It took me a long time to truly value myself and feel worthy.
I don’t know why that is but I guess my mind would tell me a thousand reasons why I wasn’t or couldn’t be and often would chatter in the background about it beneath the threshold of my awareness.
Life happened and keeps happening and the experiences arising were – or seemed to be – wholly unpleasant and difficult. As they unfolded, the intent seemed to be to grin and bear it, suppress and repress it, move past it and act on the agenda and wishes of my goal-driven mind.
I discounted and dismissed events that arose that my mind deemed non-aligned to or an incursion into what mattered to me. The judgment of what it looked like meant that if it didn’t meet my expectations it was somehow, or I was somehow, wrong.
Yes, sure, our life events weave and form what is our story and while the aim or focus may be to transcend it, there is still value and relevance in the story for ourselves and others. It is what makes us who we are and it is the fuel and fodder from which our life has become more fully and authentically ours.
To own oneself is to reclaim one’s sovereignty as the power and presence in one’s own life; there is great significance and something declaratory about it that stirs the spirit and awakens one’s consciousness when it comes from a deep place of realization.
Judge as it might, the mind may downplay or deride your experience, yet it bears all the hallmark traits of precious enrichment and true empowerment for it has brought us to this moment in our own evolutionary path.
The English poet William Ernest Henley captured this sentiment so beautifully, to me, when he wrote, ‘I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.’