Accepting Ourselves Warts and All Brings Out the Best in Us
I just finished co-facilitating a Less Stress, More Living Workshop. It was so moving to witness the participants experience more freedom of mind and have a deeper connection with their true nature. One of the themes that emerged during the workshop was a concern that if we hold the perspective that everyone is doing the best that they can based on their understanding in the moment that this would condone bad behavior and ultimately encourage it.
This reminded me of a story one of my mentors, Linda Pransky, shared at a workshop. She explained there was a time when she had problems with mice at her home. She decided to get a rescue cat to solve the problem. She told the cat that he was a working cat, and if he did not do his job he would be taken back to the shelter.
The cat, however, did not seem to understand his part of the deal. When she brought him home, not only did he not want to catch any mice, he didn’t even want to go outside for the longest time. Linda, rather than sending the cat back for not performing his duties, fell in love with him and cared for him. It no longer mattered to her that he wasn’t a mouser. She had compassion for his timidity and loved him exactly as he was. Overtime, the cat became more comfortable. He started to go outside, and then one day, much to Linda’s surprise he came home with a mouse.
Linda saw that when she got her cat he was scared. It took time, care, and love to help him acclimatize and settle down. When he stopped being scared, his natural cat nature came to the surface. He became himself and part of his cat nature was to catch mice. When he wasn’t catching mice, he was doing the best he could do at that point in time. When allowed to feel safe and secure, he eventually was able to express his natural self.
When we humans are scared, we also have the tendency to not act in accordance with our true nature. Our behavior can range from small indiscretions such as shutting down or losing our temper to huge acts of violence. Whether large or inconsequential they are all demonstrations of our suffering and not an expression of the truth of who we are.
I have experience working with inmates who have committed violent crimes. I was always struck by how they saw things in the moment they committed their crime. From their point of view, I understood why it made sense to them. I am not condoning what they did, but I can see how there but for the grace of God go I. Given the same circumstances, with the same understanding, I would choose the same behavior.
The premise of the workshop was based on the teachings of Sydney Banks. It explored how it is possible to experience less stress by understanding that the source of stress always comes from believing our insecure thoughts. Stress does not come from outside circumstances. It might look like my stress is coming from how much work I have planned or how full my schedule is, but the truth of the my experience is that I feel my thoughts. If I am believing my fearful, stressed out thoughts it doesn’t matter how much or how little I have to do. I will feel stressed.
In the workshop, we looked at how we don’t have to identify with our insecure thoughts and bring them to life. We can, instead, wake up to the illusory nature of thought. When we see our insecure thoughts as thoughts and not reality, they no longer have any power over us. We, then, naturally return to our innate state of peace, love, and equanimity.
When we have compassion and understanding for ourselves and others, when we are in an insecure state, rather than this promoting bad behavior, it helps us to stabilize and reconnect with the formless essence of our true nature. I experience this essence as loving. The by-product of this is that we no longer need to engage in acts of brutality large or small. Violence does not make sense when we are connected with the loving in our hearts.
Rather than promulgating chaos and bad behavior, accepting ourselves “warts and all” supports us with breaking free from negative, limiting beliefs. Seeing these thoughts as erroneous allows us to let them go more easily.
When we stop fueling our negative thoughts, we naturally stabilize and experience peace of mind. From this state of mind, we express behaviors that are aligned with our true loving nature and the infinite creative potential of who we are.
Christine Heath & Judy Sedgeman – Spirituality and Resilience
When you no longer give authority to the fear-based thoughts in your consciousness, all you are left with is happiness. Through the teachings of Sydney Banks, you can see how your psychological functioning works, which makes you less compelled to follow those thoughts that do not serve you. Becoming more aware of the wholeness and integration of both your human and spiritual natures helps to ground you in the unchanging essence of who you are, and ride out the ups and downs of your emotional experience more gracefully. Accepting the normalcy of your humanness will naturally reduce your anxiety and fear and enhance your joy and happiness in each moment. By placing less pressure on yourself to feel a certain way or be hung up on self-improvement, you may find that low moods do not derail or debilitate you; instead, you will become much more attuned to your innate wellbeing and peace of mind and experience more happiness as a result.
Greater psychological freedom is the gift that keeps on giving. How grateful would you feel if you no longer had to listen to your negative, self-punishing and painful inner narrative, day in and day out? Understanding the role of thought and recognizing how it creates your feelings of insecurity and self-doubt is truly liberating! You will be better able to hear and heed your inner wisdom and become less driven by the noisy thoughts of fear and constriction. As an ongoing practice, this allows you to more fully experience your resilience and reach a greater sense of clarity about how you want to move forward in your life. As a result, you can live in a way that feels authentic and true in every area, including your career, family, home, creative expression, play, relationships and overall well-being.
Your ability to enjoy life comes from being present in the moment rather than caught up in habitual, negative thoughts that take you out of the Now. Sydney Banks’ wisdom supports you in becoming aware of how you get seduced by your limited personal thinking and thus, create a painful reality of misunderstanding, fear and restriction. When you recognize how and why this happens, you can step free of the pattern. This understanding assists you to dismiss unhelpful thoughts and not take them seriously. Unlike traditional self-help or therapy, experiencing more psychological freedom and enjoyment does not rely on techniques. There are no magic bullets on the path of well-being. All you need to do is follow an internal compass that points to the truth of who you really are—beyond transient thoughts to your unchanging, formless essence.
In our culture, success is often associated with hard work and narrowly defined as material gain. However, authentic success, as shared by Sydney Banks, includes such intangibles as happiness, well-being, love, joy, compassion, and peace of mind that are innate in each one of us, along with outward goals and achievements. It honors the whole person in all walks of life, whether you are a professional, leader, executive, solopreneur, employee, mother, teacher or student. From this knowing and experience, you can access the infinite wellspring of love that is your essence, then share your gifts with the world from a place of fulfillment and meaning, through a profound understanding of the interaction between your psychological and spiritual natures. While conventional success can deplete you, authentic success only fills you up.
Are you self-critical, hard on yourself, and constantly trying to “fix” whatever you think is wrong with you? Perhaps you have tried all kinds of different personal growth techniques and spiritual practices in the hope of solving all your problems. This cycle can be exhausting and never-ending, because there will always be something to improve about yourself, from that mindset. Sydney Banks’ teachings can help you to see how your humanness is normal and not something that needs fixing: as a spiritual person, you don’t need to change or eradicate your humanness! Seeing yourself as normal allows you to love and accept yourself exactly as you are—warts and all. Adopting this perspective naturally brings out the best in you and helps to find peace with your personality. Self-love and self-acceptance is your natural state, and any disconnection from your true nature is only temporary. What a relief!
One of the first areas people often experience profound transformation from the teachings of Sydney Banks is in their relationships, both personal and professional. While it often seems like another person’s irritation, anger, indifference, insensitivity, rudeness, etc., directly affects your experience, in reality your disturbance is a product of your own individual thinking. By making someone else responsible for how you feel, that person automatically becomes the cause of your suffering. Once you understand that you always have a place of well-being inside, independent of another’s behavior, it is easier to maintain equanimity through their changing moods and behaviors. Romantically, you may experience deeper love and intimacy with your partner, but the teachings benefit all relationships. This awareness supports more authentic connection and expression, while facilitating greater understanding, improved communication, reduced reactivity, more acceptance of self and others, and improved ability to work out differences and find common ground. Best of all, just one person shifting in a relationship is enough to transform it.
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