The Uninhibited Pleasure of Being Un-Self-Conscious

No Red-faced Blush

The Amaryllis showed no embarrassment. The flower was totally uninhibited, completely unashamed of lusciously displaying its beetroot red color. The delicate red satin beautifully framed the yellow, pollen-filled stigmas sitting atop the pistils, which in turn were posed atop the graceful, upwardly arcing, white-tipped style. Each flower part expressed the fullness of its nature. No part felt the need to hold back, to be preoccupied with that others might think, to obsess about whether their display would meet with others’ approval. Nope. The declaration was clear: This is who and what I am!

Nature’s beauty has this unselfconscious way of being fully its authentic self down pat. We have a lot to learn. Nature is ready to teach us, if only we are ready to look and listen.

Quiet and Confident Pride

What would it be like to be present in the world that unapologetically? What if feelings of shame or doubt about worthiness were foreign concepts, totally alien to the pride and comfort through which the Amaryllis silently announces its presence in the world? “I am here, right now. I am present. I am fully myself and make no claim to entitlement, to being more than my full and authentic self.”

The ancient ethical teaching called Mussar espouses the value that we each occupy “no more than my space; no less than my place.” How good it would be to model that in our daily lives the way the Amaryllis unselfconsciously occupies its rightful space while humbly taking no more than its rightful place.

So, I invite you to explore what it can be like to “show up,” to display your beautiful and essential self, without apology and without arrogance. I invite you to discover the uninhibited joy and pleasure of being a naturally unselfconscious self.