This article was waaaaay too close for me. It touched on so many things that I am going thru/feeling right now. I feel like I need to tattoo this on my forehead to truly embed it in my head so I can just move forward in my life.
The One Thing That's Keeping You from the Life You
Want
The author of The Seat of the
Soul and co-founder of the Seat of the Soul Institute explains how
unworthiness keeps us from our happiness.
By Gary Zukav
What is unworthiness? It's the experience of
having parts of your personality say, "I'm not worthy." For example,
they might say, "I am unworthy of the love that I have in my life, or the
wealth that I have." More commonly, they might say, "I am unworthy of
the happiness that I feel." Thoughts such as "It's too good to be
true," and "This can't last forever because it is too good" are
experiences of unworthiness. You feel unworthy of what the universe has given
you, you feel that you do not deserve it, that the other shoe will fall, and it
is only a matter of time before you will get what you really deserve, which
will be painful.
Unworthiness is the inmost frightening thought
that you do not belong, no matter how much you want to belong, that you are an
outsider and will always be an outsider. It is the idea that you are flawed and
cannot be fixed. It is wanting to be loved and feeling unlovable, or wanting to
love and feeling that you are not capable of loving. It is the feeling that no
matter what you do, it is not enough and that you are incurably inadequate,
intrinsically and permanently flawed. It is the fear of people seeing you as
you really are and the belief that if they did, they would not want anything to
do with you.
Beneath all of this is the experience of
powerlessness—of feeling powerless to be a real part of life, to love, to be
loved, to affect the world, to be heard, to be worth hearing or to have
something worth saying. It is self-loathing, self-hatred. The pain of
powerlessness is excruciating. It is the most painful experience in the earth
school, and everyone shares it.
Until recently, the pain of powerlessness has
driven our evolution. It has caused us to reach outward continually,
relentlessly, to change the world around us. Pursuing external power—the
ability to manipulate and control—has been our way of avoiding the pain of
powerlessness. Anything that we do to make ourselves feel worthy and safe is a
flight from the pain of powerlessness. Every pursuit of external power—every
attempt to change the world or a person in order to make yourself feel valuable
and safe—is a distraction from the pain of powerlessness. All the distractions
in the world cannot uproot the pain of powerlessness inside you.
Our history is a chronicle of the ways that we
have attempted to escape from the pain of powerlessness, or said another way,
the ways that we have pursued external power. Tribes fight tribes, siblings
fight siblings, nations invade nations, individuals strive to become stronger
than one another, or more seductive, educated, wealthy or famous. The list is
as long as it is familiar.
The pursuit of external power surrounds us
everywhere. We are continually attempting to mask the pain of powerlessness
from ourselves, and others are continually doing the same. Driving every
avaricious banker, sexual predator, workaholic, perfectionist and all attempts
to exploit anything or anyone is fear of the pain of powerlessness and the need
to escape it.
Our perception is now expanding beyond the five
senses. We are becoming able to see the pursuit of external power for what it
is and the futility of trying to escape the pain of powerlessness by changing
the world. When we look inward, not outward, we can dismantle the parts of our
personalities that have controlled us for so long—such as anger, jealousy,
vindictiveness, superiority, inferiority. We realize we need to change
ourselves instead of the world in order to liberate ourselves once and for
always from the tormenting experiences of unworthiness.
Spiritual partners help one another recognize
when a frightened part of the personality is active. They can alert you when
you're striving to mask the pain of powerless, for example, by becoming angry,
jealous or a victim. When you are not aware that a frightened part of your personality
is active, you forget that all is perfect. You forget to relax and enjoy
yourself. You become serious, concerned and overwhelmed. But if you were able
to say, "I am doing it again! A part of my personality is feeling like the
most unworthy person in the universe," then you could all laugh at
this.
The pain of powerlessness is still driving our
evolution, but in a different way. Instead of reaching outward to change the
world in order to avoid it, we must look inward to experience it, to change
ourselves, to create authentic power, and act on the healthiest parts our
personality that we can access in the moment. For example, we choose to act
with patience when we are angry, or to act with appreciation when we are
judging.
This is a very big change. It is a change in
the way that humanity is evolving. Our evolution now requires us to experience
consciously all the painful impulses that have created all the painful
consequences in our lives and then choose consciously to act instead from the
healthiest, most wholesome parts of our personalities that we can access in the
moment.
Each time we do this, we create authentic
power. When we create authentic power again and again, we become authentically
powerful. Each experience of unworthiness reminds us, if we let it, that now is
the time to create authentic power.
To learn more about worthiness,
visit SeatoftheSoul.com and
read The Seat
of the Soul. You can send questions to Gary
Zukav at gary@seatofthesoul.com, and he will answer as many as he can on his
website.
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