you stopped, just for ONE day, making judgements about yourself. Stopped telling yourself that what you were doing or saying or thinking was wrong. Stopped “getting over” your neuroses and trying to get into your “calm” and “meditative” state (I’ve used those exact words when I’ve felt anything but meditative.) What if you stopped the should’s and shouldnt’s and stopped trying to live up to someone else’s values, even those people whom you admire? What if you stopped aspiring to be and just BE-ed? 

What if for one day you lived as honestly and as raw as you could – and told yourself you were right about every single thing you did and said and thought. What if you operated from the space that not one single opinion mattered except yours and that you had every ounce of knowledge, every piece of wisdom, every significant experience that you needed to live the fullest life you imagined. What if you welcomed whatever consequences arose from that day?

Bad or good, what if you accepted them because they were yours? 

Does that change the space from which you operate? Does it change how much you say and to whom you say it? Does it allow you to be more fully alive, alert, at attention with everything you are? Or does it make you feel silly, awkward, maybe scared?  

Perhaps it does both. Like it does for me every time I open myself up to, well…me. And while i can’t do it everyday, this exercise, this experiment in truth (Gandhi did a lot of these), is not one of delusion but one of extreme honesty and integrity in learning about myself. 

On that day, seeking nothing more, wanting nothing less, I am simply a vessel for myself.