Rethinking Self-acceptance and Self-improvement

I’ve been seeing some contradictions in messaging from some Yoga/Meditation/Self-help circles recently. Accepting ourselves and self-improvement have become spiritual and self-help buzz phrases and discussed as if they are mutually exclusive. I’ve been guilty of mixing this kind of messaging in the past, so I wanted to take this opportunity to clear up where I stand. These two ideas aren’t mutually exclusive, and I’d like to see them delivered more clearly and in conjunction with each other in future.

I agree with the idea of self-acceptance. What we are in this moment is perfect, the present moment is perfect, nothing is lacking. As Sam Harris says, ‘real acceptance is in the present of the present.’ This is particularly strong in Buddhism and Hinduism. Buddhists believe in Buddha-nature- the idea that our essence and true nature is already rooted in perfection. Stephen Levine describes Buddha-nature:

“Buddha-nature, is like the sun which is always shining, always present, though often obscured. We are blocked from our natural light by the clouds of thought and longing and fear; the overcast of the conditioned mind; the hurricane of I am.”

Many of us are unaware of our Buddha-nature so we allow our anger, self-loathing, jealousy and any unpleasant emotion to be identified with rather than accepting they are one of a multitude of mental modules and past-conditioning that we display which are not in accordance with our true nature.

So many people don’t want to hear this. The fundamental messaging of our society is that things are not good, that everything is bad and corrupt. Society is broken, the world is broken, we are broken, and we have original sin. We need only turn on the evening news to see this framework in action. Western civilisation and many of the Neo-Liberal systems we operate from rely on the viewpoint that everything must be improved, particularly by consuming products. Just because there is corruption and brokenness in the world does not mean the world is corrupt and broken in of itself. This is the same for us, just because we may falter from time to time, but we are not broken and this brokenness is certainly not inherent to us

However, simply accepting yourself as you are can seem counter-productive to advancing through life, particularly to sceptics of this idea of acceptance. This is a valid concern so we still need to tweak the concept of self-improvement. As I said before you do not need to improve yourself, you are inherently perfect because you were born with Buddha-nature. What can be improved is the quality of your conscious experience, the levels of suffering you endure from day to day, how much you are at the mercy of your fleeting and turbulent emotions and how much all of these hold you back. This is to say that we can change our experience to aim for landmarks in the future. It is vital that we shed our thought patterns and behaviours that don’t serve us reaching our desired landmarks.

Let’s look at exercise. If you are overweight and want to run a marathon, the things that would need to be addressed could be your relationship with food, your motivation to exercise, the type of exercise you are doing, and your levels of alcohol consumption. You are not the problem in any of these examples, it is simply a result of the more dominant modules being displayed that are holding you back. Shifting to modules that serve you more (particularly through mindfulness practices) is the only thing that you need focus on. Self-deprecation won’t help you run a marathon.

To become aware of these negative modules you might meditate. This is because you want to be calmer, and less reactive. You want to be non-reactive to food cravings, motivated and while you’re at it you want to be a better friend, a better husband, a better colleague. Here’s the thing, you are already all of these things, your true nature is one who is calm, one who is non-reactive. You meditate to connect to and discover this true nature. It is something we must practice and cultivate, but you are not purging anything from yourself, you’re simply growing on something that is already inherent to you and within you. The only thing being improved here is your awareness of your true nature and the lessening of the intensity of suffering you experience and the mental modules that contribute to it. The mental modules like anxiety that you suffer from are holding you back from the marathon or whatever else you want to achieve. We aim for the lessening of identification and intensity of modules such as anger and anxiety, and even lesser ones like procrastination and doubt. To reach landmarks in our life we must improve our experience of consciousness, to hit those pain points we suffer from and that hold us back.

I hope this clears up the messaging. When I talk about ‘the best version of yourself’ or ‘improving yourself’ particularly in my Stoicism posts I’m not saying you are not enough, I’m saying you should strive to mitigate your suffering and improve your conscious experience.