Beauty and perfection

Day 4

The good news: I've finally figured out where my beauty is and how to access it.

In traditional Indian culture, it was expected for every woman to get dressed up, style her hair, paint her face, and adorn herself with jewelry as if she was the most beautiful woman on earth--even if she is actually very ugly. This may be why I keep hearing things like "Indian women are the most beautiful in the world" or "All Indian women are beautiful." Any woman who treats herself as a precious and beautiful creature is extremely likely to also receive such treatment from others.

This morning I was getting my hair done, and since it was morning, I was ugly. My face looked puffy, frowny, and generally unattractive. As I looked in the mirror, though, I kept telling myself, "I know there's beauty in there somewhere. I've seen pictures of me that look really good, and people call me beautiful all the time, so I must be beautiful."

I could just as easily have said to myself, as I have many times for many years, "D*mn, I'm ugly. Look at that scary face! God, why did You make me so ugly? And I'm going to keep getting uglier every day because I'm getting old. No wonder I'm divorced and men don't look at me." But at this point, talking to or about myself like that feels like being violated, and I won't do it.

Sometimes I wonder if God is going to shoot me down for my arrogance, because these days I'm always calling myself smart and pretty and awesome. It's really not me who is any of those things. I'm extremely fortunate that God made me those things, and extremely grateful to Her for doing so.

The bad news: I'm tired and stressed out. I have too many spiritual practices, too many careers, too many interests, even too many wonderful friends. I love them all but I can't possibly manage them all.

The biggest thing is that I have too many expectations on myself. I expect myself to be perfect, to be extremely successful, make good money, and all that. Especially, I expect myself to manage my time perfectly so that I never miss a day of yoga training, my bills are always paid on time, I always eat healthy, there's always extra money in the checking account, I'm always 15 minutes early to work (and everything else), and I get 8 1/2 hours of sleep a night (or somehow become good and self-denying enough to get by on 4 like everyone else). Oh, and blog every day, both here and on my Brain Peace blog which I do for Dahn Yoga. And find time to practice bellydance, organize performances, and make my own clothes. And weigh 105 lbs. And learn to sing and act. And keep in better contact with all my friends, and learn every style of yoga, and read at least 1 new book every month, and play through all the Final Fantasy games I've missed, and the list goes on and on and on. Forever.

I feel like if I don't have all these things handled, then I'm obviously not good enough as a person, because someone else would be able to do it. In fact there's probably someone out there who is 18 years old and actively doing it, in which case I'm completely stupid and worthless and deserving of ridicule from everyone.

Yeah. What was that I said 5 paragraphs ago about not talking crap to myself?

I hope the Higher Power can forgive me for not being perfect, and even more that I can forgive myself. God is infinitely loving and forgiving in nature, but I am only human...