Photo By Ashley Glynn
Over and over again clients come in to see me for energy healing and when I ask them why they are there, many of them answer the same thing: I want to be my Best Self.
Who is this "Best Self" and why are we always chasing it?
This used to crush me when I heard it. A deep sadness came to sting me - the whiplash of a past self who used to strive and overwork and overachieve in order to put on the airs of someone who'd never been hurt, someone who wasn't affected by a tumultuous childhood fraught with many unfortunate pains, someone who wasn't messy.
I know all about the brutality of the Best Self. I was haunted by her illusive perfection for decades with an unending lists of to-do's and to-don'ts. Stifled by judgements that never seemed to be satisfied no matter what I had accomplished or abstained from.
I have changed my approach. I no longer get sad when I hear this answer tumbling from the lips of the most beautiful people I could ever ask the universe to put in front of me. I realize this illusion of Self is just a doorway to another series of questions: who is this best self, I ask? Where did you learn about it first? What's preventing you from living it? Why?
What I have come to observe over thousands of sessions is that the best self is a mythological being.:. Some mysterious emanation carved out of the shadow of comparison. We each have erected this best self and it is somehow etched into the Architecture of our subconscious.
It whispers to us at all moments... reminding us that we aren't enough, that we could have done it better, that we maybe shouldn't have done it at all, that we will never be recognized. It thrives on us never allowing ourselves to be fully at ease - because if we were then it would cease to exist.
Even our nicest clothes are marked by this stain, and even when we have tried our hardest to look good, feel good, be good, many of us wear our underlying discomfort and we can see it in others...
The Best Self is always trying, always striving, always uneasy, always seeking validation...
I will tell you a secret. The Best Self is a lie. An illusion we not only perpetuate onto ourselves but a falsehood we complicitly accept projected onto us by society as well. It forces us to stay small. To doubt. To covet. To be jealous. Insecure. To lust over what is not real because it's not there... Real, in our lives. It forces us to force ourselves rather than embrace ourselves.
We're already our best, highest, strongest, most beautiful self the moment we decide we are.
We are already all of those things we will become, and there's nothing else we have to do, no workshop we have to take, or retreat we have to go on, no book to read, or tonic to drink, or diet to consume... all we ever really need is to relax and to remember.
Relax.
Remember.
The rest is an illusion. So when we meet and I ask you, why are you here, know that I am already seeing what you are are and that as far as I am concerned, you couldn't be any more radiant.
Thank you for letting me help you remember, I am so grateful.