LETTERS FROM LOVE — With Special Guest Arshay Cooper!
No more fear of self-compassion
Dear Lovelets,
Would you like to learn about the mental health benefits of self-compassion?
My beautiful fellow nerds, let’s do it!
Please treat yourself to this 17-page scientific research paper written by, among others, Paul Gilbert (no relation, but all we Gilberts are into self-compassion, apparently) who is a British, Buddhist-informed clinical psychologist and the founder of something called “compassion-focused therapy.”
I heard about this study on a Buddhist podcast that I listen to (double nerd points if anyone else out there likes to work out to the Tricycle Buddhist Review podcast) where the guest, a Tibetan Buddhist scholar named Thupten Jinpa, was talking about something that struck him when he first visited the modern, capitalist Western world. On one hand, he noticed that the culture seemed to be one of great self-centeredness and individualism, where people were encouraged (especially by advertising) to do whatever they wanted, and to give themselves whatever they wanted. But on the other hand, he had never before encountered people who treated themselves with so much self-hatred, self-criticism, and self-cruelty. In fact, when he started working with people in the Western world, he found that they felt threatened by the idea of self-compassion. The concept of self-friendliness seemed to actively frighten people.
This is, indeed, the world in which many of us were raised. A world that encouraged tremendous greed and self-centeredness, without teaching us how to lovingly place ourselves in the safe center of our own hearts.
And this is why we are here together, at Letters From Love — to reverse that training. We are here to learn how to become more self-compassionate, which as the scholarship above confirms, will benefit not just us but the world around us.
Leading the way this week is our beloved old friend Arshay Cooper. Arshay is our very first returning special guest (and he’s the one who coined the term “Lovelets”)! We wanted Arshay back in the fold because he has a new book coming out called LET ME BE REAL WITH YOU, which is about, among other things, how to take care of yourself and cherish yourself while also trying to help the world. Before this book became a reality, though, Arshay faced what every writer alive today has faced: the manuscript was passed over before it found its home. And so this week we are reflecting on the promise of rejection.
Thank you, Arshay, for showing us how it is done.
And thank you all for being here in this beautiful gathering of transformation. I love you all.
Let’s keep going.
Love,
Your Lizzy
Dear Love, what would you have me know today about rejection?
Oh, honey. First of all, let’s look up the etymology of the word “rejection.” [So I did.]
Okay, that was fun! You learned that “rejection” comes from the Latin meaning “to throw back, to set aside” and that over history “rejection” has meant to block from their inheritance, to cast away, to vomit, to excrete feces, to repel or rebuff a sexual advance, to deny acceptance into an institution, or for the body to not accept an organ donation — among many other uses.
What a vivid word! What an action word! What a muscular word! What a wonderful word! Rejection: what a word full of life, and vigor.
When you are rejected, it is as if you have been physically pushed away, hurled into a distance far from your aspirations, shoved through a plate glass window in an Old West tavern, sent packing, hit the bricks.
How wonderful. How ACTIVE!
My love, we say that this is wonderful because we here at Spirit of Unconditional Love Enterprises know that this world that you have incarnated to is a world of actions. You are not meant to just sit on a couch, gently fanning yourself while you sip tea from delicate china for the entirety of your life. You are here on this planet to have experiences, to take actions — and yes, risks — to throw yourself into the stream of life.
Think about all the times you have ever felt rejected. What caused the rejection? Not who rejected you, but what happened right before the rejection? Right before the rejection, you attempted something. You tried something. You took a bold action. You threw yourself in some way at the world. Or you threw yourself at a person. Or you threw your work out there. Or you threw your name in the hat, or your towel in the ring. You raised your hand. You asked for the job. You asked to be loved. You inserted yourself into the world. You pushed for something, you wanted something.
And, in the case of rejection, many times the world decided against your want. The world threw you back up, spit you out, denied you.
But what a ride!
Don’t you see the beauty of it, little flower?
You pushed against the world. And the world pushed back.
