I was driving by the lake, looking at the reflection of the winter trees on the surface of the water. Ice crystals sparkled across the mirror image of the sky overhead.
A darkness descended over me and a grimace came to my face. I felt resigned to sadness and hopelessness.
“What’s wrong?”
I looked around at the beauty of the natural landscape. I remembered how much I usually adore this drive. But where there is normally joy and awe, there was constriction and smallness.
I imagined shining a light onto my Being-ness.
“Show me.”
And then I knew why I was upset. I was very close to achieving a wish I’d prayed for and worked for. I could see how close it was, how it was closer to being a reality than being a dream.
I felt like this was the time to give up. I felt that it would “for sure” never happen, now that I was so close.
It was bizarre to notice myself thinking and feelings things that seemed to contradict everything I’d worked for. Why did I feel this way?
I felt as though it was only someone who was truly loved, known, and adored that could receive this blessing. It would be too good to actually come true for me. It was too perfect to actually become real.
I said this to myself quietly, and with so much assuredness. Now that I was so close, it was time to let go and work on a different dream. Because life (or something) would never let it actually be my reality.
It’s strange the things we say to ourselves, the secret beliefs and fears that guide our feelings, thoughts, and actions and go undetected.
I could now see clearly what I was thinking and how it made me feel. But I couldn’t change it. It was a belief I’d practiced for so long, that a part of me thought it was an accepted Truth.
Try as I might, I could not change it or go around it.
So I prayed. Or better said, I called. I called to my guides, my higher self, I even called out to mySelf. To all of the parts of me that come together to form a whole.
I said, “I don’t know what to do with this. I don’t know how to change it. But I’m willing to change it. I’m willing to change.”
I tried to find the best words. The best combination of sounds to demonstrate what I wanted, how I wanted to feel that was different than this current feeling.
But I couldn’t find it. I couldn’t find a feeling that was the opposite of this one. I could only feel unlovable, unworthy, laughable, and forgettable.
So I said, “Spirit, I don’t know how to change this. Can you see it? Can you see me? Can you show me how? How can I accept love? How can I receive?”
I said I was willing. I asked for loving and joyful clarity and ease. I asked that I be lovingly and joyfully opened to the possibility of magic, hope, and ease.
Later, I sat and wrote about my experience. A few days went by, and I wrote about it again.
I wrote about the ease by which I can descend into shame and how effortlessly I can withdraw into my own shadows, hiding from the love that I know myself to be.
I spent years dissecting these impulses, investigating the origins of my unworthiness.
In the beginning it felt uplifting and clarifying. I am this way because of that.
Aha!
There is empowerment in seeing something objectively, rather than fully identifying with it, and so making it invisible to your awareness.
More recently, I find that the awareness of the potential origins of unworthiness is not empowering or interesting.
I don’t see the Breath of healing there anymore. That Breath has moved somewhere else.
Somewhere that says, “so what?”
Am I supposed to hold on to the unworthiness? To examine my unlovable states of being?
Is there something here? Or are these merely dodgy back alleys of a neighborhood where I used to live.
Can I just make my way to the main street? Should I examine the dumpsters full of trash? Or should I just let go and hop out, make my way to a shower?
Historically, I first identified with the negative emotions and made them ME, and then I became aware of this and instead identified with the identification of the negative emotions. But that wasn’t me either.
And now a new stage has been integrating into my reality for the last couple of years. One that feels like: I am consciousness walking around the earth. Some streets are better than others. Some smell fresh and beautiful, like walking through a forest.
Some smell like dirty, city back alleys. And as I walk, I become part of my environment-temporarily.
As the stench of an alley creeps into my nostrils, my brain processes what I’m smelling. It runs through my system to be analyzed and understood. And in those moments, I am with that space fully, but that space is not me.
I imagine these spaces as invisible clouds or fog. They have their own characteristics, and as you move through them, you temporality bond or become of “like kind” to that fog.
I see this as our energetic landscape. It includes our own thoughts, beliefs, and memories. As well as sometimes the thoughts, beliefs, and memories of those around us. The physical places we go, as well as the mental places that we go.
And how we respond is showing us how we are analyzing or processing this data. If we cringe at a horrible smell, we understand that it is a momentary discomfort. Something unpleasant to move away from. We even interrupt our receptors to stop processing the data by plugging our nose.
The smell is not objectively Bad. But after our analysis, based on our thoughts, feelings, and memories, we’ve deduced that we don’t like it.
It’s the same way whether the discomfort is outside of us (a stinky sock) or inside of us, as a stinky thought.
I thought again about how the feeling of visualizing something desirable, imagining its birth into our reality, feels so different than the actual birth.
Just before the full manifestation, there may be hesitance. A feeling of unworthiness, fear, nervousness.
I pondered how I was so “caught up” on my un-lovability. “The universe could never grant me such a gift, it’s too perfect.”
Was I broken? Was I so horrible a person that I couldn’t even accept the reality of my dreams coming true?
A new idea came to mind. What if all these thoughts are just clouds. Maybe, just like in a human birth, there is pressure and intensity in the birthing of an idea.
Maybe my receptors are analyzing the energy data of a manifestation coming through, and they’re detecting the pressure and discomfort. Maybe the analysis says, “pain”.
And I relate that “pain” to my past thoughts, feelings, and memories.
Perhaps, I feel unlovable and unworthy and small – not because those things are true…but because, that’s how my system translates data that relates to “pain”.
It’s a funny thing, to believe what your thoughts tell you. And it’s a funnier thing to say, “are these thoughts true, or am I trying to explain something to myself?”
Am I small and unworthy, or am I consciousness that is traveling through a fog that is being interpreted as discomfort. And maybe in this moment, I’m relating that discomfort to “small and unworthy”.
Are we how we feel, or is how we feel describing the energetic climate based on our thoughts, feelings, and memories?
Today I’m choosing something new. I will not fear the birthing of my dream. I will breathe, I will see my pain, and I’ll nod in understanding.
I’ll say, I see you. It’s going to be okay. We’re walking through this together. I’ll know that the universe / life will not retract my manifestation because of my weakness, or my faithlessness at the final hour. I’ll know that life doesn’t see this as weakness, or faithlessness.
Life knows how birthing works. Life understands the nervousness in the final hour. Life smiles and holds my hand as something beautiful is born. It comes despite my apprehension and despite my doubt.
With Love,
Heba ❤
Love: 