Letting go of vanity

I've been struggling recently with a demon I'd suppressed for a long time and now he's out and he's vengeful!

The demon is called seborrheic dermatitis, an inflammatory skin condition I've been managing with mild cortisone creams. Finally, after many years, I'm acknowledging this is not a solution. In order to truly heal I have to find and understand the underlying cause and address it.

So I stopped the cream. Up came the rash and with it my vanity, my attachment to beauty!

It's very easy to say glibly that beauty comes from within when you feel pretty, but when you're looking in the mirror at a scaling, swollen red face it becomes much harder. All the insecurities I thought I'd gotten over came crushing back on top of me. The shyness and social anxiety, the fear of failure, that crushing sense of defeat and apathy we call depression. And all because my face is no longer beautiful!

I see clearly now just how much of my self-worth I've attached to my appearance. In truth I'm completely and utterly vain!

Letting go of physical beauty has been very hard for me and I still hold great hopes that I'll discover the root cause of the problem and regain my clear healthy skin. Of course this would be beneficial on many levels, as the rash is clearly only a symptom of a deeper malaise, however I've come to realise that even if I do not permanently lose my beauty now, I'll certainly lose it soon enough!

Letting go of vanity forces us to look deeper within ourselves to find our worth, to bring to the fore all the gifts and talents that truly give us value as human beings. These are the things most of our friends and family love us for. They may admire our beauty, but they love us for our kindness, our humour, our generosity.

Why is it then that we place such a high value on something so shallow? Could it be (shock, horror) that we've been brainwashed by our consumer culture? No... surely not!

Letting go and loving our dark side

Isn't it weird that as soon as I'm without my community around me I begin to question my own way of being? I start thinking, 'Am I crazy? Shouldn't I be getting on with my career, having children, buying a house?' The sense of certainty I felt about the 'rightness' of my life path just a week ago has all but evaporated. I'm adrift in a sea of doubt. And my doubt makes me feel frustrated and ashamed.

Even this blog, which has been giving me so much creative satisfaction, has come under fire from my critical mind. Suddenly I feel it's too preachy, too idealistic. How can I write about something so lofty as spiritual non-attachment when I clearly just haven't 'got it' yet! And what about all those other darker aspects of self that don't seem to fit?

I've come across this before and those who know me best will attest to it. I find it difficult to accept that inside this basically good person are all kinds of dark inclinations and desires: self-loathing, masochism, fear, judgement and anger. Sheesh! Anger especially! 

Spiritual teachers tell us that we should integrate our dark side but I've always felt a bit at a loss as to how this can be done without turning a wonderfully diverse character into a bland grey persona. Because honestly I love my dark side, even though at times I feel uncomfortable with it. I like that I'm a wild cat when pissed off, and that I'm introspective enough to question my own opinions and occasionally notice that I'm being a complete dick and feel like crap about it.

However I want to be able to move between these emotions, these aspects of self, and not get lost in them. So that they become like films projected across my being and I can enjoy every single moment, even wallowing in self-pity or ranting at someone I love, because I can stand aside from it and not identify with any of it.

Because none of it is really who I am! In A New Earth - Awakening to Your Life's Purpose, Eckhart Tolle clarifies this when he writes, “You are not IN the universe, you ARE the universe, an intrinsic part of it. Ultimately you are not a person, but a focal point where the universe is becoming conscious of itself.”

Observing our reactions and allowing ourselves to experience every aspect of life, both 'light' and 'dark,' is part of our awakening process. I think the trick is not to get caught up in it, but to allow it to move through us freely while we remain firmly rooted in the present moment. Or as someone I no longer remember once put it: 'Don't jump in the river!' Just enjoy watching it flow on by :)

Letting go of youth

One of the little contradictions in my personality is that although I find the idea of using toxic chemicals on the earth or on my body irrational and self-destructive, I continue to dye my hair. I'm not ready to let go of the pretty brown hair of my youth. In the same way I mourn the desire to attend wild all night parties, even though I know I would no longer enjoy them.

Why is this so? It is because I've invested identity in these things; things that only last such a short time. My body is slowly becoming aged. My skin is no longer taut, my rhythms have become slower. My inner world develops differently, into greater clarity and consciousness, but my body decays.

How silly then to get so attached to the colour of my hair or how many admiring glances I get from those around me? Making these things important sets me up to struggle with myself. And this is a struggle I cannot win. Better to just let go and accept gracefully that impermanence is the nature of this life we are living.

It is helpful to realise that where ever you are attached you will feel a fixation. This is a very good indicator that we can look out for in our daily lives. You direct a lot of energy into thinking about and trying to procure that thing you want so much. Instead of doing something creative, all your energy is being used on something pointless. Meanwhile you feel more and more upset. How silly! 

