Self-Compassion

Yooo. This book was TRANSFORMATIVE. I feel like an entire part of my brain unlocked after reading this. I felt like I had one of those couch therapy breakthroughs that you can see on TV representations of Freudian psychotherapy. I felt like this book gave me insight into one of Buddhism's great teachings: blue sky mind. That you are all you need. That things are deeply, fundamentally okay - even when they suuuuck. But that often, for us lucky people living well-off in a First World country, we build this carapace of anxiety-driven sucking, we - ahem - SEEK DRAMA, where there is only truly privilege, blessings, and joy.

Yo. So there's this one sci-fi book, Forever Peace by Joe Haldeman, where First World soldiers are operating drone killer robots in various Third World proxy wars using fancy mind-melding tech. In the end, SPOILER, the protagonist - fed up with bombing poor villagers - realizes that, if you stay in the mind-melding tech for too long, your brain does NOT get fried (as his superiors had threatened), but rather your brain explodes into an all-encompassing compassion-gasm. You are, literally, one with everything. You are everyone else's mind, everyone else's mind is yours. And so you are then incapable of committing violence. You can't see Us and Them anymore.

Anyway, I always enjoyed that ending, it stuck with me for many years, because it just felt kinda authentic and true (and fun and funky!). And, in my real life, I would read self-help articles or have wise people say things about how “self-care is important” and “be kind to yourself”. And I was like, yeah yeah, but wtf does that MEAN?

Now I know. Thanks, Neff! I feel like this is going to be one of those foundational texts for me, like when I discovered cognitive behavioral therapy (also so good!). Even though the book, AS A BOOK, has its faults (Neff's POV can seem very specifically white/hetero/etc etc, yes yes, you can wave your spear of social justice at it; and yes, it's a bit overly long and there are moments that felt a little too woo), I was surprised by how deeply it affected my thinking, how it unlocked so many things for me.

There's a type of meditation practice in Buddhism called metta meditation, or loving-kindness meditation. I was always pro it in theory, but ughhhh I just hated it in practice. I just didn't get it! And I resented sitting there being “forced” to think soft fuzzy thoughts about the world. UGH. UGHHHH.

Similarly, in Buddhism, there's this idea of the blue sky mind. The Headspace app guy talks about it a lot. Like, after sitting there, meditating, watching your thoughts come and go, you start to see them like clouds. And what's beyond the clouds? Just a bright blue sky. Even when you're sad as shit and everything is hard, you can liken that to a deeply overcast day - or a hurricane. But, Headspace app guy says, if you went above those clouds in a plane, you'd see a sunny blue sky again. I always liked this image, like I enjoyed it as a fantasy, but - again - I don't think I deeply believed it. I was like, yeah, well, some people are depressed and wtf is blue sky anyway? NOW I GET IT. There's always going to be the sturdy base of self-compassion!

Anyway. So: it's excellent. I think this book could change the world. I'm not even being facetious or exaggerating. I felt very, very convinced, and very inspired. Forever Peace indeed!