I Shall Be

In 1990, there was a small gathering of psychologists, scientists, and meditators who came together with the Dalai Lama to explore the topic of healing emotions. Sharon Salzburg was there—she’s a much-adored writer on lovingkindness and happiness, and the co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in the U.S. Their poignant interaction at the meeting is now legendary.

She asked him, “Your Holiness, what do you think about self-hatred?” Apparently His Holiness looked startled, leaned over to his translator, and emphatically and repeatedly asked for a translation of “self-hatred.” Finally, he looked back to Sharon, and asked, “Self-hatred…what is that?”

Hold up. His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who is considered to be the incarnation of the Bodhisattva of Compassion, didn’t get the concept of self-loathing—something that so many of us westerners know all too well? You know, DOWN on yourself, man. We live this way. When I first heard about this event, I thought, Doesn’t everyone hate themselves to some degree, like, isn’t it just universal human affliction? Apparently not.

Also present at that meeting of great minds was meditation teacher and author Jack Kornfield, who adds to the story. “Then, [the Dalai Lama] asked not only whether we knew what [Sharon] was talking about, but also if we ourselves experienced this self-hatred. And almost all the Buddhist teachers there, representing an entire generation, said ‘yes.’”

With his hallmark humility, the Dalai Lama responded, “I thought I had a very good acquaintance with the mind, but now I feel quite ignorant. I find this very, very strange.”

Some philosophical discussions of this story bring up the point that while it would be hard to say that Tibetan Buddhists and the Dalai Lama have literally never heard of self-hatred or self-aggression, it’s simply not emphasized in their spirituality in the way that it is in the western world. Maybe this is because they didn’t grow up with the Original Sin soundtrack playing in the background of their lives.

Thrown for a loop, His Holiness wanted to explore the concept of self-hatred further. He was not letting it go. “Is that some kind of nervous disorder?” he asked. “Are people like that very violent?” And then he delivered this white hot Truth in the form of a question:

“But you have Buddha nature. How could you think of yourself that way?”

Early colonists on Turtle Island were stunned by the plenitude they found here, attributing the richness to the bounty of nature. Settlers in the Great Lakes wrote in their journals about the extraordinary abundance of wild rice harvested by Native peoples; in just a few days, they could fill their canoes with enough rice to last all year. But the settlers were puzzled by the fact that, as one of them wrote, “the savages stopped gathering long before all the rice was harvested.” She observed that “the rice harvest starts with a ceremony of thanksgiving and prayers for good weather for the next four days. They will harvest dawn till dusk for the prescribed four days and then stop, often leaving much rice to stand unreaped. This rice, they say, is not for them but for the Thunders. Nothing will compel them to continue, therefore much goes to waste.” The settlers took this as certain evidence of laziness and lack of industry on the part of the heathens. They did not understand how indigenous land-care practices might contribute to the wealth they encountered.

I once met an engineering student visiting from Europe who told me excitedly about going ricing in Minnesota with his friend’s Ojibwe family. He was eager to experience a bit of Native American culture. They were on the lake by dawn and all day long they poled through the rice beds, knocking the ripe seed into the canoe. “It didn’t take long to collect quite a bit,” he reported, “but it’s not very efficient. At least half of the rice just falls in the water and they didn’t seem to care. It’s wasted.” As a gesture of thanks to his hosts, a traditional ricing family, he offered to design a grain capture system that could be attached to the gunwales of their canoes. He sketched it out for them, showing how his technique could get 85 percent more rice. His hosts listened respectfully, then said, “Yes, we could get more that way. But it’s got to seed itself for next year. And what we leave behind is not wasted. You know, we’re not the only ones who like rice. Do you think the ducks would stop here if we took it all?” Our teachings tell us to never take more than half.

