Self Criticism.
That is so ridiculous! All you have done is forgotten what you are … and now you remember – problem solved! You – as pure awareness, as absolute nature – forgot what you are, and criticised your imagined, fluffed-up self, which had no true inherent existence to begin with.
We become so involved in our confused relative existence (I know I do) that we tie ourselves into knots, acquiring a good-looking identity for others to admire. Daft isn’t it? Of course, we have to play our social part as sentient creatures, but we don’t have to believe that it has any permanent reality.
When we are actually complaining about ourselves, that is our imaginary self – we are merely complaining about a temporary arrangement of atoms and ideas. Ridiculous! After we are dead, those we were trying to impress have long forgotten us…actually, they forgot us the moment we left the room!
If we spend our precious time criticising ourself and others, we become more locked in to a mistaken reality. However, we need discrimination: that’s how we learn.
If we spend our time
pulling ourselves apart,
we are merely rearranging the illusion.
If we recognise the illusion,
this, in itself,
pulls our selves apart…naturally.
Over time, we have made a few mistakes
(actually, it’s one mistake, merely repeated),
but now
we are facing the right direction.
.
BUDDHA IN THE MUD is a blog - a living book based on the Dzogchen teachings. Our teacher is life, and life is karma. We are all Buddhas in the mud of concepts. 
You know, so often when I hear teachers giving replies to questions asked by a member of an audience, I wonder whether there is any comprehension of the struggle we, as westerners, have with the concept of guilt. Listening recently to one such occasions, where a female student asked why she hadn’t become enlightened despite 40 years of practice, the “teacher” (who was actually a westerner himself) turned it back to her by saying that she still had desire there. She was still holding on to a wish for enlightenment. Maybe it’s me, but I don’t find that helpful – we are always so quick to condemn ourselves with a rueful smile and a dollop of humility…whereas I do find invaluable the reminder that self-criticism is merely a forgetting of what we are.