Look at yourself in the mirror, and at first perhaps you will feel disappointment, shame, even disgust, because that’s what you were taught to feel. But allow yourself to feel these feelings, and know they are not “you,” only old energies moving.
And let thoughts appear in the mind, like “ugly” and “fat” and “bad” and “broken,” and know that they are just words and sounds, familiar and old. Let the mind chatter away, like so many birds.
You have to love yourself by also loving the part that doesn’t love yet or trust yet.
Allow all of you to be reflected now. All of it. Begin to see yourself through the eyes of a loving mother who sees you as precious even if you have pimples or deformities or rashes or birthmarks, even if you have half a face or missing limbs. You have to see yourself through these bigger eyes, eyes of pure loving attention, eyes that do not judge but at the same time allow all judgments to be there.
Your eyes have been too small up until now. You were taught by people who didn’t love themselves, and you got infected. Until you looked at yourself today.
Your medicine now is naked, choiceless attention, being as spacious as the mirror itself, making room for thoughts and feelings but not mistaking them for the truth.
Your beauty lies in your willingness to feel, and see beyond all labels. Hold the totality of the image the way the mirror holds it, not resisting, not hiding, not shaming, not trying to adapt yourself to some secondhand idea of beauty or perfection. See how your imperfections are so perfect in this light; your wrinkles and blotches are works of divine art, fascinating and real, and so human. See.
You are beautiful, without changing a thing; your beauty is not earned.
~ adapted from Jeff Foster
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