There are two instances in which a wolf kills excessively. In both, the wolf is not well. A wolf may kill indiscriminately when it is ill with rabies or distemper. A wolf may kill excessively after a period of famine. The idea that famine can alter the behavior of creatures is quite a significant metaphor for the soul-starved woman. Nine times out of ten a woman with a spiritual/psychological problem that causes her to fall into traps and be badly hurt is a woman who is currently being starved or who has been critically soul-starved in the past.

Among wolves, famine occurs when snows are high and game is impossible to reach. Deer and caribou act as snowplows; wolves follow their paths through the high snow. When the deer are stranded by high snowfalls, no plowing occurs; then the wolves are stranded too. Famine ensues. For wolves the most dangerous time for famine is winter. For woman, a famine may occur at any time, and can come from anywhere, including her own culture.

For the wolf, famine usually ends in springtime when the snows begin to melt. Following a famine, the pack may throw itself into a killing frenzy. Its members won’t eat most of the game they kill, and they won’t cache it. They leave it. They kill much more than they could ever eat, much more than they could ever need. A similar process occurs when a woman’s been captured and starved. Suddenly free to go, to do, to be, she is in danger of going on a rampage of excesses too…and feels justified about it. … There is something about famine that causes judgment to be blighted.

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Words by Clarissa Pinkola Estés, PhD.

Scarcity thrives in a culture where everyone is hyperaware of lack. Everything from safety and love to money and resources feels restricted or lacking. We spend inordinate amounts of time calculating how much we have, want, and don’t have, and how much everyone else has, needs, and wants. The greatest casualties of a scarcity culture are our willingness to own our vulnerabilities and our ability to engage with the world from a place of worthiness.

After doing this work for the past twelve years and watching scarcity ride roughshod over our families, organizations and communities, I’d say the one thing we have in common is that we’re sick of feeling afraid. We want to dare greatly. We’re tired of the national conversation centering on ‘What should we fear?’ and ‘Who should we blame?’ We all want to be brave.

Our culture of scarcity is defined by this sentence:

Never _______________enough.

It only takes a few seconds before people fill in the blanks with their own version:

Never good enough.

Never perfect enough.

Never thin enough.

Never powerful enough.

Never successful enough.

Never smart enough.

Never certain enough.

Never safe enough.

Never extraordinary enough.

The three components of scarcity are shame, comparison, and disengagement. To transform scarcity we need to Dare Greatly; we need to cultivate worthiness, a clear sense of purpose, and we need to re-engage.

Here are the scars I notice most frequently.

Scarcity (Branch)

Self-Hatred (Branch)

Denial, as I mentioned, demonstrates that a scar is present. If you are so dug in that you can’t even see the pain in front of you, and you aren’t willing to unravel the pattern that caused it, then a scar has you in its grip. A scar is preventing you from doing all that a human can do.

Humans have already proven a powerful capacity for cruelty and destruction.

But then I remember: I’m not the only individual committed to this work.

We all do, in our own ways. This planet is home to billions of humans working with their scars, and I wonder what the world might look like if we all regain our full range of motion.

As I’ve grown up, I can see that denial doesn’t help anyone. It simply inflicts another generation with the same scar. It’s the same energy in a different outfit. If we continue to defer the psychological reckoning, it lands on the young.  

So, instead, I’ve learned to ask myself: “How do I mend the damage of my ancestors? How do I carry my European and European-American heritage with integrity?” I choose to work with these ancestral scars. I break up my inherited scar tissue by examining, investigating, and speaking about them.

There are oceans of tears women have never cried, for they have been trained to carry mother’s and father’s secrets, men’s secrets, society’s secrets, and their own secrets, to the grave. A woman’s crying has been considered quite dangerous, for it loosens the locks and bolts on the secrets she bears. But in truth, for the sake of a woman’s wild soul, it is better to cry. For women, tears are the beginning of initiation into the Scar Clan, that timeless tribe of women of all colors, all nations, all languages, who down through the ages have lived through a great something, and yet who stood proud, still stand proud.