You would never have been rejected if you had never attempted anything. Don’t you see that? So rejection is a dance. Not a gentle waltz, but a slam dance in the pit of life. Rejection is proof of courage. It is one of the possible outcomes of trying a thing. Very few of your friends had, at the age of 25, accumulated a thick file filled with rejection letters from every magazine and publishing house in the country. They didn’t have those rejections because they weren’t out there sending their short stories and book proposals around. So they didn’t get the wound of rejection. They didn’t have to feel the pain. But they also didn’t get the high-stakes engagement with life itself that you were up to.
And the men who rejected you? Oh honey, please see something right now that you have never seen before — please acknowledge this: you went for it! You went for it, kitten. You dolled yourself up and put on your brightest smile and your nicest perfume and you went out there and tried to win that handsome man, that dangerously charismatic boy. You wanted those muscley arms around you. You wanted that intoxicating smell of a boy’s t-shirt. You wanted that square jaw, that thick black hair, those glacial blue eyes, that cowboy, that trucker, that guy with the guitar — always, that guy with the guitar. You wanted those dudes. You lusted for them, and you went for it! Don’t be ashamed of that, darling. You dared to live in wanting something. And sometimes they rejected you. And sometimes they purported to love you at first and THEN rejected you, which was even worse. Which felt like murder, which felt like being vomited up or shit out or tossed back into the ocean. Which felt like you were a rejected organ, a rejected manuscript, a rejected child, a disinherited child . . .
But honey — you vivid, daring, beautiful, hungry soul — you tried for something. In all your regret about the wounds from your wild past, can’t you be proud of that? Can’t you be proud of what you have attempted and lived?
For indeed, you have lived.
Rejection is never the outcome that you wanted, but rejection is so alive! Rejection vibrates, it shudders, it flexes, it slams with life.
We love you for every single time you have been rejected. We love you for every bruise, loss, scraped knee, bad review, broken heart, wounded ego, shattered dream. We love you for being alive. We love you for being born. We love you for trying to do this Earth School curriculum. We love you for knowing, long before you decided to come here and take form and incarnate, that the path of human life would come with pain and loss and rejection, and for deciding to do it anyway.
And we also love you for never rejecting yourself. At least, not for long. Not forever. We love you for ultimately always choosing to stay with you, even when others have not. We love you for reaching into the cosmos at your lowest moments and demanding, “Who will love me? Who will never leave me?” — and for continuing to assert that demand, that desperate prayer, until something showed up that would never leave you. Until, again, something pushed back against your want. Until something arrived.
We arrived.
The spirit of unconditional love arrived within you, for you, around you. Because you insisted on it, sweetheart. Because you insisted on this relationship, this voice, this connection, this unconditional acceptance.
And what brought you to us, on your knees?
Rejection after rejection after rejection.
So how can we not love it, little bird banging yourself against the window glass of your own heart? How can we not love and embrace every single blow and rejection that brought you, at last, to true love?
We know you are older now and more careful. More likely to stay in at night reading a good novel than to slam dance. More likely to cross the street when you see an object of lust coming than to throw yourself at it like a torpedo. But we don’t ever want you to forget — or to stop thanking — that younger, insistent, lustful, ambitious version of yourself who went out there and tried for something, and tried again, and tried again. Was she foolhardy? Did she aim above her station in life? Yes, and also yes. But how courageous she was — and still is, within you. How vivid. How bold. How willing to be alive.
We would not have missed a minute of the grand theater of your rejections and failures, dearest little one. And we hope that you sincerely can say the same. That you would not have missed a moment of it.
For that is what love would say. That is in fact what love DOES say.
Prompt
The question isn’t “Have you ever been rejected?” Of course we all have. The question is “How did it change me?” Or maybe “How did it benefit me?” Or, if you’re like me, maybe what comes up is a reflection on what gave you the opportunity to be rejected in the first place.
This week, an invitation to ponder the sting of rejection: then what happened? How did the associated wounds and wants transform you? Let’s find out: Dear Love, what would you have me know about rejection?