When I hang onto my youth so desperately, I also fail to realise the wonderful gifts that growing old is bringing into my life...

You see I think when we're born it's like we're waking up from a sleep. We've transitioned from another state and so it takes a while to understand who and where we are, and how to use our faculties. So you stumble around awhile, in life, but after a while the horizon levels out and you can finally make out what is going on. We begin to become conscious.

But for me consciousness is like a radio station: it goes in and out of reception. When I am aware I see: “Ah yeah! This is how reality is. Completely simple and free!” And then I lose the station and all of a sudden I am worrying about money or whether the man who is beside me is the 'right one.' If I were conscious I would know the answer to those questions without any consideration.

As I've grown older I've found these periods of clarity becoming more frequent and of longer duration. I catch myself more quickly when I become attached to something. You know, those petty little attachments we pick up like ticks everyday, usually through interaction with other humans? I may carry these attachments around for a while but I'm getting better at noticing and letting go before they become too painful or burdensome.

That is the gift of maturity. It becomes easier and easier to let go!

Letting go of youth is something we all have to do eventually. Why not do it now?

Letting go of regret

It's tempting to look back on one's life when you're in a slightly pensive mood and start identifying all the mistakes you feel you've made. It's a trap I fall into more than I would like to... One of the things my mind likes to fixate on is past relationships. It says “How is it that your grandmother managed to have just one relationship over her whole life and you have a string of painful, fruitless failures.” Yeah, my mind's pretty nasty like that!

It also says things like:

•    You always pick men who are wrong for you

•    You're not mature enough to have a healthy relationship

•    You're going to ruin every good thing that comes along, you know you will!

What a bitch!

Looking at my past relationships in this way makes me mistrust the one I'm in now. Even though there is nothing whatsoever wrong with this love, or the man I am with, I look for things that could be signs that things will turn bad in the future. I am mistrustful and suspicious. I expect the worst.

How can this kind of attitude ever lead to anything good!?

Considering my past in a more positive light leads to a very different result. If I let go of the idea that I made mistakes, and instead accept that each and every person who has come into my life has taught me important lessons, made me stronger and led me to circumstances that helped to heal my woundedness, then I can see my present situation as the opportunity that it is. Then, instead of looking for faults and expecting things to go wrong in my relationship, I can relax and enjoy it :)

Letting go of regret allows us to trust our ability to make wise decisions in the present moment. And besides, those mistakes we think we made, they're in the past and there ain't nothing we can do to change them now! Regret make us heavy and like any burden it slows us down, makes everything more of a challenge. Letting go of regret sets us free; we become light. We move with ease and grace, even in the most challenging of situations.

What do you regret most in your life? What would it mean to let go of that regret right now?

Letting go of needs in relationship

There’s many a pop-psychology and self-help book that advocates making sure your needs are met in relationship. Many don’t go so far as to say we should expect this directly from our lover; but they do set up the expectation that the relationship itself should meet our needs.

Expectations ruin relationships. This is how it works in a so-called ‘romance’. You meet someone and because you’re both open, and there’s some resonance between you, you connect. But very soon instead of simply enjoying the other person’s company you’re asking yourself if you have a future with them. From that point on you’re constantly checking to see if the person you’re with is living up to your internal image of the person you want to ‘spend the rest of your life with.’ (Isn’t that an awful expression? Spending the rest of your life!) Many couples are still checking their internal image decades into a so-called happy-ever-after.

It’s all pretty narcissistic isn’t it? Especially when you ask yourself a few hard questions: Are you meeting all of their needs? Do you have all the qualities you assign to the perfect lover? Maybe we should become perfect ourselves before we demand it from another.

All day long we tell ourselves and others all about our needs. But are they real?

• I need a coffee
• I need to get this done
• I need him to be more affectionate

Do we really need any of these things? What about these?

• I need to change my reaction to anger
• I need to get out of this relationship
• I need to tell my mother how I feel

These latter could indeed be said to be needs. But when we use the powerful word ‘need’ we create a bond that inhibits growth; better to say the same thing in the affirmative:

• I can change my reaction to anger 
• I would like to make some changes in this relationship
• I will tell my mother how I feel

So really we can probably get rid of most so-called ‘needs’ in relationship, being careful not to throw out the real ones: safety of body, mind and soul, respect, honesty, learning and growth, connection and communication.

When you let go of pseudo needs in relationship you can enjoy a person for the qualities they have, rather than focusing on the aspects they lack. When you allow a relationship to be what it is, you free it to fulfil it’s highest purpose in your life. And when you allow your lover to be just exactly who they are, you can go on enjoying what it was that attracted you to them in the first place!

