Welcome to the Buddhist Boot Camp Podcast. Our intention is to awaken, enlighten, enrich, and inspire a simple and uncomplicated life. Discover the benefits of mindful living with your host, Timber Hawkeye. In my last podcast episode, I spoke about self-worth and how we each have value, though many of us have lost our sense of value when we started comparing ourselves to other people or measuring ourselves against their expectations.
If we buy into a social hierarchy based on looks, race, age, wealth, or job title, we overlook the integrity with which a person lives, performs their work, or treats the people around them, and spend our entire lives trying to merely APPEAR impressive in the eyes of everyone else, who, just like us, judges everybody on what they do
rather than who they are. It is a vicious cycle in which nothing and nobody is ever good enough, instead of recognizing that each of us, including you, is inherently valuable. So, in an effort to dispel that hierarchy, I acknowledged the importance and value we each have by listing various job titles from brain surgeons to custodians, construction workers, ministers, teachers, firefighters, plumbers, cashiers, servers, flight attendants, politicians, nurses, receptionists, programmers, CPAs,
bus drivers, strippers, and so on... Strangely enough, however, many people were completely taken aback and questioned my mentioning strippers, claiming it was somehow out-of-place in a list of individuals who have worth. What's awesome is that this reaction actually drives my point home: even if we thought of ourselves as non-judgmental, there is still a trace of a social hierarchy of importance in our minds, where we gauge people's value based on our own bar of relative significance.
The whole reason I mentioned strippers in the first place is because of the chapter in Buddhist Boot Camp called "Insecurity," in which I disclosed that I used to be one, an experience that has taught me a lot about the hunger I used to have for validation from outside myself when I had no sense of self-worth coming from within. Those years were an imperative stepping stone in my understanding and then deconstruction of some social values that surround us, but to which we are
not obligated to subscribe. It all started back in high school while I was hanging out by a friend's swimming pool. My mother passively said to me, "Hey, looks like "someone is getting chunky." Mind you, I was 16 years old at the time and far from obese by any measure, but I must have already been insecure about the few extra pounds I had gained, because I started seriously obsessing about my weight after that. Within a month, I had my mother take me to Sports Authority to buy the AB Roller.
Remember those? It was the most popular, body-sculpting contraption back in 1993, and she asked me, "Why do you want this?" And I said, "Because I want to be a stripper one day." She laughed, of course, assuming I was joking, but I felt like the only way I could officially overcome the "chunky issue" is if other people pay me to take my clothes off.
But, it turned out that my insecurity had nothing to do with my outward appearance, after all, because even when I started stripping a couple of years later, with a killer six-pack and a fake tan, the pale, fat kid still stared back at me when I looked in the mirror. Now, I'm not blaming my mother for doing anything we don't all do every single day. She may have only said this to me once, but I continued calling myself fat and unattractive
for years after that every time I looked in the mirror. Your words have tremendous power, even the words you say to yourself, so please choose them wisely. My intention in sharing this is to bring to the forefront of our minds any residual judgments and prejudices we may have of which we are not aware. We say, "Namaste" to acknowledge that the divinity within me recognizes the divinity
within you. So, just like it's been said for many years that you can't love another until you love yourself, it is imperative to recognize the divinity within you before you can see it in others. Namaste. Timber Hawkeye is the bestselling author of Faithfully Religionless and Buddhist Boot Camp.
For additional information, please visit BuddhistBootCamp.com, where you can order autographed books to support the Prison Library Project, watch Timber's inspiring TED Talk, and join our monthly mailing list. We hope you have enjoyed this episode, and invite you to subscribe for more thought-provoking discussions. Thank you for being a Soldier of Peace in the Army of Love. 🙏🏼