Tb,

I’m sorry for your downward cycles, and can understand how difficult the mind can be sometimes. When we come upon negative seeming criticism, we often make one of two mistakes. First, we might feel unreasonably bad that we made a mistake, feel guilt, shame, fear and all that, which clouds our ability to learn from it. Said differently, sometimes we don’t process “oops, darn it” very well. The other mistake we make is when we falsely question our own truth, such as feeling bad for a mistake we didn’t make, but someone else tells us we did. Said differently, sometimes we don’t process other people’s delusions, accusations, judgment (and so forth) very well. Their oops, our oops, whatever, learn, move on. A few things came to heart as I read your words.

Consider that we are bound to make tons of mistakes as we learn to find balance, learn to become more skillful with ourselves and the outside world. We stub our toe, ouch, and are left with some painful emotions. As those come up, consider that its like a little wound on your foot… smarting, confusing, vibrant. To seek balance, right now you seem to try to stub your other toe. What a silly thing to do!

Instead, we can learn to breathe through our emotions, see their empty quality, and let them go. Said differently, you’re just having a bad reaction to failure, there is no purpose or drive behind those emotions aside from the habit you’re in. Ouch, blame, self beating, self beating, another ouch, etc.

Consider a different approach. When we stub our toe, we can reach out and soothe it. We don’t blame our foot, the couch we kicked, the universe. Just reach out, soothe it, check for damage, move on. Emotionally its the same. “Mistake!” comes up, real or accused, and the pain comes up. Take a minute, do some breathing, and let the extra bits go. Mistake again, OK, what next. Then, if you can see what went wrong, try to make it right if you can. If you don’t see an error, consider coming back with curiosity. “OK, I’m trying to learn, but don’t see an error… what do you see?” If we can remain open to the feedback, it can quickly become obvious to us whats going on. Either we see the error, learn something new (hurray) or we see their error, and learn something new (hurray). We don’t even have to try to make them see it, we can just let it go and move on.

This helps us grow our authentic humility, as we learn that we’re learning. Said differently, consider that we’re all people learning how to be people, how to become skillful, how to find balance, and so forth. When we feel bad for our mistakes, let it drag us under, it can quickly appear hopeless. No matter how much we try to be perfect, there is always another test around the corner that we fear we’ll fail, or do fail.

The good news is it doesn’t take perfection, rather it just takes noble effort… which the painfulness is there to motivate. Said differently, suffering creates the ickyness that gets us to jump out of imbalanced patterns. So we naturally learn over time, the painfulness diminishes as we learn to be humble. “What is there to learn here? OK, I’ll try to figure it out.” Why bother with guilt? We’re already giving it our best!

Finally, consider that sometimes our past abuses give us a pair of shades that cover our eyes. Our inner light becomes dim from our wounds, and the joy around us fades, looks icky, looks hopeless. Comparisons, lost opportunities, fear, mess, etc. Its up to us to take off those glasses. We can do this through self nurturing, especially spending time wishing ourselves and others happiness. Buddha taught that metta (loving friendship) helps the mind become smooth and concentrated, peaceful. It doesn’t try to get in the way as much, doesn’t put the sunglasses on, and we can simply see the beauty around and within us. This opens up the space very directly around all those “mistakes” or “comparisons” and what not. Consider “Sharon Salzburg guided metta meditation” on YouTube, if interested. And I hope you’re interested, because it will make it all a lot easier. 🙂

Namaste, dear friend, may your cycles unfurl into lessons, and the lessons into peace.

With warmth,
Matt