An imperfect word

Article Highlights:

the failure sisters
a ring of falseness
my "weed" mono print

Special note: I’m offering a session special for the first time in quite a while. My NorthStar reading is available for 70$ instead of $100. It’s an in-person reading with an added written component. If you’d like a look at your year ahead or have a few important questions, this might be a good time for a NorthStar Reading. For more information, email me at mayetleilani@icloud.com.

Dear perfectly imperfect one,

I think we new age types get lost trying to perfect ourselves too perfectly. It’s exhausting and wastes time we could spend in satisfaction and joy.

Recently a client and I spent some weeks exploring the value of imperfection. It was illuminating. Here are a few of my ruminations on this topic from my Morning Musings. I wonder which one feels written for you today?

500 "Perfect" Words About Imperfection

March 7, 2024
Morning Musings
In general we tend to imagine others to be either far more or far less perfect than ourselves.

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March 8
What are imperfections but imagined outcomes redirected by life itself?

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March 9
We try to achieve a guarantee that things go as we wish, people behave as we prefer, and results conform to our singular vision… this is perfectionism. It is an attempt to control fear, to guarantee safety, to manage the responses of others, and to serve the ego’s need to be right, to be vindicated, and to succeed.

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March 10
Hoping for, waiting for or expecting perfection are activities that give our days a hollow ring of falseness. Sadly, we are trained to expect perfection of ourselves.

Doing the best we can, having a good enough day, feeling average, experiencing minor satisfactions… these all seem the failure sisters of perfection.

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March 11
Learning to love ourselves as we are is key to spiritual growth, accepting our imperfection in other words. Does that mean imperfection is the path to Enlightenment?

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March 12
What a robber perfection is. It robs us of our small satisfactions, everyday achievements, momentary joys. It robs us of our "imperfect" feelings. It robs us of the disappointment meant to turn our action in another direction. It robs us of self-knowledge, preventing us from knowing what we feel and why, who we are and how we work emotionally. In this way, it steals our days.

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March 13
All we judge as imperfect in life, in ourselves and others, are actually the vital building blocks for the important structures of our lives.

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March 14
There is a correlation between how much of a perfectionist we are and how generous we are with others and ourselves. Perfectionism affects our ability to have compassion, which effects our generosity of both giving and receiving.

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March 15
Benedictine Sister and social justice advocate Joan Chittister writes: "The concept of perfectibility, the idea that anything human can possibly be perfect…concentrates on the elimination of errors rather than the value of efforts."

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Guided to bring creativity into this reflection on imperfection, I started a practice each day of creating a quick mono print made from early spring growth gathered on my neighborhood walks.

Weeds, in other words - that’s what’s sprouting this early here. They actually look very sweet in my quick and delightfully imperfect little mono prints! Doing them just for delightful, imperfect moments frees me to explore and enjoy rather than try to get something right. It’s fun and builds skills that allow "better" art to happen spontaneously.

Today’s photo is one of my mono print moments.
Imperfectly yours,
Mayet Leilani