Dear Ones –

We write about what comes to our attention, and today we are noticing a fair number of you are feeling bad about yourselves. There are the usual suspects – too fat, too old, too broke, not happy with work you have done, avoidance of work you need to do, the feeling of letting others down, all the while letting yourself down by not meeting your goals or aspirations or exceeding your unreasonable expectations.

A word about goals and expectations: Please stop moving the bar. Please let yourself accomplish one thing each day, even if it is only getting out of bed, or even just that you didn’t kill yourself or someone else that day, and appreciate your accomplishment. The only way to appreciate yourself and your life is to practice appreciating yourself and your life. Starting now, in this moment, right here. One small thing. “I am still breathing.” That is good. Lots of people from history, no matter what else they have done, cannot say that now.

So, feeling bad about yourself is a lack of appreciation, which means it is all in the perspective, which means you can shift it whenever you like. And if you say, “Yes, but…” then we know you are not really ready to shift. So, wallow on, dear, wallow on. Nothing bad you can say about yourself is true. Neither is anything good. Everything is illusion, the good, bad and ugly (especially the ugly) and so you can all just let it drop right now. We know some people say Let It Go, but we say Let It Drop, because that way you know it has somewhere to go, and also that gravity is on your side.

When you name to yourself the things that are wrong, in our view you are simply trying to anchor. The underlying truth or reality (insofar as the third dimension can claim the title Reality, which is debatable in other dimensions) is that you feel unanchored, frightened and out of control. If you pretend you are bad and wrong, and especially if you name those ways in which this is ABSOLUTELY TRUE, and can pin the the blame on yourself indefinitely (also on circumstance, bad timing, your parents or your boss), then, in a funny and possibly ironic manner you feel safe. Not safe and free (free can feel quite scary) but safe as in wrapped in familiar cocoon of regret and self-loathing and comparison and making it all your fault. If you are bad and wrong, it stands to reason that there must be a way to be good and right, and if it is your fault, then there must be a way to undo it.

Hm.

In other words, self-blame makes you feel powerful when you feel helplessness creeping in.

However.

Blaming yourself in this way unfortunately misses the point that you are trying your best to just get through the day, and when things don’t go quite as planned and you slip in your good intentions and make something worse that you meant to make better, well, to put a fine point on it: Blame doesn’t help. It freezes you up so you can’t go farther, it makes it too hard to relax and unwind things, it sucks all the air and the energy from your bones and leaves you despairing, or at the very least eating junk food in front of the TV (or your favorite equivalent mild-mannered self-hatred activity, disguised as trying to feel better).

So. Maybe it’s better, in the long run and over all, to allow yourself to feel helpless and to feel the truth of the matter, that you have good times and bad, and are not always in charge of how you feel or how things go or even whether or not you can let it drop. But please just relax, as best you can, go outside for a few minutes or a couple of hours, look around or breathe the air or observe the feeling on your skin, and remember that whatever feels like shit today is not what felt like shit on this day ten years ago, nor will it be what you feel like six years hence. There are feelings that repeat themselves, to be sure, but they all do come and go. The good, bad, ugly and even appreciation.

What do you wish to attend to? What do you want to believe? What is just looking for a way to feel secure when uncertainty rears its head? Take it with a grain of salt, or sugar, a drop of vinegar, a splash of lime. Don’t swallow it whole and don’t think for a moment that the bad things you say to yourself when you are feeling down are in any way a marker of truth. Please note to yourself, “This is just how I get sometimes” and keep going. OK? OK. You are love.

xoxox

BlueStar and Counsel of Light