Zazen your self

I don’t really know how to articulate this but it feels important so I’m going to try. I’ve been noticing this pattern in my behavior. I’ll do something, and then wonder whether or not it’s okay. Often if I find that it’s not okay, I try to hide it, or manipulate it, or present it in way that is acceptable. It’s like I want to do this thing but I don’t want anyone to know about it (it’s not one thing, it’s just having an impulse or even just starting to do something, and then wondering if it’s an acceptable thing to do). I find that I am hiding myself, or presenting myself in a way that is acceptable- but not actually changing the behavior.
Once I started noticing this, this hiding, I started to look more closely at my behavior, at why I thought it was unacceptable or what it was that I was doing that I was trying to hide. And what I started to see was that the things that I was doing, were myself. It wasn’t so much that the behaviors were good or bad, acceptable or not, it was that they were me and I was looking for approval of me. I was judging, me. I would show up, I would think “Oooh, is it okay to be like this?” and then I’d go, “I don’t know, but I don’t really want to find out,” and so I’d change the looks of things or the motivation behind them. I’d deflect the behavior away from me and toward “good” outcomes or “good reasons” for doing it instead.
But I finally saw this- saw this manipulation- and I didn’t really like it because I knew it wasn’t true, I knew I was hiding and lieing and I didn’t want to do that. So instead, I asked myself to be true with myself, to actually see my behavior, see it for what it was, instead of whether or not others would approve of it.
And how I responded, depended on what I was doing: sometimes I’d see what I was doing and say, “Oh yeah, not so good, you think you’re doing it for this, but really you’re doing it for that; which is fine, but are you sure you want to do that?” And so I’d kind of back off, realize that wasn’t what I wanted to do, and I’d stop the behavior.
But more often than not, I’d see my behavior as it actually was and say, “Yeah, that’s you. That’s what you do. That’s kind of how you see things, that’s kind of how you work. Are you okay with that?” And most of the time, I was. I mean, this is me, this is how I came out and who knows what’s coming next, but this who I am.
And it was interesting, because once I said, “Yeah, this is who I am,” once I accepted my behavior as a true manifestation of myself, I didn’t matter so much, or at least I didn’t worry so much, about what others thought of it. It wasn’t that I was going to act without regard for others it was more that, if they asked, I would say, “Yeah, this is what I’m doing because I think it’s the right thing to do right now. I can see how it might look, it might look totally different to you, but I’m being honest with who I am and what my circumstances are and this is what I’m doing in response to them. This really is me, believe it or not, this is who I am. I’m open to suggestion, absolutely, but I’m doing what I’m doing with thought, intention, and awareness. I accept it, and if you don’t, please let me know, but I’m definitely doing my best to be me.”
And I keep coming back to this. When I worry about acceptance or appropriate behavior, I look back at my self, not at the approval of others, I look at my behavior and whether or not it’s true. And if it is, that’s all I can do, and I’m okay with that. I’m not fixed in the behavior but I’m confident in it, sincere in it, willing to stick with it until someone suggests otherwise, until someone points out a delusion I didn’t see or an effect I hadn’t thought of. It’s like practicing being present with myself: am I just being exactly as I am, or am I adding things on to it, longing to be someone else, clinging to an image of who I thought I was, or avoiding who I actually am. It’s almost like I’m meditating on me, like instead of coming back to my breath in meditation, I just keep coming back to me, being honest with who I am, being willing to reveal myself to others because I accept what I am revealing.