Flawless
In the March 24 NY Times magazine section there was an article by Parul Sehgal called “How ‘Flawless’ Became a Feminine Declaration”. Most of the article is dedicated to the current uses of the word, mostly in terms of either natural feminine beauty or artifice. However, the article closes with this sentence: “Flaw” once evoked a shard; now “flawless” has come to mean plainly, powerfully, something unbroken, something defiantly whole.
I agree with this statement. Flawless means more than a lack of faults or defects—It means something whole. And who gets to define what or who is complete or whole? If something or someone embraces and includes what others see as imperfections into their gestalt, it is still flawless. (Gestalt, by the way, is defined as an organized whole that is perceived as more than the sum of its parts and not derivable by summation of its parts.)
Consciousness is fragmented by the dynamics of perception. That means we see this or that, taste this or that, and our consciousness gets isolated by the boundaries of our perception—we are conscious of this or that. But when the activity of perception is reduced and the mind transcends its bounded states, consciousness is awake to its wholeness, its infinity. Every woman is infinite consciousness in her nature. It is only our identification with the parts of life, be it our body, mind, moods, circumstances, that causes us to perceive our self as less than flawless. In truth, we are all flawless ‘within’.
But what about ‘without’? Well, that‘s the beauty of having the experience of our natural totality. When our conscious mind becomes accustomed to diving within during the TM technique twice daily, the experience of our unbroken flawless nature starts to be infused into our daily experience after meditation is over—until it is a permanent feature of life. With that stability and wholeness at the foundation of our experiences, we find that our potential to live life gracefully, successfully and flawlessly is spontaneous. Our relationships, careers, self-image, speech and action become perfect reflections of our most precious commodity—the infinite potential of nature’s organizing power.
Through the Transcendental Meditation technique, we eliminate our deeply rooted stress while our mind expands to incorporate our inner pure being; through this process we realize our self as an innocent reflector of a wholeness that cannot be flawed, and thus we discover that we are flawless.
About the Author
Janet Hoffman is the executive director of TM for Women Professionals, a division of TM for Women in the USA