It’s a perfect system really :)

Letting go of style as identity

I'm not a particularly artistic person, but I've always really relished the creativity of fashion. Although I buy all my clothes second-hand, over the years I've developed a style that is uniquely mine and most of my close friends can tell straight away when an outfit is 'me'.

But actually it's not me. The clothes I wear and the way I create myself with colour and pattern and style is nothing to do with who I am at all. So why do I find it so hard to let go of this style? Why do I feel less when the clothes I'm wearing are in my opinion too feminine, too butch or just too plain daggy? Why am I so attached to these pieces of fabric, these buttons, zips and elastic?

If I were naked and you did not know my name I would be just another human animal, and until we had been introduced there would be nothing to distinguish me apart from the slight peculiarities of my hair, my skin, my body shape. I am nothing special. I am nothing that you would write home about.

But with clothes I can pretend I am special, that I am different. I can look at others and sub-consciously make a judgement about how much more or less stylish I am than they are. I can present myself in such a way that I invite compassion or illicit lust. I can make people afraid of me, or I can put them at their ease. In other words, through my style I can manipulate others to see me the way I wish to be seen.

As I travel my small collection of clothes grows more and more faded, stretched and worn. I am bored by them and I crave the stimulation and excitement of something new, of seeing admiration in someone else's eyes. So I ask myself why my self-worth and identity is so tied up with style and I see that here is yet another burdensome attachment that does not serve me.

But as I let it go I remember something I once read somewhere: "Enjoy everything, need nothing." And when it comes to style I think this applies very well!

Letting go of your career

Simply because I do not like the word, letting go of my career was less challenging than you might imagine. All that 'careering' gave me a pretty serious case of burn-out and I was all too ready to let the whole sorry burden fall from my shoulders.

Of course it hasn't come without its anxieties, money of course being the biggest one. But the funny thing is, once I set myself afloat at the whim of universal benevolence somehow I've always had more than enough.

Traveling to South East Asia was a good example of this. Within an hour of arriving in the town where I was to stay for the coming month, I had seen a poster advertising for someone to work in a guesthouse for room and board. And after this situation became untenable I sowed the seed to do astrology and tarot readings and this became the seed of a new enterprise that is now bearing fruit.

I do not see this newest venture as a new career however. The difference is that it is done in a spirit of playfulness. I like to earn money from it, but I will not stress myself unduly or turn on the hard sell to do so. This is a world away from the ten page proposals I would routinely submit to potential clients and funding bodies. Phew! What a bore...

And then the stress! Deadlines, regulations, bureaucracy. All tethers I can well do without!

Debt can be an especially strong tie to your career and one I have determinedly refused to accept. It's funny how all these bonds are self chosen - we literally sign our life away with the simple everyday choices we make, from enrolling our child in school to signing that mortgage paper. Every day we enslave ourselves a little more!

Many people pursue a career thinking that it will increase their status and influence within a community or network. Well weirdly enough my networks has grown markedly since abandoning this silly illusion and I find myself continually meeting people with whom I can collaborate in exciting, effective ways.

Letting go of your career is especially challenging when you have come to identify it with who you are. To find out if this is true of you, ask yourself whether you think of yourself as your job title, for example as 'a teacher' or 'an artist'. In such cases you are pretty strongly attached to your career and letting it go might cause you some discomfort.

Note that I do not suggest that you stop doing what it is their vocation to do. A vocation is very different to a career. One's vocation is the gift they give to the world, their niche within the social ecology. But unlike a career it is not something one has to strive for. It just happens naturally as we move with purpose through the world.

Letting go of my career was one of the most freeing things I ever did. It's been over three years now and I've never once regretted it :)

Letting go of jealousy

Jealousy is a common emotion for most people and indeed is thought by some to be a healthy expression of love in a monogamous relationship. This is because it seems to demonstrate care, that one feels strongly enough about the lover to care whether they connect strongly with others or not. To me jealousy does not signify care but merely attachment, and all attachment is based on insecurity, never on love.

Those who identify as poly-amorous use the term compersion to express the opposite of jealousy. To experience compersion is to be full of joy when you see your lover discovering a beautiful connection with another. Isn't it incredible that in order to express this sentiment, which seems to be a far more positive way of dealing with this common scenario, a whole new word needed to be invented so late in the history of human relatedness and connection!

Some people don't experience jealousy. I'm not one of those people! For a long time I struggled with this. I wanted my lover to claim me, to create a boundary and demand that I not cross it, to show me through his jealousy of other men that he cared. On the other hand I wanted him to want me so much that no other woman would make him look twice, or if they did and he enjoyed that connection that it would be no comparison to the connection we share.   

