Forget about ‘transcending’ the body.
Love it instead!
Let go of the idea of ‘letting go’.
Instead, let love go deep into the tender places, the parts that ache.
Breathe into your sadness. Let your fear move deep within.
Bow to your uncertainty.
There is an untouchable place in you that fearlessly allows itself to be touched.
Here, even your unworthiness has worth!
And that old feeling that you are unloveable? It is loveable here!
There is so much room in you, friend.
So much room.
There is nothing wrong with you,
including the idea
that there is something wrong with you.
So stop trying to love yourself;
simply be the Self that loves.

by Jeff Foster

 

One of the things I love about the poems by teacher and author Jeff Foster (this one amongst many gems in his book You Were Never Broken), is the radical acceptance that embraces all the unacceptable things within it. The feeling of my unloveableness being lovable, and there being nothing wrong with having the feeling that there’s something wrong with me.

It allows this stepping back into the wider space around the feelings, shifting to a different layer or perspective, and there’s much more of a  generous welcome there to whatever guest is currently visiting the guesthouse of my being. The final sentence really sums it up for me: stop trying to love yourself; simply be the Self that loves… here goes!

PS if you’d like to explore this practice of radical acceptance and self compassion, you will find elements of it in most of our trainings. Explicit self compassion is part of our Level 1 before becoming completely central in Level 2, and continues to weave into Levels 3 and 4. It’s a core ingredient in our approach to mindfulness, and in my experience, it makes all the difference!

Photo by Rachel Shillcock on Unsplash