My 2 bits:
Adding the elusiveness of LOVE to the equation: The inner critics are all PART of you, and as such not whole in themselves.
All of us know people, who are hard to love, because they are (all of the dis-qualities shown in the video) annoying as hell, when they let loose. But all life wants to live – strangely enough even abstract, inner thoughts of seemingly independant character chattering away…! Why not IN THE ONSET respect that desire to LIVE by looking at THAT as something needing YOUR help, rather than the other way round?
It IS stretching it a bit, but if you can look at each of the voices with love, or at least the respect that any life should command by just being different from you, inside that attention is all of the “things” that each of the voices are missing to become whole. YOUR willingness to integrate them into a whole, where they become your (albeit strange and weird and winey and cowardly and etc) close friends, filled with good qualities and the wisdom of having focused on something for long enough to actually understand the qualities of it. “Why strive for perfection?” Yes, why would that in any way be relevant – what are the lessons learned from that? “Why shut out the criticism and the hate?” Yes, why indeed put a value to that, which breaks the good stuff? And so forth.
The voices does not make you unloved. The are a sign of love needed. That you are worthy of love. From your self. These voices are you, bro, sis. And they are all there to remind you what has value. If you push them away, they will keep coming back to remind you of a bigger picture. Which is that you are independant from everything else as a singular organism. And as you listen to your own helpers, needy and cringy as they can be, you will be able to listen to the same voices in other people, in movie scripts and books and other works of art. In systems design, in curriculums, in party politics and diplomacy. They are everywhere, consciously and unconsciously trying to make you perform in a certain way. And there is nothing wrong in that. Once you can see it.
And you can, if you love your own. And offer them a place inside of you. If you offer them a home.
My own unloved voices take turns over the month, but Nelly the Nihilist is the hardest to love. I find it really really hard to give love to a part of me questioning every bit of meaning – but as I have been through a lot of pain over loss of people and purpose over the past 13 years this is also the voice needing the most comforting. And one I find really hard to give.
HOW love someone, who has given up?
Hére she is:
