Excerpt from a YouTube conversation titled "Health Challenges" in which a speaker describes recovering from medication side effects after a kidney transplant. The speaker recounts prolonged exhaustion, sleeplessness, and emotional flatness, and explains how a spiritual teacher named Faisal used tender acceptance to reveal and heal deep self-rejection, enabling the speaker to access self-compassion and renewed emotional availability.
Could you talk about an experience you've had in your life, perhaps with a spiritual teacher that impacted you deeply?
Well, the most recent one that was most impactful was recovering from medication side effects following my kidney transplant and being in a state of sleeplessness, exhaustion, irritability, emptiness for the better part of five years. And using an act of will and remembrance of what it was like before, I was able to maintain. I was able to maintain my practice, maintain my friendships, but there was no joy. There was really very little new inspiration or creativity. It was really about survival. And I went to my teacher at the time, Faisal, and it was early on, like the second session, and I said to him, you know, I've really been feeling just so empty and flat and unmotivated. And his response was, good. And I said, I don't think you understand me. I'm not talking about the Buddhist kind of emptiness. I'm talking about flat unmotivated in a completely sincere way. Again went good. And then we went on to talk about it, and he said to me that he was so moved by my authenticity at being able to face my emptiness that it didn't need to be changed. It was perfectly fine that I was empty.
Fine for him to say.
Yeah, fine for him to say. And the fact that he was in a state of tender acceptance, it revealed inside me that I was really unhappy with myself. What was wrong with me that I wasn't able to be the same old guy that was able to be inspired and creative and fulfilled. And it allowed me to experience a level of self rejection and judgment that I really wasn't aware of beforehand. I thought it was just the effects of the medication and that tender acceptance. I suddenly, after he explained it to me and I just really, literally looked in his eyes and I felt him just loving me, like, oh, you're being authentic and you've gone through this struggle and I feel for you and with you. And I could feel that part of me that suddenly could start to feel for me. And with me coexisting with the symptoms that were going on, and I got this goose pimple rush through my body, and it just started shooting and shooting. And it was just an experience of, well, being, that I could love myself. I was experiencing myself, loving myself, even though at another level I was still tired and empty. That was the beginning because he was always continuously meeting me with that kind of tender acceptance. And that tender acceptance really is. Was the healing experience itself. And it was like, suddenly you're living in a color that's blue. And Suddenly you're seeing a color red. It was like that kind of demarcation. I needed to feel the contrast of feeling and being. And it became evident that what I was really most suffering from was being critical towards myself in a very subtle way that I couldn't see, even though I had been teaching it for years. So the experience was one that was very subtle but permanent. And from that time on, there's been an internal experience of tenderness ready to greet me much more frequently than ever before. No matter what state I've been in, there's been that quality that's been more available.
You're describing a person that was able to mirror, that was open enough. And in that moment you were to mirror a part of you that, to me, you're describing the paradox. He mirrored your self rejection. It wasn't just medication. He mirrored self rejection, which brought, paradoxically, acceptance in a certain peace.
In a certain way. He mirrored self acceptance, which illuminated self rejection. And it's like you can only really hear the music if it's playing. And my awareness was already saying, I'm doing the best I can and I deserve to be loved. And I was already saying those things to myself. But down deep, my subconscious wasn't happy with me. Down deep, I thought I was doing something wrong. And I couldn't believe that my body was capable of feeling good goose pimples. I thought my electrical system was dead. So it became obvious that it was a level of self compassion and self tenderness that was missing. And like you're saying, the self rejection was exposed for what it was.
