The Buddhists would tell you that one of the many elements on the eight-fold path or wheel of enlightenment is right intention, also translated as the exertion of our own will to change. But when we look at our lives, most of us are probably thinking, “Erin, seriously, Buddhist enlightenment? I’m just hoping to get through the day without people driving me crazy, without killing my kids or my coworkers/clients/boss, and maybe have a little affection for my husband left over at the end of the day.”
We’re not really worried about enlightenment. Not when there are dishes in the sink and a kid waiting to get picked up and that last web design to finish.
Right?
Everyone has their shit.
But taking the path towards enlightenment isn’t just for monks in Tibet or that weird heavy breathing dude in your yoga class. It’s open to all of us. I know…because I used to think that happiness (and yes, I’m equating happiness with enlightenment, see below) was only open to other people. People who didn’t have messed up lives. People who didn’t have my history, my past, my mistakes, my shit.
Oh, they might have other stuff that they had to contend with, maybe even some really “bad” stuff, but mine was way worse, I was sure. The things that I’d done couldn’t really be forgiven (at least, not by me), and the ways that I’d acted towards myself meant that I needed to suffer. Maybe even for the rest of my life. (Um, yeah, that was my good Catholic upbringing!)
I’m pretty sure, though, that you don’t really need to be a (recovering) Catholic to have this same guilt, or to put that happiness option onto something external; we all find ways to put the happiness option up on a shelf. Happiness might be a path for other people, but not for you, right? And enlightenment, well, that’s totally out there.
But the path towards enlightenment offers something for all of us. In my mind, it’s more of a journey inwards, one in which you are continually finding those parts of yourself that you always knew were there – the beautiful, the transcendent, the amazing parts of you.
Enlightenment…now!
And to get onto the path, you don’t have to take a special class, read that next book, or get that next training. You just have to start opening up to the present moment. What is this moment showing to you? Notice how you’re feeling right now. Are you bored (no, you love this blog!), tense, annoyed with a kid, spouse, friend, coworker? What’s underneath that little humming sound in your head?
That acceptance, that noticing of what’s going on inside of you, is the first step towards enlightenment.
Is happiness equal to enlightenment?
Why should we care about enlightenment, though? Well, because the path towards enlightenment really is the same as the path towards happiness (and who doesn’t want to be happy?) If you’re thinking of happiness as that sort of giddy, just ate cotton candy while on a roller coaster feeling, then no, they aren’t. But if you think of happiness as an ability to maintain equanimity, even in the face of “problems” throughout the day, then yes, I would equate the two.
And one of the main requirements for that sort of happiness is a fundamental sense of ourselves as worthy, or, in other words, acquiring great self-esteem is one of the best things you can do for your happiness.
One of my fave books on the subject of self-esteem is Nathaniel Branden’s classic book, The Six Pillars of Self Esteem, in which he details his process for acceptance of ourselves (as part of overall self-esteem). And just like the Buddhists, it starts with accepting where we are. Because…
If I refuse to accept that often I live unconsciously, how will I learn to live more consciously? If I refuse to accept that often I live irresponsibly, how will I learn to live more responsibly? If I refuse to accept that often I live passively, how will I learn to live more actively?
To that end, he uses a system he calls sentence completion. The basic premise is that we can unlock our subconscious mind through quickly writing down (no editing or reviewing!) endings to these stem sentences, and through this, we can start to bolster our self-acceptance. Here’s how it works: in the mornings, you write down the beginnings of a pre-formulated sentence (a sentence “stem”) and then six to ten different endings to the sentence.
Then, in the evenings, you essentially write down the same sentences and another six to ten completions. (There will most likely be repetition.) Here are the stems:
- Self-acceptance to me means –
- If I am more accepting of my body–
- When I deny and disown my body–
- If I am more accepting of my conflicts –
At the end of the week, you look back over what you’ve written, and then use this stem sentence for the same exercise, with another six to ten endings:
- If any of what I have written is true, it would be helpful if I–
How does writing down sentences help me?
When I first read his book, I was pretty confused. How could writing down sentences help me to improve my self-acceptance and self-esteem? But simply by bringing consciousness to our own thoughts and feelings, and then allowing our psyche to act from that place throughout the day, we start to honor ourselves. It doesn’t even need conscious attention; we just set those sort of intentions in the morning, and things start to improve on a day to day level.
What’s your reputation with yourself?
Doing what we told ourselves we would do bolsters our self-esteem. It doesn’t matter if our family thinks that we’re a success if we believe that we’re a failure. It doesn’t matter if the entire world thinks that we’re beautiful/smart/talented if we believe that we’re ugly/dumb/a fraud. So when we start to feel as if we have done what we meant to do that day, even subconsciously, then we start to improve (in Branden’s words) “our reputation with ourselves”, and then we can truly believe in the amazingness of ourselves. We know that we have worked towards our own highest good for that day and that we are committed to doing what is best for ourselves. We then feel better about ourselves by doing what is right, not by avoiding it.
If you’d like more examples of sentence completion in a quick, handy guide, or to talk through the exercise, contact me.
