I can't sleep--I have to write about BEING YOURSELF!
I can hardly believe this happened years ago now--but years ago, in a moment of trauma, I went to my bishop, and as we visited, he suddenly stopped and said: "I have to pronounce upon you a divine blessing: as you BE YOURSELF, you will bless yourself, your family, your friends, and everyone who ever associates with you."
...
WHAT?!
It was a beautiful and surprising blessing--and one I didn't really understand or know what to do with. How does a person just be themselves?
How do *I* be myself?
What does that even mean?
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Here are the thoughts I wanted to share tonight, the thoughts that woke me up in the night and drove me to my computer!
There are two steps to BEING YOURSELF.
STEP 1: Let go of all that is NOT you.
STEP 2: Fully inhabit YOU.
Yogi Bhajan in his book "The Master's Touch" writes how important it is that we "identify with our own identities."
Do YOU identify with your own identity?
Do you KNOW your identity?
Do you resonate with your own Reality?
I'm not talking about the reality you've created here, the reality you experience here in the avatar of the body--I'm talking about the Reality of Yourself as a child of God, the Reality of your own divine Being, the Reality of You as someone important, qualified, honorable, meaningful, mattering.
Here is the Reality:
If you do not identify with yourself as important, mattering, and fundamentally GOOD--
--you are not identifying with your own identity.
Because who you are IS good.
If you were created in the image of God, YOU ARE GOOD.
It's not that we're perfect, or that we don't make mistakes: children of God make mistakes and are not perfect (obviously unless they are Jesus!). This isn't about that.
This is about knowing that even when we make mistakes, we have WORTH. We MATTER. We are IMPORTANT.
It is about knowing that even when we make the inevitable mistakes, WE ARE GOOD.
When we identify with our true identity, there is no room for shame.
And there is no room for pride or egoism either.
A perfect humility comes from a perfect knowingness of our true identity, our true Self. In perfect humility, we do not put ourselves above others, we do not need validation from others, we do not need to put others above us. When we know WHO WE ARE, when we truly KNOW it on the deepest kind of soul level, it sets us free from shame and pride, from enmity and self-doubt, from endless spinning and confusion, from wondering and wandering.
TO KNOW THYSELF is the truest freedom.
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In the Bible Dictionary, the entry on Faith has this beautiful sentence: "All true faith must be based upon correct knowledge or it cannot produce the desired results."
All actions, religious or not, are based in FAITH. Every action we take is motivated very thoroughly by our own faith in the narrative we have crafted of "who we are."
...the narrative we have crafted of our own self-image is usually WRONG.
Typically, our self-image is out of alignment with our actual real identity, the identity of the Higher Self.
When we act out of alignment with who we REALLY ARE, our lives cannot produce the results we desire.
This is why it is so important to fully, thoroughly KNOW YOURSELF.
You MUST know your own identity, and you must know it as it is based in TRUTH--outside and separate from the story you have crafted about who you are.
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I know what it is to look in the mirror with dread.
I know what it is to consider myself with despair.
And I know what it is to have God Himself come along and smack me on the head and say: WAKE UP. YOU ARE GOOD. STOP HATING YOURSELF. OPEN YOUR HEART TO GRACE AND HAVE GRACE FOR YOUR OWN SELF.
Have grace for your own self.
It is easy when you know who you are.
And when you know who you are not.
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I once thought I knew who I was, because I thought I had created myself. I had crafted an identity for myself, and put a little label on it anyone could read, and I thought that was who I was.
I introduced myself to a class in the simplest terms: "I'm a conservative, I like to debate, and that's about all you need to know about me." I set the stage for a lot of stereotyping and assumption, by stereotyping and making assumptions about myself.
Later a classmate discovered that every weekend, I was going home to take care of my dying brother. She said, "Why didn't you ever say that? Here we all thought you were one way, and it turns out you're a whole different person than we thought you were."
The comment shook me.
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BEING MYSELF has come in two parts: learning to identify WHO I AM, and perhaps more importantly, learning how to identify WHO I AM NOT.
The secret to being yourself is to ruthlessly eradicate what you are not, and to step boldly and fearlessly into who you truly are.
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I want you to BE YOURSELF.
I want you to profoundly release what is not You, and profoundly step into Yourself, without looking back.
I want you to experience the rush of fully inhabiting your own body and your own spirit, your own space, so thoroughly, so openly, so graciously, so joyously, it invites everyone around you to do the same.
I want you to dance in the waterfall of divine grace, without inhibition.
I want you to look in the mirror every day and think: I AM WHO I AM. I am who I am, and that is good enough.
And if you want to talk with me more about this, you can schedule a call here: https://app.acuityscheduling.com/schedule.php?owner=12661027
This is a picture I took while I wrote this essay this morning. In my pajamas, with no makeup on, and it doesn't matter because I AM WHO I AM AND THAT IS GOOD ENOUGH. And now that this is written I can go back to SLEEP!
Good night, and good morning! BE YOURSELF TODAY!!!!!