Be gentle with yourself

[u/liljonnythegod]

Hope everyone is doing well. First a short update on where my practice is before I get into the gist of this post. Rigpa is stabilising and awareness is now unhooked from being within my head to now being no where with no location. It's not even that it unhooked and went from being within my head to nonlocal but instead was always nonlocal. It's also obvious that it is nontemporal as well.

I haven't made a post in a while and I tend to only do so when I arrive at something that leads to a significant change so I'm making a post about being gentle and an insight I arrived at this morning that has me in an ecstasy deeper and more worthy than any jhana I have accessed before.

Earlier I was walking in the park and I saw a child crossing a road and I had a flashback to when I was a child and had a traumatic experience with crossing a road with my mother. Suddenly a sense of warmth for myself as a child arose, in the same way metta has always arisen for any other child I see in day to day life. This hasn't happened before and so I was intrigued to go into it more. I thought perhaps I should see if I can main generating metta towards myself as a child but to go up in the years until I reach myself now and direct the metta towards myself now.

I reached a certain age it became obvious that there was a blockage like I couldn't give it to myself. I probed into why and it now makes sense why I have always gone from relationship to relationship seeking out love. When I was young, I never felt or received the love I should have, so I internalised that I would only be worthy of love once it was received from someone external.

This then resulted in not being able to give it to myself and is why I've always been so hard on myself. I thought that perhaps I should reconcile this by realising I am worthy of love regardless if someone is giving it to me right now or not but this didn't resolve the blockage.

So I probed into how I give love to others and it then it became obvious. Being gentle and being soft comes with giving love and this is how I have been towards others that I've felt love towards. So then I thought, have I ever given myself that same gentleness/softness and it's obvious I haven't. It took a single second from that insight, to be able to be gentle with myself and now it hasn't gone away and it doesn't require me to think about. The phrase you can't love someone until you love yourself really is true haha I always thought it was just a dumb cliche.

It feels like I'm now drunk in love, that is similar to when I've taken ecstasy or being in in deep romantic love but it's much stronger. The ending of tension in the body is great and for a while I thought that was all that would be needed. Once that's done and dusted, I'll have got what I wanted. But I was wrong, this love that comes without a condition, has been missing from my life and I never knew that it was missing because I didn't give it to myself.

As soon as I have became gentle and soft with myself, it is here and now will not go anywhere.

In a nutshell, be gentle towards yourself. Be soft with yourself. Growth is good and necessary but don't be hard on yourself. You don't need to be anything in order to be loved. I would hear statements like this before and think it was just philosophical jargon but it's not. Once you become gentle and soft towards yourself this love will overflow. It now feels like a great amount of metta that wants to flow outwards towards others.

🫶🏽

[u/ms_abominable]

I love this, thank you for sharing. It reminds me of parts work (also called Internal Family Systems) where you identify an inner child as well as any other versions of yourself that need healing. Sometimes there's also an inner teenager, parent, etc. Sending those versions of yourself love is such a game changer. It helps with awareness too when old coping mechanisms get triggered. Like, why is 12-year-old me showing up in a specific dynamic? Hmm, let me send her metta since I'm feeling insecure and bullied in that situation.

How you do self-care can also be tailored to what part of you is showing up. For example, my inner baby is very young and when she shows up I usually care for her in fundamental ways like eating or bathing. My inner child is a little older, maybe around 5, and needs to be "heard." For her, I'm more likely to seek a quiet environment and draw or paint.

I've found this approach helpful for regulating, very cool to see it applied in a Buddhist context!

[u/liljonnythegod → u/ms_abominable]

Oh yeah I've heard of IFS before. I didn't find that it did much for me compared with just powering through the path but I might have to look into it again

Have you became familiar with the younger versions of yourself so that when they do show up, you are quickly aware of it?

[u/ms_abominable → u/liljonnythegod]

Yes, the familiarity came with repeated awareness. I love body scanning too, saw you mentioned it. Learned some techniques through Vipassana that help me tap into what version of me is "here" now somatically. Every so often a new version makes themselves known, that's always fun because it means a more subtle awareness. Other times I've healed a part in a way that soothes it into being less prominent because my needs are met.

This convo is so good, thank you for prompting it. What does your meditation practice look like? I find it cool that different roads can lead to the same insights and healing.

[u/liljonnythegod → u/ms_abominable]

That is really interesting that you can pick up on different versions of you that are here through body scanning. I never came across anything like this but it makes sense how it can be done.

The future self stuff is interesting as well. Going to play around with that and see what happens but I do always hear of self improvement people on youtube who speak about doing things for your future self out of love for yourself.

My practice has been quite varied since I've began quite a few years back. Started with shamatha and TMI then began noting and body scanning which got me SE and much beyond. A year ago I shifted towards Mahamudra but still do body scanning here and there. I think I have spent a lot of time dealing with awareness and now that's settling to how it should be, healing practices seem much more intuitive. I have came across people who refer to the path as a mind, heart, gut awakening process so perhaps I'm now falling into the heart part of the path.

Are you mainly doing IFS or do you follow a specific tradition?