I used to wish I was more beautiful..

Sometimes an article sparks another article.

http://www.masterscenter.net/how-cool-is-it-to-be-cool

I have never been cool. Did that ever bother me? Well I used to want to be a little bit more popular. It seemed like all the other kids were having much more fun, but it wasn't just that. I also wanted to be liked. Looking out from my eyes at the world, I notice that seems to be a rather a common characteristic of the human condition. I never really surrounded myself by people who cared what I looked like, or what possessions I sported; designer clothes, cars, gadgets, big homes, actually any home and when I stop and reflect on this I feel blessed. What a lot of pressure I never had to contend with, those unending material desires, the need to constantly have to keep up with your peers. In some moments, I would feel shame at the thought that I was lesser in the shadow of what another appeared to have. But did they really have more? And what is more? Could it actually less? Can possessions be a burden? My experience has been that I feel freer and lighter every time I Freecycle something or take some books or clothes to the charity shop or give away some unused item to a friend. However, I am someone who often feels the wanderer close at hand.

I used to wish I was more beautiful with a more attractive body, free of those ugly stretch marks and that imperfect cellulite. When I start practising yoga and eating a little more healthily I was confident, if not sure, that I would eventually end up with some perfect way of looking, because I was 'doing' all the right things. Perfect and thus happy, though I never stopped to reflect on whether looking like an airbrushed celebrity, some idealised notion of female perfection would ever actually lead me on a one way train to a permanently happy state. I never even stopped to reflect on whether society's ideas of femininity were even very sane.

Then a male friend said to me, 'perhaps your stretch marks are meant to stay there as testament to what you've been through and your realness'. I laughed. One of those laughs of inner knowing, of realising, of accepting and letting go. And since that time some new questions came into my mind. Was I really practising yoga to look good? Wasn't I really, yet again, projecting into the future to some magical time when I would be happy on account of some fantasy of my own physical perfection? Even if I did have the perfect look what then? What would the pressure be on me to maintain how I looked? The pressure to maintain a status quo that would try to hold life still and unchanging, pinning it down, not realising that it was responsible for stifling it, not realising that the pressure exerted was being held somewhere, internally and would eventually explode. I paid a little attention and witnessed the truth that life was expressed in cycles and that entropy was natural and was really ok.

And this led to the relief, the freedom, the unburdening that comes from appreciating what we already have now. My body is incredible, magical, gorgeous, perfect already. It allows me to walk and talk and breathe and eat and touch and sense and see. All my cells giving selflessly to me at every moment of the day, though I had never even acknowledged them to this point. I practice yoga because I want to, because I love getting on to my mat and moving, because I love the deep relaxation and the greater flexibility I seem to have (though not every day!), being mindful of my breathing, the greater sense of awareness of the energy and the aliveness in my body. I eat healthy foods because I love them. I appreciate the nourishing, the aliveness being incorporated into my body, I love the art of preparing these foods.

Do I still care what people think of me? I may have never wanted people to think that I was cool or fashionable, but I did want people to think of me as nice, good, even saintly. I really thought walking a spiritual path would take me there, a peaceful, direct, walk to sainthood. Well, it hasn't really work out that way. I realised again I was projecting into the future, working towards a time when I would be a perfected human being.

So what is left? Being and loving myself right now. Integrating in this moment. As I walk this path now, I am more and more aware of all the characters I tried to shut out, returning back; the angry Kali, the sexual goddess, the old woman on the verge of death and terrified. Sometimes, we all sit around the table and have a little chat, learning to listen to each other, interacting with love and making decisions together democractically. And so I feel more real and alive than ever before. Do I still care what others think? Yes, sometimes I do and so I am still experiencing the reflection of others who say, 'I do not approve of you and the way you are living your life'. Well, in this moment, I am accepting the little voice inside who believes that and feels a little ashamed of it too.