. Self-hate is terrified that you will make being kind to yourself a habit. It comes down to this for me: None of my heroes (and all my heroes are religious types) ever says, “The important thing in the universe is to be at one with fear and inadequacy.”

GUIDE: The fact that we see it as phony and ridiculous tells us that egocentricity is doing the judging. From a centered place, you would never see loving yourself as phony and ridiculous. Only ego would add those labels. Calling it phony is self-hate. It’s ego trying to get you to believe that loving yourself is an experience that you don’t know.

Fear is very dramatic. It tells very plausible stories. It makes strong feelings in your body. It is the primary support of egocentricity. It is egocentricity. Ego is fear, and ego is everything it does to manage, control, and avoid that fear, that experience of itself. (It says, “I’ll protect you. I’ll keep you safe.”) Ego spends enormous amounts

PAINFUL THINGS COME UP NOT TO RUIN OUR LIVES, NOT TO MAKE US MISERABLE, NOT TO SPOIL OUR GOOD TIME, THEY COME UP TO BE HEALED, TO BE EMBRACED IN COMPASSION.