Our dear old Uncle Rumi wrote: 

I must have been incredibly simple or drunk or insane
to sneak into my own house and steal money,
to climb over my own fence and take my own vegetables.
But no more. I have gotten free of that ignorant fist
that was pinching and twisting my secret self.
The universe and the light of the stars come through me.
I am the crescent moon put up
over the gate to the festival.

This — this idea of an ignorant fist of your own, pinching and twisting your own secret self, full of Universal light — this might be the best description of the Trance of Unworthiness, the best description of self-judgment, that I’ve ever heard.  

How have you been pinching and twisting your secret self? 

How have you been judging yourself? How have you been critiquing yourself? 

What have you been anticipating that “they” won’t approve of about you, so you’ve been withholding your own approval of yourself? 

Let me tell you something:

I know that this world says “the struggle is real”. 

The struggle is not real. 

If you can read or listen to this lesson, “the struggle is real” is a lie. 

However, the struggle feels very real.

It feels real, but it’s not true.

As long as there is anything about YOU: your body, your life, your ways of being, even your feelings and reactions that you are treating with anything less than warmth, hospitality and radical approval, your struggle will feel real.

And that’s because your Inner Wisdom — the voice of God that speaks to you within you  — knows the truth that you are a perfect drop of the Divine, made flesh. 

You are created in that image. 

You are offspring of the Divine.

So anytime you judge or shit talk yourself, anytime you resist the reality of who you are or what you are or how the process of life works, you will feel like the struggle is very real, because to judge and critique yourself or your reality is to create an Inner War between the Divine You and the conditioned you, the programmed you, that is shaming or judging or critiquing yourself or pushing against your realities. 

During this Inner War, you will feel like the struggle is real, because to judge yourself, track your progress, judge your process or rush your process creates turbulence in your system that shuts yourself off from all the assisting forces and powers of this Universe, which are multitudinous and desire to benefit and help and assist you. 

This is the case even if whatever you are observing about yourself or your life that you would like to change or would like to be different is true. 

The only way to move powerfully and expand easefully from this season to the next without feeling like the struggle is so damn real is to find the Inner Peace that only comes from radical self-acceptance, self-care, self-compassion and self-love.

The only way is to cultivate a deep satisfaction and joy with your life as it is right now, to bloom where you’re planted, as the old church ladies used to say. 

The only way is to suck the vast clarity and power and wisdom out of your current circumstances. 

The only way is to hold the paradox of being deeply satisfied with what is and to simultaneously allow yourself to eagerly desire the fullness of what your soul desires in your next season.

Then you can just go with the flow, even through unwanted circumstances and plot twists, without the struggle feeling real. 

The Indian saint Bapuji wrote: 

My beloved child
Break your heart no longer

Each time you judge yourself you break your own heart
You stop feeding on the love which is the wellspring of your vitality

The time has come, your time
To live, to celebrate and to see the goodness that you are. . . 

Let no one, no thing, no idea or ideal obstruct you
If one comes, even in the name of “truth”, forgive it for its unknowing

Do not fight
Let go
And breathe into the goodness that you are

He didn’t say breathe into the goodness that you have. 

He said breathe into the goodness that you are.

Catch this principle: Goodness is what you are.

And when you judge yourself — the goodness that you are — you break your own heart. 

This is a tragedy every time, because your heart is where all the resources of this Universe flow. 

Judging yourself includes: 

• Chronically feeling like there’s something a little bit wrong with you​​​
• Chronically believing that you have to be perfect or you aren’t worthy of doing a thing at all
• Sucking it in or poking your cellulite in the mirror
• Constantly tracking your own progress against your goals or other people’s outer appearances
• Frequently engaging in self-deprecating humor
• Silencing yourself in meetings because you’re not sure your ideas are worth voicing
• Being paralyzed when it comes to marketing or promoting your own products or business or writing
• Deferring fun, joyful experiences until you’ve lost a certain amount of weight
• Wishing you didn’t feel how you actually feel
• Holding your breath until you have a certain amount of money in the bank, and
• Feeling behind or ashamed that you haven’t achieved some goal yet. 

When you judge yourself, you shut off the pipeline of your sacred resources, including your own inexhaustible inner reservoir of love and intelligence and energy and including the creative power that formed all worlds. 

Self-judgment shuts off this inner pipeline by blinding you to millions of golden opportunities for you to be, do, have, learn and create exactly what your soul came into your meat-covered skeleton for. 

These golden opportunities are all around you, in your current, life right now. 

Because you can only detect, energize and activate those resources through the lens of who you think you are, what you think is possible and what you deem yourself worthy of. 

That’s what Uncle Rumi was talking about when he exclaimed: “You wander from room to room. hunting for the diamond necklace that is already around your neck!”

And that’s what Jesus was talking about when he got frustrated with the people who were going on and on about the coming harvest like some people you know: It’s always coming. It’s never now. 

Jesus got frustrated. In my mind’s eye, he got in their faces and clapped his hands as he said, very loudly: “LOOK. UP.”

Don’t say 4 months until the harvest. 

The fields are ripe right now.

Look. Up.

So, first put on rose-colored glasses of openness and warmth and hospitality and affection and attention and affection and approval of yourself. 

Then… look up.

And ask yourself these breakthrough questions, if you’re really ready to start actualizing your potentials and living the realities you daydream about:

What opportunities to do the callings of your soul are before you right now? 

What resources that you need to do the callings of your soul are available to you right now? 

Are you willing to take one natural-feeling next step toward fully inhabiting your life, your current opportunities, your current resources? 

And finally: What is that natural-feeling next step? 

Don’t write it on your list of things to do.

Don’t put it on your calendar. 

DO IT NOW. 

Head up + heart out,

Tara-Nicholle Nelson, MA, Esq.
Founder + CEO of SoulTour

@taranicholle on FB | TW | IG | LI

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