Accepting Yourself vs. Self Improvement
Do we accept reality as it is, and not attach ourselves to outcomes? Then why do we bother doing self-help and clearing our blockages and mental bad habits that cause others suffering?
That is a great question. I think my answer would be that true change only happens after self-acceptance. For several reasons.
First, acceptance of yourself and the world around you gets you in touch with spiritual truth - that you are perfect as you are, and everything you experience is the spiritual path you are walking. If you accept that, you live from a place of personal God-hood or spiritual liberation, and the "bad habits" will fall away. The "bad habits" amount to rejection of your true nature of divinity, and/or rejection of others true divine nature. How can you be angry with an angel? How can you be jealous of God? God is perfect, and we are perfect, and the world is perfect. Therefore anything that seems imperfect is actually a mental rejection of perfection and the creation of false dualities. So to actually change in a meaningful way, to move closer to Truth, it is necessary to accept what is.
Second, in walking the path from where you are to where you want to be, you must truly understand where you are, and accept it. Tell the truth about it. Because if you are fooling yourself into thinking you are starting from a different place then you truly are, the path you will try to walk from that place will not be your true path. You have to start where you actually are.
Third, I was just reading this book that talks about this. It is Towards a Psychology of Awakening by John Welwood (details below). They were describing a traditional Tibetan analogy that describes three levels of spiritual practice. They use the analogy of a poisonous plant, which are the basic tendencies that produce suffering: grasping, aggression, ignorance, jealousy, and pride. The first level of dealing with these is to replace 'poisonous' tendencies with virtuous tendencies - uprooting the plant. But by doing this you lose the power invested in these mental constructs - you lose your connection with the earth.
Second level is to develop an antidote - in Buddhism for instance, cultivating emptiness does this. However, this "may leave us with a subtle preference for emptiness over form, which can also leave us inwardly divided."
Third level is to develop immunity by eating bits of the plant. This is what meditation does - you watch the mind, in the moment, without rejection, and learn that thoughts are self-created. Then you unlock the energy of the poisons for your own use. You also gain a greater compassion for other people's struggling.
Last, the way I look at it is this: you do not cause others suffering. Everyone is responsible for their own suffering - no blame, no guilt, just responsibility. We are all Divine beings here, all capable of choosing whatever path we want to learn whatever it is we want to learn, to experience. So clean up your mental blockages if you want to...but don't pretend you're doing it for other people. You're doing it for you, because you choose to, because you want to experience a clean mind. Which is great, I do too!
But in the most expanded sense, there truly is no right and wrong, no good and bad in the grand scheme of things. There are only different ways of experiencing things. I choose to experience it as all being Joy, but that is my choice, my personal orientation. Everyone, as a Divine being, is free to choose their own orientation, their own path and view of the world.
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