My twin nieces turned a year old just before Christmas. Being an aunty is better than I imagined it would be. The twins are ridiculous amounts of fun and provide endless hours of entertainment.
I wrote to a friend the other day telling her that when I look at them, everything is clear. They’re perfect. In their eyes is nothing but pure life. I can’t imagine anyone being able to look at them and judge them in any way as wrong, bad or somehow defective.
And then my mind wanders to how it will be when they grow older. Life experiences will happen to them. Just like all of us, they’ll have many ups and downs. They’ll make mistakes, probably experience varying amounts of worry and doubt about situations in life and they may well start to judge themselves, compare themselves and perhaps even come up against that feeling of not enoughness.
But if they experience those things: if they judge themselves, compare themselves, think they’re not good enough, think they’re failures or any of the other feelings that so many of us experience through life – I know I won’t see what they see. All I’ll see is the truth of who they are. I’ll continue to see them as perfect. Because…how could they be anything else?
We do it so easily for others, don’t we? Our friends find themselves tortured by feelings of failure, not being good enough, not being worthy. They feel shame, guilt and experience so much doubt about their abilities. But in our eyes we just see who they are. We don’t see the problems they see. We see the beauty and purity and perfection of who they are, even with all the life that’s happened to them.
But for ourselves? We don’t do that so easily. Just like our friends, we too torture ourselves with all those same feelings. But whilst we’re able to see and articulate to others the truth of who they are – that none of what they’re talking about is really the truth – we seem unable, mostly, to see it for ourselves.
We’re different. Our failures are too big. Our not enoughness is real. We truly don’t have anything to offer through who we are in the world. Our guilt is valid and our shame is heavy. If people knew how bad we really were, surely they wouldn’t love us in the way they do?
But none of that is real. Go, take a look at a baby. See the truth. And know that no matter how many years you’ve been here on this planet and no matter how many mistakes you’ve made or regrets you have and no matter how much you feel like you’ve screwed it all up, that truth of perfection and beauty and wholeness is as true for you now as it was when you were a tiny little being.
That perfection is who you are. It does not change. It cannot change.
It’s a brand new year, a time when people often talk about creating or finding a new you. A new year. A new you.
But it’s not about finding a new you. Not even close. It’s about seeing the truth of who you already are. Who you’ve always been. And knowing that nothing that happens in life can change that.
People seem to think they need to change themselves, improve themselves, be somehow better. But all you really need to do is turn around, go back to the beginning, and know that in the truth of who you are, there is nothing at all to change, nothing at all to improve.
If I have a wish for you, for me, for all of us in 2017, it’s that something inside us opens up and allows us to see with total clarity – the way I see it with total clarity when I look at my twin nieces – that there is nothing that can take away the truth that, spiritually speaking, you are utterly perfect, utterly worthy and utterly, utterly whole.
And then, with that clarity, go forth and create whatever your heart calls you to create, bound no longer by the lies that tell you you’re anything less than perfect.
Love and courage,
Leah
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