When Enough Cannot Be Enough

There’s a point, a stage if you will, of awareness. To describe it, you have come to know yourself intimately, the construct you’ve been living within and identified as ‘you’ all your life. This awareness includes understanding the notions of self you’ve adopted from early life, adopted and created, added to over the years. You’ve built an intricate prison and that prison is also you. It’s made up of thoughts and feelings based on a fictional story. You understand it’s not you, at least intellectually.

You know it comes from your inner child’s reactions to family influences, circumstances and environment - the emotions and thoughts created from that. This is the loop tape that is your construct. It will have lead you to the realisation of a see-saw of reactions from you to this construct. You’ve ‘done’ much to delve deeply into those painful, limiting feelings best described as ‘I’m not enough’. You may even have sat in presence with (allowed yourself to fully feel), the pain that created it, all the reflections or echoes of it in your life. To name some, they include:

(*Note: For all of these points, it’s what at root motivates or informs our actions or inactions (the energy underlying:, our feelings, thoughts and responses that reveal whether we are on this see-saw or not.)

At one end, the so called negative reactions, what we think of as dysfunction*

• avoidance (of whatever has triggered feeling it)

• paralysis

• blame of self or others

• doubt and indecision

• feelings of and identifying with being a victim

• apathy

• self medicating (food, drugs/alcohol, exercise - potentially, literally any activity)

• escapism (too numerous to name all forms)

• seeking fixing or validation from others

• self hatred

• intense focus on self image, whether in the form of self consciousness/judgement or simply vanity

• aggression

• lying

• manipulation

• need/lack

• shame

  At the other end of the see-saw, the so called positive reactions (what psychology and society supports) which are considered functional behaviour/responses*.

• setting boundaries

• setting and achieving goals

• ambition

• self care

• confidence

• assertiveness

• excessive attentiveness to word and deed

• believing that anything outside of or inside this idea of you is going to make you better, happier or more in any way

• faith

• buying things to make a life or to make you feel like you

• self expression

• need (this one ends up on both ends of the see saw as society is constructed around a plethora of approved of needs)

• self help/self improvement

• affirmations

Everything that exists is created from energy, is energy. Our feelings and thoughts, our beliefs cannot exist without the energy that creates them. We’re all energy sensitive beings even if we don’t realise it. From childhood we experience adults telling us one thing at times but we feel/sense another. They do this to protect us it’s said but the energy reveals what underlies.

In the same way, the energy of ‘not good enough; is distinctive; the ways in which it shows itself in our lives is clear. It’s popular to counter this with many ways in which one might come to feel enough. The power of positive thinking, affirmations and behavioural modification are all part of counter measures. To feel enough seems to be so desirable, our glimpses of it confirm this. It’s often said that as long as we invest in/believe that anything outside of ourselves will fix us we shall remain unfixed. What is we’re not broken though? (We’re not.)

Read the list at the other end of the see saw of so called positive reactions again. Consider that they too are a reaction to feelings of ‘not enough.’ We’re driven to feel enough by not enough. It’s the energy that reveals and on this see saw, no matter where you sit, the energy is lack/abundance. It’s created by a desire to be more; happier, better and it’s created from need. Where there is need there is never enough. I frequently say, we are so much more than enough. We are.

I do not affirm but rather, share; I am not revealed by enough - I am.

~ Stephanie Marian

The Heart Valet

All One

Alone: From 'all ana' (old English) meaning, in essence, 'all one.' This photo was taken several years ago in the Thar Desert, conveying a sense of peace in the solitary. Images like words can reveal but also obscure.

There in the magnificent Thar I was neither absent of company nor many illusions and needs, the crowd within me that beautiful day. In a state of joy - not alone in any perceived sense as I was looking into a mirror. My mirror wasn't alone either. Just the two of us and our crowds, far from 'one,' imagining the other had something much desired, the key to release.

I've been experiencing some timeless alone these interesting days. It's come to me that aloneness is often identified as what it isn't, rather than what it is. It's been understood as a time 'without.' Very often, it's perceived as either an escape (from others, ultimately ourselves) or the default, time when others aren't available. It's been measured by what it isn't...but I'm interested in what it is, what it offers us.

In these days of shifting sands, I've heard many say in consolatory terms, 'but we are never alone.' This may be a truth but it also easily obscures and becomes another kind of 'crowd.' We're longing for faraway places we aren't, for faces that quiet the clamouring crowd.

The desert being largely glass, is full of reflections. We are all one in innumerable mirrors, in each and every-'one' we see. We are also infinitely alone, with a blink of awareness we may see beyond the crowd.

Say Yes!

Today say yes! As we move into what feels like uncharted terrain, even the obstacles don't feel the same. Those that come up are fundamental, triggering pain. There's no beginning, no end on this journey of ascend. It's true we're ever becoming and already became, but the answer is just the same - say yes!

Say yes to what is, breathe deep into you, through that you'll become what you always knew. It's the opening of childbirth for the child long born, it's a stretching into resistance, letting go of all form. Say yes to what you hide, to the dark corners of you, say yes to your shame and your deepest fears too. Bare your heart, bare your soul, let the spear pierce the skin...for this is where the transformation begins.

It's a sigh of surrender, opening to the sea, it's in you, it's in me, it's what sets us free. You cannot get lost, it's not possible, just try, that which you fear was always a lie. It's not found in flowers, not in these words, nor gestures or poems, it's not felt in the mind but where the heart roams. So set yourself free, let one word be spoken, say yes to it all and your truth will be woken.