Saving Grace

It is hell being in a place where we don’t feel we exist. A voice not heard and where our wisdom falls on deaf ears. A heart yearning for love when there is nothing left to give. Self-esteem living in the toilet and the promise of tomorrow being another day that feels already like it precludes hope and where pride already takes a dive, long before it falls and where ridicule robs our confidence to go after our dreams for fear of failure let alone tempt the bigger fear of success by poking that proverbial sleeping bear.

Sound familiar?

Welcome to the desolate landscape of not being enough. The place where we have no idea how to get out of because we’re frozen in fear and don’t necessarily recognise it. Fear of people, fear of doing the wrong thing and making a mistake. Learning to people please, control or manipulate others just to have our most basic of needs met and where we don’t know who, or what to trust, yet we still smile so we don’t show anyone that something might be amiss and where we have forgotten to have the courage to love and believe in ourself and that we might just have a chance and a glimmer of hope of landing in a better place of being seen, heard and loved without any fear.

A world of reality for some, but not all. A place that exists for some but not others.

A stark contrast to the verdant and abundant world of self-worth, self-esteem, self-love, nurture, encouragement, compassion, kindness, love, radiance, belief, support, forgiveness, attention, acceptance and bliss.

How is it that we live in the same world yet have vastly different experiences? How do we get from one side of the divide to the other? Or simply, we don’t know or care, as it’s out of our awareness to even notice?

We exist in all vibrations of reality in the soul realm, yet we hang out down here in the physical dimension in only some of the realms more than others and some don’t even get a look in. We are a myriad of hope, faith and trust yet we are buried under the guise of thoughts, beliefs, emotions and karma, and all for the learning and growth of the same soul.

We are here today. Yesterday no longer exists and tomorrow hasn’t arrived. What is it that we bring forward with us into today? And what do we want to take with us from today into tomorrow?

The true gift we have been given is choice and the choice to choose; it’s our free will.

It’s also the gift of experience, now be mindful as not all experiences are, shall we say, delightful and in reality, we’re not sure what we are going to get anyway.

Choose we do, sometimes wisely, sometimes not, sometimes hastily, sometimes not. Sometimes the choice is made for us and we remain silent, agree with it, learn to live with it, learn to make peace with it or rally against it with all our might.

For all of us, there are places where we have existed, people we’ve hung out with and loved or loathed and some of those are the places that no longer exist for us because we have moved on and they are now simply etched and woven through our memory, compartmentalised, categorised and catalogued for future points of reference, grandeur, righteousness, humility, ego, failure, abuse, defensiveness or love. It’s all woven through the tapestry of our life of who we are now, how we react and how we have our needs met.

As we age, we let go of more people, places, times, events and experiences and learn to carry within us instead, patience, tolerance, compassion, empathy, kindness, forgiveness and more love.

We understand the importance of boundaries for ourselves with the authenticity and courage of saying no to people when their requests cross our thresholds. It’s taking with us that it’s none of our business what other people think of us, as they don’t know our history and are coming from a place of ignorance. It’s letting go of the fear, feeling it anyway and taking action, even when doubt is knocking at the door. It’s having the courage to have dreams and to allow them to flow with ease and grace.

It’s having the patience, tolerance and courage to learn new things without self-criticism and judgement and not project it onto others with blame and outrage. It’s about recognising our strengths and our weaknesses and still having the conviction to take stock and then step ahead with confidence, humility and grace feet first into tomorrow.

It's having the strength to apologise and mean it. It’s having the capacity to stretch into kindness and love when we don’t want to. It’s having the tenacity to keep moving forward even if we don’t know where we’re heading. It’s having the courage of faith to trust. It’s allowing our generosity to be able to share. It’s knowing our kindness is felt even if it’s not acknowledged. It’s knowing we are heard, even if it is only hearing our own thoughts, beliefs, wants, needs and intuition rather than ignoring them.

It’s knowing our heart and spirit is what shines brightest when we let them smile in the face of adversity. It’s knowing that sometimes the touch of a hand can mean far more than any words. It’s knowing we can be the beacon of light in the world when we stand with love. It’s knowing we can be the change in the world that we want to see and believing that peace is possible and comes from within each and every one of us. It’s the beauty and power of humility having surrendered our masks of fear and regained our authentic self over vanity, austerity and anxiousness and knowing we’ve won the inner battle.

Those are the places and faces that no longer exist, the ones where we couldn’t speak up, the places we where we had no voice, didn’t feel good enough, didn’t feel loved yet in spite of it all we’ve come through with flying colours when we learnt to value ourself and our worth, our voice, our dreams, our humility, our kindness, our generosity and learnt to respect, honour and care for ourselves anyway, and then share with others and where we’ve allowed our confidence in ourselves to grow. The longest journey on Earth is the one from our head to our heart. Heaven does exist if we take the time to choose and the choice is always ours.

When the student is ready, the teacher appears. With age comes wisdom. With wisdom came responsibility. With responsibility came empowerment. With empowerment came freedom and wisdom became our empowerment and always was our teacher.

Om Namo Narayani