Pitfalls of the Seeker 5: Don’t make this a self-improvement project.

Don’t make this a self-improvement project. Self-improvement is real. People get stuck in bad places that they can learn to get out of. Depression, loneliness, and insecurity are tangible experiences that can be improved. But if you seek to reach God or enlightenment because you want to stop being depressed or anxious, if you want greater self-esteem or less loneliness, your search may never end. This area of understanding isn’t cut-and-dried. Some people feel tremendously self-improved as their awareness expands; but it takes a strong sense of self to confront the many obstacles and challenges that lie on the path. If you feel weak or fragile, you may feel weaker and more fragile when you confront the shadow energies within. Expanded awareness comes at a price—you have to give up your limitations—and for anyone who feels victimized, that limitation is often so stubborn that spiritual progress becomes very slow. To the extent that you feel any deep conflict inside yourself, a large hurdle stands before you on the path. The wise thing is to seek help at the level where the problem exists.

Somebody is standing on his head, somebody fasting, somebody forcing celibacy, somebody destroying his body, committing slow suicide, somebody lying on thorns and somebody standing in the sun, somebody sitting naked in the snow; all masochistic. If you are too mad after self-improvement, one day or other you will become a masochistic person. You will start torturing yourself. You will see death coming and nothing is happening.

There is no need to improve yourself. All self-improvement is a way to hell. All efforts to make something, somebody out of yourself, something of an ideal, are going to create more and more madness. Ideals are the base of all madness, and the whole humanity is neurotic because of too many ideals.

Animals are not neurotic because they don't have any ideals. Trees are not neurotic because they don't have any ideals. They are not trying to become somebody else. They are simply enjoying whatsoever they are.

So you are you. But somewhere deep down you want to become a Buddha or a Jesus, and then you go round in a circle which will be non-ending. Just see the point of it -- you are you. And the whole, or God, wants you to be you. That's why He has created you, otherwise He would have created you a better model. He wanted you to be here at this moment. He did not want Jesus to be here in place of you. And He knows better. The whole always knows better than the part.

So just accept yourself. If you can accept yourself, you have learned the greatest secret of life, and then everything comes on its own. Just be yourself. There is no need to pull yourself up. There is no need to be a different height other than you are already.

There is no need to have another face. Simply be as you are, and in deep acceptance of it, flowering happens and you go on becoming more and more yourself.