I’m afraid of being abandoned. I feel shame when I think I’m being rejected and not seen as I am. I love solitude, but I am terrified of not being able to choose aloneness.
I notice a deep panic ripples through my nervous system when I let someone in, allow myself to feel that I might matter to another person; allow another to matter to me. What if I become dependent? What if they depend on me? Ugh . . . anxiety.
I want a specific outcome, a hope, an imagining or a belief about how things could be . . . my marriage, my career, my friendships. But alas, the crushing realization dawns that things weren’t ever really going to turn out the way I thought they would. I’m a loser, a fuck-up, a hopeless excuse for a human being.
Worst possibility of all?? Biggest fear? I am already loved, as I am, all imperfections visible and known. This is a fact, a truth that emerges as my beliefs of unlovability dissolve. When I am entirely seen and fully held, it is the end of my world as I have known it, all expectations, dashed. Divine, Supreme, The Mother, God is always seeing me, and holding me, whole and beautiful. But I am not always knowing, remembering, sensing the constancy of Presence.
I often feel like I’m frantically dog-paddling, aware that as this revelation works its way into my being, “I” will never be the same again. No turning back. No more pretending I am anything other than radiant and whole. I watch in astonishment as the lie of unworthiness unwinds in my body, the truth softening my connective tissue, relaxing my solar plexus, opening my sinuses. I know I will no longer be able to stand on the sidelines, taking refuge in the victim stories that repeat the lie of unworthiness.
While a part of me has longed for this shift for a lifetime, the death of this ancient idea of “me” has consequences. Now I can see and feel I have choice and full responsibility. I am at cause for my experience. Choosing actions aligned with worthiness and truth means the ending of stuff and things and people and dreams and hoped for outcomes rooted in the lie.
Sure, some infrastructure will remain, but still, I know, what I am will never be the same again. Am I really prepared to no longer identify as unworthy? To travel in the world without the victim’s armor? I will be naked, raw, unguarded, and vulnerable!
The wisdom of the maturing woman lies in the honoring and integrating of all these contradictory feelings. I am learning: all manifestations are valid and workable on the path of love.
When I look at you, my friends and loved ones, my fellows and comrades, I see that you were never unhealed, that nothing is ultimately missing, and that you are already fully alive. Not after you heal your past, find your soul mate, wiggle into a “high vibration,” or replace the burning with joy. Not after you wrap it all up, become an “expert” or “master,” become “untouchable” or “utterly powerful,” or transcend your sacred vulnerability. You are now, already, always beloved. When I see you, it is then I know myself. I wake up . . . and the dream of postponement comes to an end.
A fantasy world in which I live a life of worthlessness and shame is dissolving and a world of truth is emerging through the vessel of this body. This new world, this new dharma, is not being “created,” but has always been here, patiently awaiting collaboration and manifestation, anticipating the moment when the veil of unworthiness would be lifted.
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