Something that I am realizing more and more – any desire for external approval or acceptance will inevitably let you down.
Why?
Because it’s higher function is to fail you again and again until you no longer look outside of yourself for approval of who you are.
We live in a world where we mistake external acceptance for love.
External acceptance is not love, but it’s a hollow shell that we mistake for it.
“If I am good-looking enough, if I have enough money, if I have the right career, or the right combination of material things, or the right image, then I will finally be lovable.”
And then we achieve those things for a moment, and then the moment passes. And we lose what we worked so hard for, to make us lovable in the eyes of others.
And then we are met with the devastating blow of loss, initiating us into a form of internal death. But the only part of ourselves that dies is the part of us that denied ourselves for the sake of receiving approval from the world around us.
And then we are left with ourselves, and with God.
And maybe if we are blessed, there will be a small handful of those who are with us through all the up’s and down’s, despite how things may change. And these relationships are those holy gems that are valuable beyond worth, stemming from a love beyond this world.
But ultimately, our true strength rests solely between ourselves and God.
As a child, I felt like I was met with rejection everywhere I turned – I was bullied and rejected for the way I looked, I was terrible at sports and was always seen as the “runt”, and I was very sensitive and empathic which was perceived as a sign of weakness (especially being a male).
Realizing I was pretty awkward in my body, I gravitated to music as a teenager to channel my sensitivity, as well as to compensate for the physical deficiencies I felt that I had. And then by my late teens and early twenties, my entire identity was completely wrapped up in my ability as a musician. If I was praised for my musical prowess, then I felt loved and accepted. If I gave a bad performance, then I felt completely and utterly worthless.
As I got into my early twenties, I struggled with crippling poverty and was always a hairline away from living on the streets. I was opening “psychically” which drove me into a very deep and passionate relationship with painting (I now work as a professional intuitive). This was because art was my primary way of processing the excess information that was overloading my system. I didn’t know how to really give readings at that time, or to use my abilities in a healing capacity, so I just obsessively made art to help me process.
Though I was passionate, I felt crazy. Because I was so artistically obsessed and psychically overwhelmed, it felt impossible for me to hold a “normal” job. Working 8 hours a day at a cash-register, or some other day job, still barely making enough to survive – it felt insane to me. I would look out at people driving these lavish cars and living in these lavish homes, and was just completely baffled as to how people could maintain their sanity and hold such extravagant lifestyles together.
So throughout my early twenties, I felt exiled and rejected by a society that I struggled desperately to be a part of. This mirrored and reflected my childhood wounds of rejection and feeling ostracized for being different.
There was always a streak of creative genius in me that gave me a sense of purpose, and thank God for that. And thank God I never gave up on it.
At some point, in the later half of my twenties, something shifted. And I remember just completely giving up.
I worked so hard to try to “fit-in” so that I could be lovable and prove something of myself to the world. I tried a million different jobs to find the “right one”. I did everything I could to make money so that I could be seen as powerful and worthy in the eyes of others. I altered my image a million times over to try to find the one that would give the most validation and acceptance.
And no matter how hard I tried, nothing worked.
I tried to measure up to every societal standard in the book.
And I just failed. Time and time again.
And then I realized that maybe this was a game that I was just never meant to win.
So I turned to God, and I said:
“God, you take me. I have tried my whole life to fit into this world, and I just fail, over and over. I am tired. I am exhausted. And I don’t know what to do. I have finally realized that I will never fit into this world, because I am not of this world.
I do not belong to this world of conditioned love, where people are praised for shallow amusements and things that will never last. Where the brilliance of one’s soul is traded like a commodity for that which withers and fades like the passing of the seasons. Where people fall in love with hollow images, rather than the passionate fire of truth that burns within another’s heart.
God, I do not belong to this world. I belong to yours.
I belong to a world that shines forever, where my value rests far beyond what can ever be measured. Where my love is not limited to some shallow caricature of how I desire somebody to be, but rather my love unconditionally celebrates the unique spark of another’s essence. Where the expression and loving nurturance of the soul take priority above everything else.
God I do not belong to the world of conditioned fantasies, I belong to your world of eternal truth.”
And from that moment, everything in my life began to shift.
It was as if as soon as I started to truly accept myself, reality began to rearrange everything in my life in drastic and significant ways.
Rather than trying so hard to make things happen, things started to effortlessly and miraculously manifest on their own. I began to see miracle after miracle, and I began to follow a stream of synchronicities that were guiding me towards a path of healing not only myself, but of healing others.
I began to form a loving relationship with a higher intelligence, whose voice spoke to me through the echo-chambers of my reality. My life began to feel more dream-like, more fluid and malleable.
“Was there always this loving force that sought to guide me? Was this always here? Was the world always this loving? This embracing and supportive of my growth?”
Through this, I have come to realize that there is a deeper reality that calls us to it. It is unconditionally loving. It is highly intelligent. And it wants nothing more than to guide us and support our growth. If you have ever witnessed synchronicities, or miracles in your life, then you have seen glimpses and evidence of the deeper reality that we are forever a part of.
This reality exists beneath the wavelength of our conditioned world. But nonetheless, it is always there. It merely awaits our maturity and readiness to perceive it.
For me, I began to touch this reality more intimately, when I began to accept myself. My True Self.
This is because I began to see through the eyes of my True Self, which can only see what is truly there.
Magic is real.
Miracles are real.
And they are far more real than the cloak of fear and comparison that drive the madness of the world we have made for ourselves.
Because they stem from a deeper reality.
And the more you trade in the shallow ideas of yourself for what you know to be true about you deep in your heart, the more you begin to see what is always there.