What do you like about the I AM Course, the practices, etc.?

Thanks,
Steven

After 30 years of meditation, I noticed that I could have been the house on that show.

I had spent most of my life, from the time I was 8, treating myself like an improvement project — a self-improvement project.

And the reason was simple: If I fixed me up just right — an addition here, removing a wall there, some new paint — I’d finally be truly happy.

“Happy” was shorthand for a lot of ideas of what I thought I wanted — calm, imperturbable, wise, admired, loved-by-all, etc.

And then I realized that I only believed certain things needed fixing was because of the idea of this imagined, improved, future.

In other words, it was my lack of self-acceptance that motivated a practice that says you should accept things as they are!

Or, better, I was trying to accept things as they were… so that things would CHANGE!

Am I the only one?

Once I got hip to this twisted motivation — and it was SUBTLE — I had to stop practicing.

Of course the obsessive interest I had with the workings of the mind didn’t go away (my parents got a note from the principal of my elementary school, saying, “Please ask Steven to stop hypnotizing the 5th grade class.”). And that’s what led to I AM… but more about that later.

What would your life be like if you couldn’t conceive of yourself as an improvement project?