Imperfectly lovable 

Striving for perfection 

Perfectionism is so pervasive in our culture that we are all affected by its influence in some way or another. Our ability to be perfect is also largely connected to how lovable or unlovable we feel that we are.  Most of us live with this unconscious story that we must be perfect in order to be loved.

You can see this story played out through your thoughts and behaviors.  Perhaps you are overly focused on your image, either physically or professionally, and can’t really let anyone see you undone or see your “faults”. Or maybe you are constantly striving to do more, achieve, be better and get it right, which on the surface can give the illusion of you being a personal growth master, but what you are really doing is avoiding feeling like an unlovable failure.   It can also show up as an over attunement to others, so that not much focus is on yourself, and in that way you can stay hidden or unseen.  You may also see it in trying to control a “messy” or less than perfectly planned outer circumstance, to look a certain way, so that you are not an inconvenience or disappointment to others.

These subtle patterns that most of us engage in daily can give us clues as to where we are still resisting or rejecting ourselves, believing we are less than worthy and where we are giving our power away.  Your ability to begin to see these patterns in yourself is key to your ability to be with and transform them, so that your lovability is not connected with your ability to achieve, not fail or be perfect, but is simply owned by you as your natural birthright.

Errors in perception 

Humaness & divinity coexist

We are both human and god coexisting in this one form or expression.  This means we are both divinely perfect and massively imperfect.  There really is no separation, but from the limited human perspective there is quite a gap.  The mind cannot perceive how one can be both perfect and imperfect, as that seems like an impossible paradox.

Our ability to embrace this human, imperfect nature of ourselves resolves this paradox in our mind.  As we learn to accept more and more of our human, flawed nature, the more we see just how perfect it is and we are.  This must be experienced as the mind can not ever make sense of it.  The mind will always try to convince you that you are not right in some ways and that you must strive to be better to ensure that you are loved.

The practice then is to embrace the vulnerable, tender, wounded, hurt, failed and lost parts of ourselves.  These are often what we are always trying to either hide, get ride of, heal or transform.  If you have been trying to “heal or transform” a part of yourself for years and you are still not healed, essentially what you are saying is that you still have not embraced this part of yourself.  That is really all healing is; an embracing of what is.  From this embracing transformation and reorganization of yourself occurs naturally.  Not through massive effort and doing, but in effortless, clear, determined action.  If you are massively efforting in your transformation process you have more accepting and embracing of your imperfect parts to do first.

So this is how you become imperfectly lovable.  You rest into the messy, disorganized, uncontrollable, inconvenient, ugly parts of you.  You love them even though you don’t like the way that they feel, and even though you are afraid that if you really see them (thus allowing them to be seen) you won’t be loved.  This is your only opportunity for liberation.  For in them holds the key to what you really want, which is full, unconditional self-love.  The only love you are really ever looking for is love from yourself.  When you embrace you, no one and no thing can un-embrace you.  You have completed the circuit in and with yourself.

Dr. Amanda Hessel, Chiropractor, Network Spinal Analysis & Somato-Respiratory Integration, Boulder, Colorado