Reclaim Your Peace and Self-Worth: Basic Goodness Training Part 1

This is the first of a four part series where we bring our focus to Basic Goodness. This is how we can relax within groundlessness, because we get to know everything is okay. 

Discovering real goodness comes from appreciating very simple experiences. We are not talking about how good it feels to make a million dollars or finally graduate from college or buy a new house, but we are speaking here of the basic goodness of being alive — which does not depend on our accomplishments or fulfilling our desires.”
– Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

Basic Goodness is the most fundamental principle there is, and it is the fruition of all our training in fearlessness. If you can discover this inside and around you, it will change everything about how you experience yourself and your world; it is that powerful.

The word Basic here means fundamental, or primordial. It means that it is the true underlying nature of everything. It is unconditional. 

And Goodness here does not mean good versus bad. It is in the sense of just existing, having the full right to exist, with nothing to prove to anyone, and nothing that you need to hide from anyone.

So, Basic Goodness is a fundamental quality of all beings. Each one of us has the full right to exist in this world, no matter what we do or say or think.

We often get an experience of Basic Goodness when we look at nature. Imagine you were walking through a field in summertime, and sat down on the grass. There in front of you, you notice a daisy. You enjoy its daisy-ness, the white petals arranged around the yellow center, and the way it’s growing out of the ground at a jaunty angle, sheltered by the blades of green grass. You’re not thinking, “Man, I wish this daisy would buck up and turn itself into an oak tree already, because oak trees are so much better than silly little daisies.”

We simply enjoy the unconditional perfection of the daisy, without needing it to be any other way than how it is. This is having a direct experience of Basic Goodness of daisy.

Now, this is not what most of us think most of the time. We have adopted a belief along the way that says that we must do “good” things all the time, otherwise we are fundamentally bad people.

When it comes to ourselves, or others, we can have a very hard time connecting to Basic Goodness, even though just like the daisy, we all have that same fundamental nature.

Examples

In each of these it is difficult for us to handle the fear that comes up, due to not being connected to Basic Goodness. And each has consequences for us, our loved ones, and society at large:

Example 1: We sit down to our meaningful work, but we get distracted. We end up doing something else. Then when we see that we didn’t do it, a feeling of self-hatred comes up; we believe we’re a failure because we didn’t do our meaningful work.

If we knew our own Basic Goodness, not doing our meaningful work would not make us bad. In fact, it says absolutely nothing about our fundamental nature.

Example 2: A message comes in, and someone asks us for something. We do that thing instead of what we were going to do, our own meaningful work.

If we knew our own Basic Goodness, we would know that saying no does not change anything about who we truly are, and that we can say no without regret, because we are already working on something meaningful to us.

Example 3: We’re always keeping ourselves busy. We do a lot, but it feels like there is always more to do, that we are never getting through our list.

If we knew our own Basic Goodness, we would decrease our busyness, since nothing we do or don’t do affects how we love ourselves. We wouldn’t have to do anything for anyone else in order to be good or to be lovable. We would make choices based on what is important, rather than on what we think we should be doing.

Example 4: We meet someone and feel an attraction to them. We feel a little rush of delight that maybe this other person likes us too. But then they say something that shows that they’re not, and we go into a shame spiral. We begin to say to ourselves, “Of course, this other person would never be interested in us. Who would ever be, we’re a loser.” The shame spiral deepens, and we go home and hide away for the rest of the day, or the week.

If we knew our own Basic Goodness, when someone says no to us, we simply rejoice in all the infinite choices there are in life. It says nothing about our worth, it’s merely a choice someone else is making.

Homework for Part 1

Your practice is in directly contacting Basic Goodness. Extending that experience of Basic Goodness of daisy, and connecting with it in our real lives. 

1. Practice noticing all the little moments of basic goodness around you all the time. When you do notice one, pause for a few moments and let it sink in. Enjoy connecting with it for as long as you want.
2. Each night, before going to sleep, write down on paper 5 things that you noticed today that you appreciate, and as you recall them, let the feeling of appreciation for their basic goodness suffuse through you.

Share your Basic Goodness moments with me.