Truth: Being real is better than being perfect.
“I must learn to love the fool in me – the one who feels too much, talks to much, takes too many chances, wins sometimes and loses often, lacks self-control, loves and hates, hurts and gets hurt, promises and breaks promises, laughs and cries. It alone protects me against that utterly self-controlled masterful tyrant whom I also harbor and who would rob me of human aliveness, humility, and dignity but for my fool.” ~Theodore I. Rubin, M.D.
I can’t tell you how tired I am of trying to keep up, comparing and competing. And there really is nothing you can do that will make everyone love you, or even make some people love you most of the time. Approval and appreciation are fickle things, and even if you can get a person to tell you directly what it is they want from you, they might be confused and you most likely will get it wrong in the trying, and in the end neither one of you will be satisfied. This is all good news, because it means that you can give it all up, let go, and just:
art by egirldesign
Truth: You can start now.
There’s no reason to wait. You know what to do. Don’t waste anymore time beating yourself up about all the mistakes you’ve made and time you’ve wasted. Get out of your own way. Be where you are, embody what is real. Take a breath and look around, really look, see what you are seeing. Open your heart. “All the love that we are seeking is nowhere but here, tucked into this very moment,” (Julia Fehrenbacher from her Kind Over Matter guest post, “Peace is Right Here“).
Photo by Steven Depolo
Truth: You can create your life.
You can save yourself. You can accept and love yourself. You can create a life, rather than simply reacting to what happens, rather than denying or drowning in it. I don’t mean to say it will be easy, because most likely it won’t be.
Deep in the wintry parts of our minds, we are hardy stock and know there is no such thing as a work-free transformation. We know that we will have to burn to the ground in one way or another, and then sit right in the ashes of who we once thought we were and go on from there. ~Clarissa Pinkola Estés.
art my Dallas Clayton
One wish: that we all embody and manifest who we are.
Be who we really are, fully and utterly and completely love and accept ourselves, all the messy and stinky and beautiful bits. “Embrace your inner weird. This is the stuff that makes you interesting and gorgeous and exciting to be around. Get excited about the stuff you love. Wear whatever you want to wear. Ignore what everyone else is doing…be one of the gloriously happy weird ones,” Goddess Leonie.
Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others. ~from A Return to Love, by Marianne Williamson.
Open Space Practice, (AKA: A Thousand Shades of Gray) 