“I’m perfect as I am…and there’s plenty of room for improvement”: An Exercise in Self-Compassion

Suzuki Roshi, the father of American Zen once said — “Everything is perfect…and there’s plenty of room for improvement”!

His tidbit of wisdom very clearly lays out a recipe for growth and evolution in our lives.

But quite often in our Western culture, the piece that gets in the way is the “everything is perfect” part. The open, accepting, self-compassionate piece.

Why is it so hard for us to have self-compassion?

It can be very challenging to give ourselves space and compassion, especially around the areas we’ve been struggling with for a long, long time.

I would posit that our self-critical voices are simply the shadow side of the gift of self-awareness.

And a quick look into awareness itself and its basic attributes can give us insight into how to flex the muscles of self-compassion.

We are gifted with this incredible treasure of self-awareness.

Self-awareness allows us to have insight, wisdom, perspective, creative abilities — to name a few. But that self-same ability likewise has a shadow side when that lens is pointed back at ourselves without incorporating other aspects of our consciousness. That lens can become a deeply cutting and discerning lens that from the other end of it can become negative and self-critical.

When I was studying awareness and consciousness more closely through meditation, I learned that there are two aspects of our awake nature:

• There’s the openness of awareness that is soft, welcoming and accepting.

• Then there’s the light of awareness that shines, reveals, illuminates and gives us insight.

So what we’re seeing when we’re experiencing a lack of self-compassion is the light of awareness without the space of awareness. The light is illuminating the asleep places in ourselves but we don’t have the space to accept those places. We have the very focused and direct energy of the father without the open, warm, accepting energy of the mother. Having BOTH the male and female energies of our awareness are critical components for us to be able to have the self-compassion that we need in order to not only survive, but to thrive.

I personally lost the main female energy in my life, my Mom, at a young age and for a period of time was raised by a father that didn’t have a lot of space or knowledge of the soft, open female energy. There’s no blame here, my father was a very giving parent, he just didn’t have this element of the female in him. He was an “old-school” dude, if you know what I mean.

So in my existence, I’ve had a good amount of the critical lens pointed AT myself FROM myself as a result of the environment in which I was raised. Moving out and through the parental attachment stage and developing my own female insight and intuition, I am now just starting to develop a deeper sense of self-compassion.

I am able to first #1 see the negativity bias that I have toward myself and #2 see this light as the discerning element of my consciousness and self-awareness that allows me the insight I need in order to progress, advance and evolve in my lifetime.

I can then use the space of awareness to have more self-compassion - combining the two to form my meditation bell for awakening and growth.

So we can use this level of our self-awareness to not only allow for self-compassion (the yin, female, open element of our beings) but we can also use it to give us cutting insight on where we need to grow, evolve and improve (the yang, male, insightful element of our beings).

When we hear that voice consistently poking at our “faults” again and again, we can look at the source of the voice and ask “What truths are you trying to reveal about myself?” “What element of my being are you looking to improve?” “How are you asking me to grow?”

The very act of doing this shows a good amount of openness and self-compassion and is already eliciting the female, yin, open element of our beings to come in and teach us. Then the cutting, direct, male, yang nature of awareness can point to where we need work, where we can focus to grow, where we can, as Suzuki says, find “room for improvement”.

So next time you hear the familiar voice of critical self-judgement ringing in your ears, step back for a second, give it space, allow it to speak softly to you and say to yourself, “I’m perfect as I am, and there’s plenty of room for improvement” !