Tasting love in your cells and feeling the divine expressing through your life starts with self-acceptance. Holding within your psyche that you are both a fragile, vulnerable human and a magnificent, gifted, powerful being is one key to happiness. Most of us are identified as broken and insecure, or powerful and amazing. But what if we are all both?
We all have the duality of our humanity and our divinity. This perceived separation and contrast is more apparent to those that dare to achieve. For example, most gifted artists don’t have the psychological foundation to handle their talents. Experiencing the genius of their craft while having the vulnerabilities of being human can drive someone mad. I understand why Robin Williams couldn’t accept himself. I saw a similar split in myself when I stepped into my gifts fifteen years ago. I was able to facilitate great healing in sessions for others, but when I left the healing room the insecure little girl rose up to be loved. Feeling “her” fear and insecurity with compassion, I realized more gifts and let myself be loved in the process.
Our needs and feelings are the same, independent of what we achieve, express, or learn. Just because you are in a role of teacher, mother, actor, or doctor doesn’t mean your human self has now disappeared. Everyone’s feelings and needs are the same. When you express love and your unique self, it will bring up the next layer of humanity to be witnessed and loved. Compassionate awareness of your humanity allows your soul’s expression a greater foundation in which to rest.
Spiritually, when you accept your humanity,you realize the next layer of your divinity. Your vulnerabilities are the fertilizer to realizing a greater you. What you perceive as weakness is actually a strength.
We all crave interdependence, connection, or oneness. When guided by narcissism and selfishness, we search for love and identity outside of ourselves. When we honor our humanity (vulnerabilities, feelings, and thoughts) we organically feel a greater connection to our full Self (divinity). When we feel this inward permission and love, we then feel safe to be loved by a group, by Life, and God. It is “lonely at the top” only when we forget our own humanity. In humility,peace and greatness are found.
When you accept yourself as an equal and do not place yourself beneath or above anyone else, you stop denying your feelings and trying to painfully rescue another from themselves. When you know yourself as magnificent and flawed, you touch the cosmos. You stop giving your authority to be happy over to a loved one or boss.
When you feel discomfort around someone, it is not because of them. No one has the power to make you feel any certain way. When you don’t give your feelings or expression permission, your ability to simply be yourself is suffocated. Anything you use to shield yourself will eventually lock you in a house of your own suffering. Peace and authenticity are inseparable. Inner peace is a practice of being in the world without hiding your feelings, or trying to impress. When you allow the connection to your fragile and powerful self to be felt, you have happiness.
Rumi – The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your house empty of its furniture, still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.
When we are fearful of letting ourselves be loved (or in other words, allowing ourselves to feel as one) we dominate what we need. Every human must eat food. Yet our agricultural processes rape the soil of its micro nutrients, pollute the water with pesticides, and genetically modify vegetables that our bodies have trouble metabolizing. How has it become socially sane to spend hours sculpting, cutting, and fertilizing a yard until it is perfect? This same time could be used for growing food or studying a new language. We only feel safe in nature when we can control her wild ways.
We dominate nature and we dominate the ones we love. Culturally we are taught it is weak to need. “Power” is doing it all on your own, by yourself…and up a hill. How can we get our needs met and let ourselves be truly loved with these beliefs? Fearful of independent choices the “dominator” will impose his/her will until the “loved one” submits. For every person that wants to take someone’s power there are people standing in line to have their power taken.
As children, we are not allowed our feelings and truths. We are told what to believe, feel, and follow if we are to gain the approval of our parents or other authorities. We learn that to belong we must sacrifice ourselves on some level. Yet a fundamental human need is to belong and receive love! We “cleverly” join a group yet demand to be the best! This perfection keeps us slightly separate and “safe” from losing ourselves, yet never fully feeling free to BE ourselves. We let ourselves enter into relationship yet hide our deepest feelings; keeping that part of ourselves “safe” from being hurt. The problem is whatever we keep secret eventually becomes shame and “proof” of our unworthiness. In denying ourselves, we cage our Soul’s authentic expression in strategies of false security.
Hierarchical models of power and separation permeate our religions, psychologies and personal lives. When we admit with vulnerability that we are intimately weaved into the fabric of life we feel sweetly loved. Isn’t it a paradox that in consciously allowing our vulnerability, we open ourselves to be loved and give our Soul the footing to fly high?
