Making Friends with Oneself

Well, as I say, making friends with oneself is a very important stage because although, for example, in Buddhism and in most genuine spiritual traditions, our identity with our small self is the main obstacle on the path to recognizing our true nature. Nonetheless, just saying, I am ego-less is not going to solve the ego, and bashing the ego over the head is not going to help either. You can't destroy the ego by just beating it up or denying it. The ego dissolves through inner wisdom and insight. In the meantime, as I think the Buddha recognized, because we're sending loving-kindness to ourselves, well, the nature of the mind, our divine nature, doesn't need loving-kindness.

It is loving-kindness. What we're sending loving-kindness to is our small self, our ego, to heal it so that it's a healthy sense of self which can walk the path towards benefiting its own dissolution and also towards giving more clarity in the world. I mean, the problem is that we see things so confusedly that even when the intention seems to be good, it creates problems because we don't have wisdom. We have sometimes great compassion, but the wisdom side of it is lacking, and both sides are needed. It's called like a bird with two wings.

If you're going to fly to enlightenment, you need both wings. We need to cultivate this inner friendship with ourselves, seeing our faults, seeing our problems, not denying that, but also seeing the goodness within us and the potential, so that like a good friend, we encourage them. We don't keep criticizing them or putting them down and making them feel worse and worse. We wouldn't have any friends.