My friend Jeff was explaining his new spiritual practice.

Over the phone he said, “I stand in front of the mirror naked and send appreciative thoughts towards what I see.”

“Okaaay,” I said, drawn out—spoken with equal parts cynicism and suppressed humor.

“No, really.  I’m totally serious.  It hasn’t been easy," he continued.

"The first thing my eye gravitated towards were all my perceived flaws.  But, believe it or not, with each passing day, it got easier—my focus got clearer and more deeply rooted in the simple appreciation of this body that has been given to me.  Something so simple has literally propelled my heart, my mind, my attitude to greater degrees of love than ever before. Go figure!”

Something about his sincerity and enthusiasm captivated me, melted my cynical resistance and urged me to try it myself.

At first, identical to Jeff’s experience, all I could see were the things about me I didn’t like.  It was remarkably uncomfortable to stand staring at my 5′10”, 48 year old frame.  This body relationship which had been flying under low radar for most of my life felt as if it suddenly were being broadcast in high definition.  How easy it would be to discount the exercise and find something better to do.  To be totally honest, I was a bit shocked at the brevity of hidden judgment I felt towards my body.  All this self-love I teach and talk about—well, you can only imagine the echoes of "physician heal thyself" resounding in my head.

A few days later, I returned to my house from a brisk walk with my golden retrievers.  The next thing I remember, I’m standing in my kitchen, clutching my chest, now tightening with pain.  Having had a defibrillator implanted there a few years back to counter a genetic “flaw", my mental diagnosis raced towards some possible malfunction.

Then, in a panic, I wondered, "Am I having a heart attack?"

The continuing pain and unbearable heaviness stifled my breathing.  Don’t ask me why, but I stood by the sink, grabbing the counter—waiting, telling myself I could tough it out.  The insecurity regarding my health insurance status only compounded my discomfort.  “What could I do?” I was still signed under an HMO in another state—a non-transferable policy.

Finally, surrendering my worry and my control, I drove myself to the emergency room.

My heart had gone into atrial fibrillation but the acute source of the pain was rooted in a near septic gallbladder.  I underwent surgery, a stint in ICU, and a frustrating recovery.  I finally made it home 2 days before Christmas, nearly 14 days after the attack.  And, now for the first time since this medical adventure, I stood in my bathroom recalling the mirror exercise. 

I approached it again, only this time there were tremendous additions under the flawed column of my mental descriptive page.  With surgical scars and a shaved chest hair pattern that resembled something like a spastic crop circle, I made attempts to send appreciation and love to what I saw.

It was far from easy.  In fact, as I continued, there were mornings of such tremendous sadness and vulnerability that I questioned myself, my work, my path, my life.  Yet I stuck with it and with each dedicated day, each golden thought, I began to take whatever misguided criticisms and broken feelings I had manufactured and began to slowly piece together a new view of me.

Some time around then, I received an e-mail that ended with, “Blessed are the cracked, for they shall let in the light.”

I smiled.

“Maybe that’s what I am—blessedly cracked.”

It seems so many of us are expending great amounts of energy in avoiding the cracks of life or, if they are undeniably in our face, masking them—burying the seeming uncomfortable vulnerability they bring.

Yet I can testify now, more than ever, that it is the cracking—the surrendering—the loosening of our grips of control which usher in the next great dimensions of growth.

So, I continued.  Day after day I stood before the mirror naked, attempting to love the scars, the “flaws”, the external and internal “cracks.”

A similar story could be told of the artisan and his own journey of acceptance.

Day after day, this artisan would fill the molds and start the assembly line process of creating the clay pots.  One after the other, these containers emerged from the kiln, each identical in shape and detail.  They were displayed to sell.  Yet despite his best efforts and accumulated inventory, sales were meager.  He worked even harder, producing more of the identical pots.  Still nothing shifted.  Finally, there were so many of the unsold pots stacked within his shop that he began running out of room to house them.  The floors were covered from side to side, corner to corner—the windowsills stacked high, every nook and every cranny piled high with pots.  With little to no room to move, it was inevitable this system would eventually breakdown.  And break it did.

One morning, while making his way through the crowded shop, the artisan caught his foot on a pile of pots, sending them to the floor with a resounding crash.

With a defeated spirit, he began picking up the pieces and placing them in burlap bags.

It was hard to fathom throwing the pieces away.  After all, he had worked so long, extracting the clay from the earth with his own hands, separating and removing all the pebbles and foreign matter out of the mixture before fashioning them into the mold.

He sat and stared at the pieces and uncharacteristically began to cry.

“How long has it been since I’ve shed such tears,” he questioned?

So much of his current life had been spent doing, thinking, planning that he’d pushed away his sadness and feverishly continued going about his work.  Yet sadness had never left and it pressed at his heart and eyes with an undeniable presence.  His crying continued until eventually, just like the final note of a song needs to be sung to feel complete, a last tear rolled from his now swollen eyes.

It was then that the artisan felt a strange sensation.

Best described as relief, he discovered an ability to breathe easier, fuller, more calmly.  It was as if releasing the tears had opened up more space within him and allowed fresher air to fill his lungs.

As he continued picking up the fragments of the broken pottery, his swollen, moist eyes spotted an old can of glue and a dusty tube of gold filigree resting on a forgotten corner cabinet.

Suddenly the fresh air in his lungs was accompanied by a fresh idea.

He began gluing the pieces back into pot formations, adding the gold in between the haphazard cracks.  The result was so startlingly beautiful that the artisan further expanded his experiment by adding color from old paint stock he had also long forgotten.

He sat them outside his entrance to dry.

The response was immediate.

People began buying the one-of-a-kind pots with a feverish zeal for now; the artisan was offering something so unique, so wonderful that everyone kept coming back for more of these treasures to claim as their own.

Today, the artisan continues pouring the clay in the mold just as before, but as soon as the kiln has fired them, he places the pots, one by one in the burlap bag and smashes them.  Thus begins the joyous process of gluing them back together.

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Most of us have, at some point, approached life and love like the artisan in the story.  We go about seeking love and offering what we think is love based on our observations of others.  We go about our lives focused on what to avoid rather than how much we can embrace.  We make considerations about our career path by what family and faculty recommend or by what statistics dictate is the next sure thing.  All the while, this safe, cookie-cutter approach to life is suppose to generate satisfaction.  It’s suppose to make us feel comforted, and keep us away from the pit-falls and disappointments in life.  Yet, ironically, it is those exact “pit-falls”—the heart brakes (or heart expansions as I’m learning to call them)—disappointments, stumbles and recoveries that bring about such rich and beautiful spiritual character.

Greg Baer, author of Real Love, says that true, unconditional love is “caring about the happiness of another person without any thought for what we might get for ourselves.” That and that alone is real love.  Not “if I do this, if I say this, if I give this, what will you give me in return?”

Real love has no agenda.

Turning that real love inward proves even more powerful.

At first, like the artisan with his broken pots, I simply wanted to hide all my perceived physical flaws in an imaginary burlap bag.  But something bigger was requiring me to change.  Something evolutionary was pressing to crack me open and usher me into a greater expression.

My healing process was considered remarkable and swift by most standards and I continue feeling exhilarated and renewed like never before.

After reading this, I encourage you to consider trying the exercise.  Stand vulnerable and naked before the mirror.  Cry if you need to.  Allow yourself to take all of you, even the “broken” parts and start the process of piecing your essential self back together.  Do so with an expansive, golden intent of who and what you truly are and consider the unlimited potential that lies before you.  By your willingness to own the attractive, unique aspects of you, the world, in kind, will honor the attractive work of heart that I trust you will come to embrace.