Can I Try That Again?

A lot of us are working through perfectionist conditioning in at least one quadrant of our life.

One way that can play out in practice is a sense of deep frustration, anger or shame that we read a situation wrong, took the wrong action, or generally misperceived internal and/or external cues.

Here's the thing. Life itself (nature), including our individual nature, is one big "do-over" machine. We are basically given infinite configurations of people, places and situations to bring our core conditioned patterns to rest. Life spits out opportunities in this realm constantly (the more we practice, the more opportunities we perceive, even amidst so-called mundane activities).

This is another reason why we say sincerity of intention is the ultimate protection. We want to know the truth... to live the truth of who we are for the sake of ourselves and others.

With that in our heart, we can badly misread what our intuition is telling us, or misperceive conditioning as wisdom, but the situation will always have a way of repairing - of righting itself. Why? Because it is sincerity of the heart - not our skill in "performing" our spiritual path - that is actually going to bring freedom.

Notice that the heart is always up for a re-do! For trying it again. For saying it a different way. For starting fresh. To the ego, being wrong - and particularly being shown by others to be wrong - is perceived as a kind of death.

"You can't change your mind about this or they will call you a fool!" "You can't admit this is the wrong fit for you because now they are depending on you." "You can't admit that that was the wrong thing to do or they are going to doubt all of the other stuff you have done."

Are there situations where you are currently believing some version of these thoughts? Can you gently question them? Can you bring presence to the fear underneath?