Tuesday, December 15, 2009

Acceptance

I right, I am coming clean. I am pretty hard on myself about my habit of having wine with dinner. I usually only have a glass, sometimes two. But every time I do I feel bad about it. I feel like I should not be doing that. I keep trying to let it go, realize it is not a bad thing, it is not like I can't go a night without; sometimes I do.

After looking at, trying to not have a glass is actually worse than dealing with my feelings of guilt. I know guilt is ridiculously useless and my standards are ridiculously high, but it all happens anyway. Following some guidance in a recent read, Spiritual Materialism, I decided to stay with the feeling. Identifying it, feeling it in my body as I was awake early this morning thinking about how I should not have had 2 glasses of wine last night. The feeling was tightness across the front of my chest, I was justifying, defending my position.

Pride. I hold such incredible standards and feel full of pride and arrogance about how one should live, by what standards one should conduct oneself and clearly somewhere in my mind having a glass of wine each day is wrong. This may be borne from the challenges around drug use I have experienced with loved ones in my youth. Perhaps it is from all the spiritual self help books I read. Perhaps it just doesn't feel good in my body at 3 or 4 am. Whatever the motivator, my consumption seems to go against a belief.

No... it is that I succumb to desire. Deep down, I feel ashamed that I cannot hold to my own high standards. The lack of discipline is what I dislike. Discipline equals being good enough.
Can I accept me? Can I accept me for all my humanness? Perhaps the way to acceptance is to practice loving kindness for myself. For I am one just another of the universe's children who suffers.

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