Self Awareness or Self Improvement?

As some of you know, I made time for a 3 week retreat last month: a much needed protected solitude. I’ve discovered that times of deep quiet are essential hygiene for me.

Throughout the retreat this quote from Rumi played through me: “Your task is not to seek for love, but merely to seek and find the barriers that you have built against it and embrace them.”

To become aware of what gets in the way of experiencing our good hearts is a different approach to life than pushing away what’s unpleasant. Pushing away what’s unpleasant about ourselves is much of what’s at the heart of “self improvement”. If we can come up for air from our ever demanding self improvement projects we can stop chasing some ideal that doesn’t exist.

To find those barriers that you have built against love—and embrace them–that IS the practice of self awareness and self compassion. I believe that’s what most of us want when we grab at the “self improvement” model. To learn to kindly meet the limitations we’ve built against accepting ourselves would reveal that we are love itself always seeking us–what’s to improve?