Kat’s prompt today asks, “Who could help you in manifesting your dream life?” and “If the universe was prepared to send someone to help, who would you ask for?”

My first thought was “I don’t need any help. I’m doing this for myself.” I remembered the Rumi poem I saw the other day that said,

I have been a seeker and I still am,
but I stopped asking the books and the stars.
I started listening to the teaching of my Soul.

And while that is true, I let myself think about it a little longer and realized there’s help to be had. It looks like this:

• A nice, kind publisher and editor. A team of people who get what I’m doing, love it, inspire and encourage me, help me to create beautiful things and get them out into the world. I love the stories of someone happily blogging away being approached by someone who says “hey, I work with this publishing house and we’ve been following your work, we love what you are doing — wanna write a book for us?”
• A tribe of kindreds that support me and my work. People who love me, who inspire and encourage me, who will gently tell me the truth, who believe in what I’m doing and want to share it.
• Kind and gentle readers. People who get what I’m doing, who need what I’m doing, who want what I’m doing, who I can inspire and encourage.
• The love, patience, and support of my tiny family.

Today Kat’s prompt asks about obstacles. “What tends to trip you up? What is your kryptonite?” Any specific obstacle of mine typically falls into one of three categories:

• A lack of confidence. I have forgotten who I am, doubt has crept in. Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche once said, “we think we are rocks, but we are gold.” He didn’t mean that we should feel like we are special, or that we should use this information to build up our ego into thinking we are better or more important than anyone else. He meant that we all, every being, are precious, have basic goodness, and that our true nature is compassionate and wise. We simply need to get out of the way and manifest, embody it. Susan Piver describes it this way, “Confidence is the willingness to be as ridiculous, luminous, intelligent, and kind as you really are, without embarrassment.”
• A need to be loved. When we are babies, we depend on others to care enough about us so that they will care for us, feed us and keep us safe. We would die without their love. Somehow as an adult I haven’t been able to let this go. I find myself doing things and not doing other things in an attempt to earn the affection of others. It is too important to me, still, that people like me, that I don’t make them uncomfortable or irritated, that I give them what they want, need, like, believing that they will then do the same for me. I forget that I can be love, take care of myself, that I can be my own best friend, save myself.
• Being stuck, in old habits, ways of being. For example, when I’m tired and what I need is real rest, maybe even sleep, what I do instead is either push through it, do more, try harder, and get overwhelmed, or I numb out, shut down, watch TV or eat, reject rest, resist the letting go.

The bigger issue: confusion. A lack of confidence is confusion about who I am, what I’m capable of, what I’m allowed to do and be. A need to be loved is confusion about my own capacity to be love. Being stuck is confusion about reality, an illusion about my ability to move, what’s really stopping me, holding me back. I am my biggest obstacle.