Be here now and breathe

I've been reminded lately, that I am perfect just as I am.  In fact, I heard that this morning in yoga class.  It was met by considerable skepticism by several of the women present, who are all in their 80s and 90s.  It is sad to me that the common complaints we have are still about expanding waistlines and not being good enough.  Is it something that we are all doomed to take to the grave?

The perfection statement, the first time I heard it many years ago, was one of the most puzzling things I had ever encountered.  Perfect?  Nobody's perfect --- I've heard that all my life!  Sometimes, someone would add "except God" which really only made things worse.  So how, by any stretch of the imagination, could I look at myself in the mirror and see perfection?

But when my children were born, I could instantly see the perfection in them.  I still do.  Sure, my son had a bright red birthmark on top of his head, but that didn't make him imperfect ---- it was part of his perfect self.  And my daughter with the interesting toes?  Absolute perfection, no doubt about it!

So what happened to me?  Why could I only see things that were wrong, whether I was looking at my physical image in the mirror or thinking about my accomplishments and behavioral characteristics?  Someone might describe me as generous, but I knew that wasn't true.  Others saw me as smart ---hah! there are about a gazillion people smarter than I am.  I've heard myself described over and over as patient, but I know about the seething impatience I have inside myself, the impatience I learned from watching my father interact with people and situations.

So when a teacher of yoga or meditation or self-acceptance or even religion says that I am perfect, there's a HUGE disconnect, and I could only think that the person was intentionally lying, or more likely, I'm too stupid and screwed up to understand it.  Fortunately, I do have some persistence and I've stayed on the planet long enough to start understanding things that made no sense to me the first 150 times I was exposed to them.  Like attachment.

When I was in my late teens and newly married, my then-husband introduced me to the writings of Alan Watts and a couple of others.  The Buddhist teaching about attachment seemed like the most ridiculous and idiotic thing I'd ever heard.  I was passionately in love with this man.  You mean I'm not supposed to love my husband?  That was my interpretation and I rejected it out of hand. I wasn't really interested in trying to figure out what they were saying.

Over the ensuing decades, I've come across enough related ideas, and had enough of life-living, to form my personal understanding of what I think is meant by attachment.  It has been my own experience that attachment creates unhappiness or dissatisfaction.  When I love someone passionately the seeds of unhappiness are intrinsic to the experience; to lose that love will make me unhappy, and even the thought that it could happen creates dissatisfaction and unhappiness in the present moment.  Likewise, a "negative" situation contains inherent dissatisfaction in the thought that it "should be different".  Do I rejoice in my own or someone else's illness?  No, but if I can be with it in the present moment, it simply is. I don't have to like it --- up or down judgment has nothing to do with what IS.

So there I am.  Once, nearly twenty years ago, I was in a personal crisis and feeling as though I was reaching the end of my rope.  I took a call from a young woman I was sponsoring in sobriety, and she said to me, "Just be here now and breathe."  I have used that phrase for myself and others innumerable times since that day.

Right here.  Right now.  In this moment, in this breath, is perfection.  It's all I have to do to experience perfection ---- just be here now, and breathe.