In other words I wanted to be special, and to believe that our relationship was special.

Letting go of jealousy is about recognising that our worthiness and value as human beings does not stem from our relationships with others. It's about realising that deep connectedness need not be synonymous with attachment and that despite what the media and other fairy tales tell us, true love always means freedom: freedom to create, freedom to explore and freedom to grow as human beings.

Letting go of shame

Lately I've been noticing the role shame plays in my life and how it limits and inhibits my true expression. Nothing is more sure of sending us into a state of depression, indecision or denial than shame! And all these feelings inhibit our ability to make wise and courageous choices in our lives. The kind of choices that expand our lives and our sense of what is possible.

Shame is different to guilt which usually only shows its head when you've deliberately or maliciously wronged someone. But shame can attack even when no one has been hurt at all! I might feel ashamed of the chubby parts of my body or of my off-beat sexual fantasies or because I feel I haven't lived up to my own high expectations. Everyone has their own shame triggers.

Guilt is more of a function of traditional and accepted notions of right and wrong, whereas shame can be attached to all manner of odd things. For example the other day I was sitting by the window and catching a movement out of the corner of my eye I looked up to see if my boyfriend were coming up the drive; afterward I felt a twinge of shame for caring so much about him! Yes it's bizarre but this is how shame works. It's attached to all sorts of wrong-headed beliefs that we hold about ourselves, others and the world around us.

Shame causes us to become stuck for a number of reasons. Firstly, it can cause us to start beating ourselves up which weakens us spiritually and makes it difficult for us to make empowered decisions. Secondly it can make us feel that we're not deserving of the good things in life. And thirdly it can send us into a state of denial where we unconsciously block out key facts about a situation that we need to know in order to make wise choices.

Letting go of shame requires us to first develop our self-awareness so that we become very clear about the beliefs we are holding onto that trigger shame. These beliefs may have been passed down to you from your parents, or perhaps they were developed in response to experiences that occurred earlier in your life. Either way they need to be explicitly understood and seen for what they are: just one way of looking at things.

Next it's important to become really clear about whether these beliefs are useful to you. Perhaps they were once, but if they're now triggering shame you can be sure they have outlived their usefulness! Ask yourself: 'What is another way I could look at this?' Even just realising that there is another perspective on the matter can help you see that your belief is not the only truth.

Meditation and the daily practice of mindfulness can help us notice when shame occurs and we can then trace the experience to a preceding thought, slowly deconstructing our ideologies and replacing these destructive beliefs with more life-affirming ones. By letting go of these beliefs day-by-day we can gradually free ourselves from shame. 

Letting go of the need to be right

Have you ever found yourself passionately involved in an argument about something that doesn't really matter at all and yet you will not give up your point of view? Say you're arguing about who's turn it is to do the dishes, or why dogs bark more at night, or whether the Queen of England is the richest women in the world. The outcome of the argument has very little bearing on your life, or on the lives of others, and yet you somehow cannot back down. You are determined to prove that you are right and the other person is wrong!

Many wonderful relationships have been ruined because of the inability to let go of the need to be right. In the moment we feel so completely justified in our position that we somehow convince ourselves that we are prepared to sacrifice both our own happiness and the happiness of our friend in order to prove it. At the same time we close ourselves off from learning anything new because to do so would require us to let go of our solidified perspective on the world and to open up to other ideas and viewpoints.

Why do we feel this need to be right? One reason is that our self-esteem is so fragile that we associate being wrong with not being good enough. Even if we know deep down that we are mistaken we can sometimes go into denial and continue arguing til we're blue in the face. The irony of this is that by being so stubborn we often cause others to lose respect for us.

If we have attached our self-esteem to being right it can be difficult to let go of it. One thing that can be helpful is to remember how vast and mysterious the universe really is and to acknowledge that our understanding of it can only ever be partial. That goes for all of us; we're all in the same boat here! Therefore even if you do not know, or are mistaken, this is only to be expected. It does not mean that you are stupid, and it does not mean that you are not good enough.

Another thing that is helpful in letting go of being right is to cultivate mindfulness. When we are mindful we tend to be more aware of what we are about to say before we say it. Thus we tend to avoid getting involved in pointless arguments in the first place. We are also more likely to notice when we are getting attached to our point of view. You'll come to a point where you think, 'Hang on. Does this really matter? What am I getting so worked up about?' It then becomes much easier to acknowledge the other person's perspective and move on to more meaningful discussion.

