I wonder what it would feel like to be free. What would it feel like to know that I am perfect just as I am? To know I can be 100% me in the world and I would be safe? To know I can say what I think and share how I feel and I would still be valued and belong to a community? To know that I could tell the truth and have a family and friends who love me?

What would it be like to truly comprehend that, in reality, hiding and not sharing myself is what creates loneliness and division?

If you think your true nature is too outrageous and loud and uncouth, or too quiet and sensitive – if you reject your true nature and judge yourself as unacceptable and wrong – then no external healing on the planet can touch that inner disconnect.

That inner disconnect, your self-loathing and lack of love for your authentic being, reproduces itself in your outer reality because of this cycle: Thoughts create feelings. Feelings drive actions. Actions produce results. Results accumulate to become the circumstances of your life. Then you think more thoughts about your results and circumstances, and the cycle continues.

If your foundational thought is “I’m not okay. I’m not good enough. I have to pretend to be someone I’m not to be safe and loved,” then you will feel fear and shame. Fear and shame drive actions that probably look a lot like being good, accumulating achievements, and meeting others’ expectations. These actions produce results that accumulate to create your life – a life that doesn’t fit who you really are. Your life becomes an illusion that must be maintained so you feel okay about yourself. Maintaining the illusion takes a tremendous amount of energy and is ultimately unsustainable.

Living a lie is always unsustainable. Your belief that you’re not okay, you’re not good enough, and you have to pretend to be someone you’re not to be safe and loved is a lie. I know it’s a lie because it causes suffering.

The way back to the truth is not to believe something else really hard.

It won’t work to tell ourselves over and over that we’re fine just the way we are if we still, deep down, believe we’re shit. We have to drop the lie that’s causing suffering. We have to see the lie for what it really is, and replace it with the truth.

The source of your self-worth is ultimately a faith question. Your innate worthiness, your guaranteed belovedness, your essential holiness, can’t be proven. It can, however, be experienced and remembered. There was a time in your life when you were deeply connected with your innate preciousness. You didn’t question it. Even if your mind can’t pull up those memories, your body remembers. That connection still exists. You just have to find the connection and strengthen it. Even though the spring has gotten blocked, the source of the flow remains. The blockage just has to be dislodged so the water can flow. The lie of “not okayness” is the blockage. And the water wants so badly to flow through you.

Try this. Put one hand on your heart and the other on your belly. Breathe deeply. Feel your heart beating. Now imagine that you’re holding a baby or a cat or a dog in your arms. That tender, perfect creature is in your care, and they’re completely safe. Just resting on your chest, being completely who they are. Now imagine that you’re that baby or that animal, and you’re resting completely in the arms of a loving presence who’s got you and is never going to let go. Call that presence what you want – God, Universe, Mother, whatever. You are holy. You are perfect. You are beloved. And you are so, so safe.

This is the truth. You were born perfect. You’re still perfect. You’ll always be perfect.

Freedom is knowing that the thoughts keeping you caged are lies, and they’re flimsy as dust. Freedom is living as the perfect, holy creature you are.

Choose to believe the truth you’ve always known. Choose to be free.  

Photo by Melissa Askew on Unsplash, edited on Canva