But we still don't want to be associated with the word:

I love you.  You're so imperfect.
I finished the job!.  I hope you think it’s imperfect because that’s what I was going for. 

​Nope.  Doesn't work.

Even John Legend's love song "All of Me," which celebrates the "perfect imperfection" of his love, sounds a bit off at first, and we sort of have to sink down into his meaning before we can stop ourselves from silently chastising him for even noticing, much less saying out loud, that his beloved has any imperfections.

The perfectness of the world, as it is, at each emerging moment 
is a mind-blowing truth every time we touch into it.  But the everyday mind doesn't like to be blown; it likes to understand.   So it works really hard:  labeling things and actions and even our own selves as good or bad. 

Thus imperfection becomes an enemy. 


Why does imperfection become an enemy?
The 1-Point of the Enneagram might help us respond to this question--because it represents the yearning sense we have for something very precious:  a paradise that we used to inhabit, a place and a time when everything was perfect. 

A sense, too, that we did something wrong, got kicked out of the Garden, and now we are enduring the excruciating pain of being cut off from Goodness itself.  And we will do anything to get back there:  work hard, do it right, make no mistakes, improve ourselves, improve our work, improve  our homes and children and pets. . .
 
Our sense of an unbearable fall from a world and a life that used to be perfect makes imperfection into an enemy.
​
But of course, it is not.

Imperfection ultimately does not even exist. 
Imperfection is simply a profoundly compelling illusion that traps us inside what Tolle calls psychological time:  a mind-created a sense of ourselves as stable, a sense of our lives as things that should not change without our express permission.  

When we say it in such stark terms, we see that the idea of doing it perfectly, doing it right . . .  is utterly futile. 



​Because "it" is already perfect.  
 We just don't perceive it as such in the flow of our daily busy-ness.
For it is our busy-ness, our daily-ness,  our holding on to past joys and hurts and our drilling into future plans and fears—this is what keeps the illusion of imperfection alive as an enemy to fight against.

Ultimately, then, no thing is imperfect. The unfoldment of matter and energy in time simply is what it is.

But most of the time, this truth is too slippery for us to grasp, and this is probably good.  Why?  Because as a concept (as opposed to a lived experience), the idea that everything is perfect is counterproductive at best and dangerously neglectful at worst.  (Think of Pangloss in Candide.)

And here is where my advice becomes less meaningful than attuning to your own inner wisdom.  (But I’ll give you first a bit of advice, just in case it is helpful.)  And then I'll offer some help in attuning to your inner wisdom.
 
Here is the advice, my dear friend:  befriend the paradox by attuning to your body’s infinite, unfolding wisdom.

And here is the help in doing so: 

Breathe consciously.  Practice yes-breath or alternate nostril breathing.  Or, just invite yourself to notice the lovely, magical, swirling place at the top of your breath cycle, where the inbreath becomes the outbreath.  Just notice it.  Two or three times a day is plenty. 
 
Move to the off-rhythm of life!  Imitate a 2-year-old’s facial expression.  Spread your toes and see if you can sense the dip in-between your second and third toes.  Shimmy your shoulders (just try it, just once, and then you can go back to what you were doing.) Surreptitiously smile and raise and eyebrow to see if anyone else noticed your shimmy.  Stick out your tongue without opening your lips.  If you live in Saint Louis, do a little soul dance.  
 
Do these things in the unfolding present moment, whenever you think of it.  Build reminders into your day.  Notice whatever shifts in you when you do the weird things above, (aka creative joint play).  Appreciate from your depths any joy, relief, calm, peace, or giggles that arise.  Ask for more and more and more of this.
 
Small shifts in the present now are the undoing of egoic patterns of behavioral, thought, and emotional responses. 
 
I deeply hope that these reminders are useful for you today, and for most of you, they likely are enough!  Yay! 

But if you are in a place of transformation and would benefit from individual support, we can easily have a brief and free conversation.   

(I’m actually unusually good at attuning to what is unfolding within people—clients, friends, family—which is why I’m developing this coaching practice, the central tools of which are available in this workshop—How to Live Unstuck, Imperfect, and Free.  
 
It’s also why I’m collaborating with other health-and-wholeness professionals in the Saint Louis area to create Owning Your Wholeness events. )

Appreciation all around!  And may you feel an ever-greater sense of unfolding ease.