Many if not most of us
were taught from a very young age that life is very hard and unfair, a constant
struggle, and that as humans we really can’t trust one another or even
ourselves for that matter. Furthermore, if this isn’t our experience, then we
must be doing something wrong and we don’t deserve to be happy. And while we
can hopefully entertain that this isn’t exactly the healthiest outlook to pass
on, I don’t feel that we intend to necessarily cause harm by demonstrating this
to our children. In fact, I feel most parents would say they’re trying to
protect and prepare their kids. But then again, where does this need to want to
“prepare” them to struggle come from? Well, from OUR parents, right? And from
theirs? And theirs? Well, where did this consciousness of lack and imperfection
and fear truly begin? When did we begin to view life as something we need to
survive rather than thrive in?
I remember as a child
the moment I realized that adults were actually not these “all-knowing” beings
that many of them appeared or claimed to be and even as a child I knew that I
was onto a higher level of knowing than many of the adults around me, simply
for the fact I had an inner understanding deep down that life actually
wasn’t meant to be hard, that it was fair, and that
it wasn’t meant to be such a struggle if you just learned how
to trust and work with it (and yourself).
I somehow just knew
that we, all of us, were meant for greater things than the daily small talk and
stresses and that for those of us who had the courage to go for it; to go
against what we were told how life should be, were the ones
who were actually HAPPY. Why? Because they were taking control over their own
happiness; they made it an inside job. I didn’t know how to
consciously structure this awareness at the time, but looking around at all
these adults telling me what it takes to live a happy life (by acquiring more
and more stuff and comparing yourself to others) and yet seeing for the most
part how miserable they all were; well, I knew something was up. And unlike
most people under the age of 10, I spent much of my time pondering things like
this and trying to uncover this and other mysteries of the workings of life and
the universe and what it means to be a (happy) human.
Needless to say…this
made me a pretty strange kid.
Well, that and the
fact I could see auras and energies! But seriously, I’m not saying
that I was immune to establishing negative core beliefs about myself. I did
form several, just like everyone else around me, and eventually even my own
inner knowing was tested and layered over with false perceptions of the world
around me that I started to convince myself were real. Slowly but surely I too
fell victim to core beliefs (or what I now call “shadows”) that had me
believing I didn’t deserve love, peace, or happiness in my life, and for years
I played out this drama to convince myself it was all true…
The biggest ones I
personally took on were around self-esteem and having fear around being who I
really am. I knew I was “different” and for a long time I let the harsh words
of other kids putting me down for the weird things I’d say crush my self-esteem
and make me shrink so small like a turtle going deep into its shell. I learned
to believe that my opinions were not important and that I had nothing of value
to say. Eventually this would manifest as different habits including mumbling
when I spoke and a severe fear of public speaking. Eventually as a teen, I
developed some serious resentment as I rebelled through poetry full of morbid
angst and hatred for a world that could never understand me. Do you see how
dangerous believing the opinions of others are? And this is what we’ve done as
children before we had a conscious choice as to whether or not to do so. Now,
if anything isn’t fair in life, it would be that. As children we are literal sponges
of words and emotions and unable to always coherently process them, we bury
them deep with our psyches where they surface later in life in many different
ways.
I’m sure some of you
can relate. When you feel like no one understands you, you inevitably feel
alone and tend to withdraw and I think this happens to so many of us for so
many different reasons. Whether we are taught we aren’t good enough or too fat
or told we’re stupid. Words and actions are so damaging and the truth is they
stick with us well into adult-hood. So, literally all of those issues you are
still having and are yet to identify; the causes are literally rooted in your
most early years of life. And this is how we always work with shadows to heal
them…we go back to our childhood when it all started.
When we ask various
people about their childhoods, we can get a number of varying responses ranging
from quite positive to quite negative and even these ends of the spectrum have
their own light and dark corners. With so many variables, saying that one had a
“good” or “bad” childhood completely is rather difficult to do. And with good
reason. We are multi-faceted beings and we are here to experience not just one
end of the physical spectrum of reality, but everything in between. Each corner
of space and time offers a great lesson if we are open to it. And perhaps the
current paradigm of being in a cycle of “lack” and seeing life as a mere
struggle we need to survive is our greatest lesson yet.
For in this end of the
spectrum, we have lost sight of our divinity and greatness. We are seeing a
place in reality where Source or God doesn’t exist and this is merely
impossible. We’ve convinced ourselves that there is even a chance that
imperfection exists in the Universe as even that which appears imperfect just
IS. Perhaps in the vibration of struggle, we learn to surrender. And perhaps in
surrendering we find our true strength.
When we teach others,
especially children that they must “earn” love, then we are convincing them
they are anything less than divine creations, which is false information…we
have lied to them. And children being children will know this on a soul level
and receiving this conflicting information will cause an energetic disturbance
they will not and cannot process, thus manifesting in harmful core beliefs
about themselves they will carry into their adult lives. We all do this and
have had this done to us. Hopefully not out of intention, but out of ignorance,
and now with awareness, we all have the choice to take heed with our words,
with children and all people; even ourselves.
To thrive in life, we
are taught we must get the degrees and climb the corporate ladder to “success”.
But then again, that depends on what your definition of success is, which is
nowadays meaning many things to many different people. However, regardless of
how you define success, one thing that remains abundantly clear that everyone
wants is…well, abundance, and happiness. And we are finally agreeing on what it
really takes to get there. It’s not “stuff”, well, not material stuff anyways.
It’s the good stuff, going on within you. More specifically, what YOU think and
what YOU think of YOU.
While hard work is an
inevitable part of reaping the fruits of life’s abundance, life doesn’t have to
always BE hard. If you’ve come from a particularly difficult
upbringing, or from a very poor family, you might have trouble entertaining any
other concept than life is ALWAYS hard and ALWAYS a struggle, because that has
ALWAYS been your experience growing up. But even if you grew up in a very wealthy
family, chances are still good that you may have been ingrained with core
beliefs that put a damper on your sense of self-worth; which is really what
determines how much or how little we truly allow ourselves to suffer in life.
Or in other words, how hard we allow things to be before we finally say,
“Enough is enough!” In the age where the American Dream has literally turned
into a nightmare, it’s up to each and every one of us to wake up to our own
creative power and start thriving in life!
Believe you can…and
you’re halfway there.
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