Baby Blog: Fears of Adequacy

In order to keep this blog alive following its recent resuscitation, from time to time I'm gonna do 'Baby Blogs' (which are basically just short entries). Anyways, I posted the following on an online forum I am part of (Mysterious Wisdom), and for some reason thought I felt compelled to share it here, because I believe it's an important message for us all. It was written in response to the following quotation, which is from Marianne Williamson (but is often falsely attributed to Nelson Mandela). It's ways been one of my favourite quotes and has great power to it.

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. And as we let our own lights shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same.

I believe there is great truth in this. When we're lost in fears of inadequacy it's because we're mistaking our ego as being what we are...and in a strange sense, we're right - the ego can never be 'good enough' because it isn't even real and it's only the palest reflection of what we truly are. But I believe hand in hand with this fear of the inadequacy of our false self is the fear of our true nature, which is beyond all conception and which I think we intuitively realise is vast, expansive and immeasurably powerful...and this freaks us out!

I believe this fear of embodying what we truly are stems from wanting the approval of others. Many of us build our entire lives and personality/ego structures around the desire to secure the good opinion of others. This pathological need to micro-manage the opinions others have of us is exhausting and self destructive. I know. As I wrote in the "Sedona Method" post below, once we become aware of the underlying 'wants' beneath our feelings and beliefs, we can clear them, chipping away at them bit by bit.

I found a LOT of approval-wanting and control-seeking (as in controlling other people's opinions) embedded within me like layers of underground rock. As I chip away at them I feel freer and freer, and less willing to cover up what I really am just so others won't think I'm 'weird' or, gasp, 'different'!

I invite everyone else to do the same. The world really, REALLY needs us all to step up and be authentic now!