
Practice 13
Noticing Criticism, Growing Compassion
Compassion practice is simply: not making someone wrong for where they are. Including yourself.
Self-compassion is a fundamental building block on which spiritual growth is built. Without it, it’s easy to topple over into ‘should-ing’ yourself and creating more burdens to shoulder. Spiritual growth shouldn’t be about burden, it should aim to support you as a companion would. If spiritual growth becomes a ‘should,’ your inner rebel can be provoked to act as an adversary that wants to get you to disengage. Compassion is key to building a sustainable positive relationship with accomplishing new habits and rituals without self-sabotaging.
Growing compassion is what love would have you do, what your higher-self would have you do not solely based on the concept of a virtue of a golden rule—treating others as you want to be treated—but also because developing a relationship with compassion leads to creating your own sense of equanimity. There’s nothing wrong with living virtuously, and there’s nothing wrong with realizing spiritual growth includes a benefit to yourself, but I come at this topic from this angle because expressing compassion is often held in the position of a sort of holy regard. It goes something like; Mother Theresa had great compassion for the plight and suffering of others, and we should all aspire to be more like her because there are poor people suffering in the world that need your help. Relating to compassion this way is all about ‘others benefit’ and thus compassion often gets put up on the top shelf of virtues labeled, “when I get through with parenting, and all this work or whatever, then we can talk compassion.” But it isn’t a lofty thing. It is a simple thing.
Having compassion means seeing someone with your heart.
One dimension of what’s wrong with the “Golden Rule” is that it only points in one direction—teaching us how to treat others, but what about the way we treat ourselves? How often do we sit and think about how and in what ways we would like to change how we treat ourselves? It’s not a normal practice, but if we did such a thing, growing compassion for others would become much more easy to accomplish. In fact, it’s the secret ingredient to becoming more compassionate—compassion has to start with the self. Self-compassionate. So what about a new Golden Rule addendum: “treat yourself as you want to be treated?” Or even more inspired, “treat yourself with compassionate unconditional love.”
The first place to look when attempting to grow self-compassion is noticing your inner critic.
The inner critic is the foe opposing your efforts to grow compassion, but its intentions are more innocent than nefarious. It’s just trying to keep you safe and keep you motivated, but its only language is fear. It’s that ‘voice’ made of your thoughts that likes to tell you things that keep you small—rejected. A recording that plays again and again, created from past painful experiences that seeks to judge and demean you as not (fill-in-the-blank: good, smart, pretty, wealthy, etc.) enough. Its efforts to get you to act are distorted as its only go-to motivational method is negativity, which only breeds more negativity, pain, and suffering. It thinks it can get you to change by lowering your self-worth and though creating emotions such as shame and guilt. Unfortunately for your inner critic, negativity, shame, and guilt are somewhat terrible motivators for positive change.
The inner critic is the shadow side of your self-motivation instinct.
We have an intrinsic drive to improve, to become our better self, but in that motivational energy there are two very different paths one can take: hugs or kicks. If you have a strong inner critic, somewhere along your life path criticism actually worked as a motivational energy. Because of that success, you internalized a critical negative relationship with yourself and made an internal agreement, “if I kick myself here, I will do this or I won’t do that thing that I know I should or shouldn’t do.” Over time, this gets re-enforced so effectively that you barely notice this dynamic and before you know it you are unconsciously enacting the same behavior aimed toward the people you are closest to. A difficult truth to confront.
The other path is the one behavioral science says actually works to motivate ourselves effectively, and that’s hugs. Positive motivation, encouragement, and self-compassion is much more effective for creating motivational change, and a side benefit of using this internal/external language is not having to live with someone constantly tearing you down no matter how hard you try or what you do. The emotional relief of that burden being lifted isn’t just a temporary release, if you learn to practice self-compassion regularly, the positive feelings of acceptance, love, and kindness will continue to flow through for a lifetime. Relating to yourself in this way will automatically grow your compassion for others as well, but how does one confront and defeat the inner critic?
The inner critic is most effectively addressed by accepting it compassionately—realizing it’s just trying to help you. Realize a part of yourself feels threatened in some way and the inner critic is trying to defend that threatened part by using fight, flight, or freeze tactics. Rather than pushing the critic away (resistance), respond to it with affectionate kindness, “I know you are trying to help me, thank you, but I’ve got this.”
An important aspect to realize about any internal adversary is that it is a disowned aspect of yourself that needs energetic healing. You can’t easily think your way out of your dance with the inner critic. That critic has been installed through an agreement glued together with negative self-esteem energy, and releasing that negative energy will make belief change much more likely. This is part of the biovibrational model: things are both material (thoughts and beliefs) and energetic and must be resolved at both levels in order to create radical inner change.
Another aspect that’s helpful is to realize that your inner critic may not be working alone. It may have co-opted help from its close relative: the inner perfectionist. Typically, when our inner criticisms are chronic and continual, it’s because it’s being supercharged by your holding some unrealistic vision of perfectionism. If this is the case with yourself, realizing that everything is already perfect, given the circumstance that created it, might be a helpful start. More difficult done that said, but the truth is your vision of ‘perfect’ is essentially your being mean to yourself and it’s time to let it go. Life is too short to be mean to yourself and it’s never too late to give love a try.
You don’t have to seek for things to change about yourself or even the world. You can choose to accept things as they are and let go of how you think they should be. You are living out your perfectly ‘imperfect’ human story and so is everyone else. You can own your ‘flaws’ and see them as your spiritual growth gifts. You can realize your perfectionism and criticism are just unresolved pain in yourself and in others who are critical, and seek healing. You can choose to not make yourself or others wrong for where they are at in their process. You can realize that judging others by your standards, and judging ourselves by other’s standards is just madness. You can let go of believing that asserting more control over yourself and others will eventually bring peace, calm, and equanimity. You can instead learn self-compassion, let go and accept everything as it is to bring your relationship with yourself and the world into more love.

Practice 13: Self-compassion Meditation
Use this practice when you need a moment with your self-compassionate care as well as learning a self-compassion practice that you can use anytime outside of the meditation space.
Self-compassion is a key building block in spiritual growth, so use this 10 minute practice as much as you need to. Move on to the next practice as soon as you feel that you understand and have internalized relating to yourself in a compassionate way.
If there are strong elements of an inner critic you deal with, dedicate more time to growing your self-compassion. It will help create balance and bring more positivity, harmony, and less judgment into your life.
Use the brainwave entrainment track with headphones to do your own unguided meditation or brainwave entrainment work.