Stop Fixing Yourself Now: Meet Yourself Exactly as You Are

Do you meditate enough?

Or are you patient and compassionate 24/7 in each and every situation?

How does it feel to be the living embodiment of truth and love?

If you just looked at yourself, at your internal reaction to these questions, what just happened? I guess, for most of you, you weren’t able to answer them in a way that satisfied you.

Do you meditate enough? Probably not, unless you are a monk living in a monastery, but even then you might criticize yourself for not being able to stay present all the time.

Are you as patient and compassionate with others as possible? Unless you are a true sage, the answer is probably no as well. You may get angry or become impatient with others more often than you would like.

And how does it feel to be the living embodiment of truth and love? Here the answer might be: What, are you talking to me?

Now you might feel guilty because you don’t meditate enough, because you fail with other human beings, and you can’t even claim that you are an embodiment of the Absolute Truth.

And this is a problem.

When we are on a spiritual path, we read about the holy masters, the enlightened beings, and how they have developed qualities that make us look like inferior beings. We think that we need to change. We need to develop into a holy person before we can finally become awakened. Therefore, we think that we need our lives to go perfectly. We have a strict schedule, we wake up at 4 a.m., we sit in meditation at least six hours every day, we are always kind to everybody even if they do something not so nice, and we almost float above the ground because we feel so holy.

I mean, this would sound really nice, except that almost nobody would claim this is the case for them. So, what do we do instead? We still have this ambition, but we fail, and we feel guilty. We think we need to change everything about ourselves in order to become worthy of awakening or enlightenment. And we even put in the work. We try our best. Maybe it goes well for a while. We feel as if we are doing something right, that we are on a good path. But then, for whatever reason, we fail. We fall back into our old behavior, feel guilty, maybe even ashamed, and might even start disregarding spirituality because we can’t meet the ideals we set for ourselves or believe are necessary.

We may even start doing the opposite and justify our unskillful tendencies. We might say, “I am just awareness, I don’t care about the world,” or something like that, but secretly, we feel that something is still off.

If we haven’t even realized that we are pure awareness, then we are deluded anyway if we think that way.

So, what’s the solution to this dilemma?

If you are looking at yourself, with all your flaws and imperfections, where are you really looking? You might be looking at your human body, your feelings, your thoughts, your behavior. But are you really only this human body, only these feelings, these thoughts, or this behavior?

In spirituality, we often hear that we are not our thoughts, not our body, and so on. And this sounds really wonderful, even freeing, but do we truly believe it?

If everything goes well, we have no problem saying that we are beyond our human form. However, if "we" do something wrong, we immediately look at ourselves and believe it’s entirely our fault; suddenly, it becomes very personal.

You see, the real issue is that, even though we are on a spiritual path, we still identify with this limited human form and judge it based on what we think is right or wrong.

True spirituality is about letting go of our limitations, our perceived sense of identity.

Everything we identify with is not our true nature.

Our true nature is formless; it has no beginning and no end; we can't say it exists or doesn't exist.

To say that something exists or doesn’t exist, or to say that something is good or bad, belongs to the dualistic realm—the relative aspect of life. Our identities, how we like to think about ourselves, as well as our human form, all belong to the relative.

So, what’s the conclusion?

No matter how we think about ourselves, it's always from a relative, dualistic perspective. If you think well of yourself, eventually, you will also think poorly of yourself. There is no exception to that. Any affirmation we make about ourselves or anything else will also imply the opposite. And if you try to improve, if you try to fix yourself, if you think you have to become something, all of this belongs to the relative realm.

Spirituality is about waking up to your True Self, the unchanging Self, the Unborn, the Supreme Being, the Absolute Nature of reality.

That’s why it’s called awakening. It’s not called development or progression.

It’s about waking up to who you really are.

In Korean Zen Buddhism, there is a concept called “checking mind.” It describes the habit, the tendency to look at something and judge it. When you sit in meditation and think your meditation is going well or isn’t going well, this means checking your meditation practice. When you go through life and think you are a bad person or a good person, this also means engaging in “checking mind.” It basically means attaching to judgement, attaching to good or bad.

Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn always told his students not to check, not to hold any thoughts or judgments, and not to attach to anything. Just become aware whenever this checking mind appears. “I want to have a good meditation session,” or “I want to be a good person.”

Your true nature is already complete; it’s already beyond good or bad, beyond any description. You just need to wake up to that, from moment to moment. When you become aware of a thought that judges you or suggests that you need to do or become something in order to awaken, just notice it.

Don’t attach to it, don’t hold it. You are already beyond this thought; you don’t have to do anything to let it go—just don’t hold on to it.

How can you possibly become something that you already are?

You see, it’s not about becoming something, but about letting go of all the false identities we have, not attaching to anything that comes to mind, and awakening to our true nature.

And how do you do that? How do you awaken to your true nature?

The most direct method is self-inquiry: just ask yourself, whenever a thought appears, who is looking at this thought? Whenever a sound appears, who is hearing this sound? When a judgement appears, who is looking at this judgement?

You can do this anytime and anywhere.

Whenever you do something, just ask yourself who is doing that. This way, your thoughts, your judgments—everything—will come to an end, and you will wake up to your True Self. 

You will meet yourself as you truly are, because there is nothing you have to do to become who you already are; just let go of the false notions and ideas you have about yourself, and there you are - already perfect, already the Absolute.

Alright, I hope this was helpful.

I wish you all the best. Your friend of the way, bye.

PS: If you want more guidance on this path, I’ve got an online course that goes deeper into it - here is the link.