Cultivating mindfulness also gives you a different view of yourself in relationship to the world. As you watch your thoughts in meditation you find that 'the observer', the part of you that watches the thoughts as they flow through your mind, is unconcerned with your day-to-day anxieties and insecurities. This self doesn't have poor self-esteem, in fact this self doesn't need to be esteemed. All those thoughts in your head that tell you you're not good enough, they're just obscuring this deeper self. When you become connected to this deeper self you become pure peace, and being good enough or pretty enough or smart enough just doesn't matter any more.

Letting go of being perfect

In the past I was one of those people who's addicted to self-help books. Why? Because I've always felt there was something wrong with me that I had to fix, something that I could improve about myself. I felt that until I was perfect I was not worthy of love.

In my work especially I felt I needed things to be just so... Even when I did my best I always felt that I could have somehow done better, that the work I produced was somehow flawed. If someone gave me negative feedback it would send me into a tail spin!

This way of looking at myself meant that for a long time I seemed to attract partners who reflected back my need for perfection. They were always offering suggestions on how I could correct this or that fault, or how I could improve myself. On the other hand, because I had such high expectations of myself I also demanded perfection in them. Needless to say we made one another pretty unhappy!

It took me a long time to realise that achieving perfection is both impossible and undesirable, not to mention that in striving for it we lead ourselves into all manner of difficulties along the way. By expecting perfection of ourselves we set ourselves up to fail over and over and over again, at least in our own eyes. Other people may be impressed by our work, they may love us dearly despite all our flaws but this is never enough. We never believe in their love or praise because in terms of our own aims we have fallen far short.

Letting go of the need to be perfect is difficult, though I've found along the way that a few things can help us along.

Firstly, look to nature; nature is replete with desperately beautiful things that are deeply flawed if looked at from the perspective of conventional beauty. Nature is messy, smelly and seemingly disorganised but somehow harmonious. When we look at our own lives we can see many parallels here; we begin to appreciate that it is our 'imperfections' that make us uniquely, beautifully, who we are.

Secondly, daily meditation helps us to become mindful of our thoughts so that instead of working towards perfection we instead start to notice the kind of thoughts and actions that work for us and those that don't. For example we may notice that drinking a lot of alcohol when we're depressed simply makes us more depressed, so we stop doing that so often. We don't stop because we want to be a better person or to live up to some ideal, we stop simply because we can see clearly that it doesn't work for us.

We no longer struggle to change, we simply let go of what no longer serves us.         

Letting go of possessions

Very recently I was traveling overseas and had stored a lot of things in my brother's backyard shed. While I was away a great flood came through the area and a lot of my things were badly damaged. In particular, many of my favourite books were ruined.

Now for me a book holds something of a sacred virtue. I know this sounds nerdy but books have been the doorway to so much pleasure, learning and insight that I place them on a sort of pedestal! So of course I was upset. I grilled my brother over the phone. Exactly which books had been damaged? How badly had the water affected them? Were they still readable? I ruminated about the whole thing for hours wishing that I had made a different decision about where I stored my stuff, blaming myself for being so stupid, wondering if my brother could have done something more to have saved them.

Then it occurred to me that most of the books I own I haven't read for years and yet I dutifully haul them from house to house whenever I move. Moreover I have dusted and sorted them, and made room for them in my sometimes small living spaces. Really I was better off without these books!

The other thing I realised was that many of the books I own help me create an identity that I use to present myself to others. You know how we gravitate towards someone's bookshelf when we visit them for the first time? How we judge their character by the titles they own? Well I wanted other people to be impressed by the books in my shelf, to think of me as a certain type of person: a serious-minded, intelligent and spiritual person with a wide range of interesting hobbies. Many of the possessions we own are used for the same purpose: to impress those around us in some way, to present to the world a persona that we think of as an ideal. For example we may want others to think of us as wealthy, or stylish or unique; in all these cases possessions can provide a means of demonstrating this persona to others.

Image: Copyright Petr0.

So beneath our attachment to possessions often lies a deeper attachment: the need for others to approve of us, respect or like us. And this attachment ties us up in even more knots than the first! When we are attached to the good opinion of others we are forever afraid that our mask will slip, that we will ultimately reveal who we really are and that this 'real' person will not be good enough. Moreover by creating this identity with our possessions we cut ourselves off from others and this can lead to feelings of separation, loneliness and alienation.

Letting go of possessions can be liberating not just because we now have less things to clean around, dust, move, organise and tidy, but also because by letting go of these identity props both we and others will see us more clearly. This is not so scary as it might sound: in fact life becomes simpler, we become more genuine as human beings and we move closer to the truth of who we really are.