A Sense of Self-Worth

Again I find myself saying, "It is time now for this."

We have spent years working with the yes and the no of our own worthiness, our own blessed being in the world. All of us have done this. Even the most apparently confident and entitled among us have secretly wondered whether they were worthy. We have stepped up and then back down again, up and then back down. All of us have done this.

It is time now for us to deeply and fully understand how profoundly loved we are by the ALL-That-Is, by God. It is time for us to breathe that into ourselves and move within its truth - this loving appreciation for us that enfolds us like a blessing, like a hand holding ours, always, always. So profoundly appreciated are we!

It is time now for us to begin to live our lives as infinitely and always worthy. We are allowed. We are allowed to experience abundance, ease, joy, love that surpasses any love we've ever known until now. We are encouraged to radiate our own perfect and exquisitely beautiful energies and to create for ourselves the world which we, in our best moments, would inhabit.

That which we have been accustomed to extend to others, the love, the appreciation, the benefit of the doubt, the faith in their innate goodness, the confidence in their ability to proceed in their own integrity.... all of these we are now being asked to give to ourselves. And to give them to ourselves in abundance.

So we begin to make statements that sound like boasting, that sound like vanity, that sound wrong to our highly trained selves - trained in self-effacement and self-denial and self-negation. Let these go.

Yesterday, I was graciously invited to speak of my emotional challenges if I cared to do so, in a circle of women. Oh! I do so love to sit in a circle of women! I spoke of my intention of becoming self-centred, as I have written in an earlier post. I could feel the response in those around me. I specifically said, "I'm practicing not caring what other people think or feel." It felt wrong to say it and it felt wrong in the people around me when they heard it. But I meant it. When you have spent your life living for others, feeling what they feel, doing all that you can to smooth their sharp edges of experience and comfort them when they are in any way off balance... when you are so habituated to looking to the needs of others that you have to force yourself consciously to look to your own needs first, then you might want to practice not caring. It doesn't mean that I'll never care, just that I'd like to have the option of caring or not caring. And anyway, caring feels like it's the wrong word, I just don't know what the right word is here.

When my brother died, I knew that I was broken, badly broken. I knew that I absolutely needed to be cared for. I was not. I cared for others, saw to their needs. And it hurt. And I ended up really badly ill. It was the only way that I could give myself the care that I needed. And I wish with all of my heart that it could have been different, that I could have put my needs in that situation ahead of the needs of others. But I couldn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to do it. And they, suffering as they were the terrible loss of a truly wonderful man, didn't see my need, I suppose. I've always been seen as the strong one. Many of us women have been seen in that way. How much of our supposed strength was more self-denial than anything else? And what price to us this illusion that somehow we don't matter as much as others do?

We've been taught, especially women, to put others first. It is time now to put our selves on a par with others, not above them. No. Not above them, but on the same level as they are. 

Now, and moving forward, our own wholeness and well-being is of the utmost importance and must be our primary concern, for we are the ones whom we have been waiting for. We are our own future and as those who lead the way for others, we matter a great deal. We are worthy of honour, of respect, of abundance, of love, of appreciation, of joy, of light, of our own unique greatness. And no other human being on this planet or recently departed from it can provide for us this sense of ourselves as worthy. No one else can do this for you. And you cannot do this for anyone else. This is our own. Each of us must grapple now with this sense that we are somehow unworthy. This is now a time when the old paradigm of some being good and powerful and accomplished and others not being these is exposed as an outdated illusion. We are ALL that we are and it is perfect that we are as we are.

As if it were in any way possible for you to be unworthy! As if it were in any way possible for me to be unworthy! We are divinity expressed in humanity's perfect imperfection, in human consciousness, as limited as it is and has been. We are God also. We are as much God as is the music of the spheres, the vastness of the oceans, the distance of the stars, the perfection of a wild-flower, the look in the eyes of a child that breaks open our hearts and minds, the undoing of us that we see in the eyes of a child. We are as much God as is all of that.

Breathe it into yourself as you breathe the air around you. You are invited now to feel this and to work it into your sense of yourself in the world.

Practice. Practice saying, "I am worthy." Breathe. Then say it again. "I am worthy of all good things, of all resolution of my soul's purpose through me, of my own creativity, of the perfection that I AM." Then breathe again - breathe! Say, "I am worthy."

Repeat as needed.