I was reflecting this morning in quiet meditation before getting out of bed about how frequently I’ve heard others speak about their belief of not being enough.
They come to me to work on their terribly uncomfortable experiences of being abandoned by another human being, they come to work on not having enough money, on having too many conflicts with other people at work, on sadness around their children.
Everyone has stressful beliefs, it seems. And many, many of their beliefs point back to this underlying feeling: I am just not big enough, loveable enough, kind enough, fun enough, good enough.
Just so irksome, because I would prefer to be enough, and to be the boss of the universe.
Me, all by my little self is just such a tiny miniscule drop in the big ocean of the universe, and this is NOT a good thing. It’s weird at best, horrendous at worst. I have no power to change “THIS” stuff that I don’t like.
I began to feel this way about life during my first memories. I remember discovering with shock at age five that I was expected to go to school every day. When school first started, I thought it was a superbly fun idea and that my parents somehow were involved in getting me there….but as soon as I didn’t want to go anymore I was AMAZED that what I wanted didn’t matter in that moment.
I was going whether I wanted to or not, it turned out.
When I was about 8 years old my mother went to something called Weight Watchers. I learned that sometimes people on this planet have a problem with their bodies. They don’t like how they look! OR, they are thinking about food all the time (or other substances) and also thinking, at the same time practically, that they DON’T want to think about them.
When I was 10 years old I was swimming with my dad. My dad dove off the diving board into the pool and a few seconds later came to the surface with red blood coming out into the water from his head. Lots of activity happened, people were talking loudly with big sounds, rushing around, my dad was holding his head and getting slowly out of the pool in the shallow end, it looked like he was stumbling.
There is a flurry of images, activity, then fear. Then watching or acting, just movement happening. Things comes back to center, they calm down. People go to the hospital, healing occurs.
Things break apart, then come together. That appears to be the way of it.
But this feeling inside that I WANT TO FIX IT starts to grow, for some more than others. THIS IS AWFUL, I CAN’T STAND IT, IT WILL NOT BE OK, I HAVE NO POWER TO HELP.
Not enough, not enough, not enough. This thing that just happened is really not good, it should never happen again. I’m afraid.
When I was about 15 I started believing more acutely than ever that I was not good enough. I was selfish, I wanted stuff for myself, I wanted to be supported and secure. I wanted people to like me, I cared about other peoples’ opinions. I didn’t think there was enough love to go around.
I started hating my body. I started noticing that I wanted to eat like a pig, to stuff food in, to eat voraciously.
The more self-hating I got, the more critical, mean and nasty, the more I looked at myself and said “God, you could do so much better…” the more I wanted to eat.
And then, of course, the voice only got louder. So I started to seek for answers to this terrible problem called “Me”.
Then, something happened. The voice got so loud, the pain got so severe, and I felt so defeated and beaten to a pulp, that I became willing to open myself to other ways of thinking. It was either that or die, it seemed.
I was introduced to the idea that I could love myself just the way I am. And that meant, also, loving the world just the way IT is.
To those of us self-haters….this is a very foreign concept. If I love myself here, now, and the world around me….then how will I improve?
Oops….wait. To love myself means I need no improvement.
It means the WORLD needs no improvement.
Mothers don’t like their bodies, fathers get their heads cut, children have to go to school. These things seem to happen.
It is thinking that something actually needs to change that creates the feeling “I am not enough”.
I am powerless over the way the planet is run, it turns out. That is the reality of all this.
Doh! Gosh….and I thought I wanted to be the boss of everything!
Could it be that you’re enough, just as you are, in this moment, right in this situation, with things happening around you that feel uncomfortable?
“The Master’s power is like this. He lets all things come and go effortlessly, without desire. He never expects results; thus he is never disappointed. He is never disappointed; thus his spirit never grows old”~Tao Te Ching #55