“There is only one you, it is truer than true. No one on earth is more youer than you.” –Dr. Seuss

When Katharine (not her real name) came to my office for counseling, she presented me with a list of things she wanted to change about herself. She was a screenwriter and was experiencing writer’s block. She felt insecure about her abilities as a writer, and her insecurities spilled over into other areas of her life. She was unhappy with her weight, her appearance, her relationships. We worked to heal some underlying issues, but real healing began when she experienced an epiphany that sparked a profound sense of self-acceptance.

When she came in for her session one Thursday morning, she reported that she had suddenly started experiencing a heightened sense of self-awareness. She clearly saw her behavior, her thoughts, her feelings in a way she hadn’t experienced before. She said it was disconcerting to see herself with such clarity, but that there was a sense of relief too. This is who she was, and as much as she wished she were different in some ways, she saw the futility in resisting what she saw—resisting herself. She was able to see herself with humor. This clarity resulted in a kind of self-acceptance that was deeper than merely psychological. It was a love for herself as a part of humanity, a part of existence as a whole. Her life began to change as a result of her realization.

In my psychology practice, I work with clients to heal traumatic memories, to change limiting thought patterns, and to create life-supporting habits. But true healing happens on a level deeper than our psychology. Like Katharine, we need a shift in consciousness, an expansion of our awareness. At the ashram in India, we were told that spiritual growth involves three things: “awareness, awareness, and awareness.”

Arriving at the ashram in India, I was dismayed when we were informed  that working with our psychology was only rearranging the furniture in the prison of the mind. Until we transcend the mind, we will never be truly free. As a psychotherapist, I wanted to feel that my work was really helping my clients grow and evolve. Later, I realized what they were saying doesn’t mean psychological work has no value. It is important sometimes to “rearrange the furniture” in order to create the stability in our system necessary to evolve beyond our ego-self.

People often come to counseling wanting to change themselves in some fundamental way. Ultimately, they want to be happy, and that involves healing the inner conflict and coming to a deep self-acceptance. Psychotherapy can help make our lives more manageable, stable, and comfortable. We can adopt habits that are more life-supporting, and we can learn to be kinder to ourselves. But the shift like the one Katharine experienced is a fundamental change in our perspective of ourselves and our lives.

Accepting ourselves is, ironically, realizing there is no separate person to accept. It is living ‘what is’ moment to moment. It is realizing you are not separate from ‘what is.’ My teacher at the ashram explained it this way: “You=suffering.” When the little egoic you disappears there is no longer a subject and object, there is no one to suffer. This does not preclude psychological work. We exist on multiple levels—physical, emotional, mental, spiritual– and all levels must be addressed in one way or another.

Eastern thought has seeped into Western psychology, making it more holistic and therefore, more effective. The West tends to view the self as a solid entity that needs to be worked on, changed, ‘fixed.’ The self, according to Eastern thought, is more in keeping with recent scientific research, which points to the fact that the sense of a solid, separate self, continuous in time is a function of certain parts of the brain—not an ultimate truth. As the spiritual masters tell us, at the deepest level of our being, we are unlimited, an intrinsic part of the whole. There is nothing to become, nothing to accept or reject, because we are always whole and complete and perfect.

You may not feel like you are perfect. You may feel you are full of flaws and defects. But can you recognize that even with your perceived faults and weaknesses, there is perfection in your uniqueness? There are 7.5 billion of us on the planet, each expressing an aspect of the Infinite. Just as an individual wave on the surface of the ocean is a singular expression of the ocean, we are each perfectly unique expressions of the one underlying existence. In this recognition lies our ultimate healing.

The Dr. Seuss quote above is one of my favorites. But when I quoted it to a spiritual friend once, he said, “Only there is no you.”

Consider This: Can you embrace all your perceived flaws as a part of your perfect design? Do you recognize yourself as an expression of the One?