Years ago I was standing in line to get on a plane when an awareness landed within me that was as palpable as the day was sultry. Amidst the flip flops, shorts-donned tourists and duty-free items, I realized that I’d been carrying a belief that who I am was bad. Not that I did something bad - it wasn’t about what I had or had not done. It was bad like who I was at my core, was bad.
At first I was really angry. Incensed, actually. As I looked around for someone to blame, I realized that it wasn’t about blame and that blaming would only continue the insidious loop. I began to see how all the players in my play enacted their parts perfectly. And it was never incumbent upon anyone else to point the truth out to me. I created every moment and every painful encounter to finally wake myself up.
The buried belief that I was bad was not rooted in logic. And yet, there it was. Later I discovered that there is a name for this, the feeling that who one is, is bad. It’s name is shame. And until that moment in the airport shame had lived in me, as me, unannounced. This malignancy lived and breathed just below the surface of my consciousness. And at that exact moment, the belief broke through to awaken me.
Shame is the result of a false construct. This construct is the belief that one is bad. What do I mean by construct in this context? Like the physical construction of a building, we similarly construct our belief systems, and therefore our lives, with a grouping of thoughts and ideas. The resulting belief system may or may not be a conscious one.
Anything that is not life giving is false. Shame is not and has never been life giving. Shame is toxic. What is True is Love, shame’s antidote. And, love is who each being IS. Love is who YOU are. Love is who I am.
Crazily, this is not the script. The script is you are bad. Again, maybe not consciously. But unconsciously it is. Shame is everywhere.
It is the person I once knew saying to me in response to me saying that shame is toxic, “well don’t you think it’s a handy tool to make people act right?” And, recently on a podcast a woman was discussing how shame is a social emotion, like it was a totally normal thing to feel. Because in our society, it is. And the Easter morning, when my mother-in-law discovered my husband and I and two young children had chosen not to attend church that morning said, “shame on you!” And when I said, “we don’t do shame,” she stomped her foot and said it again, “shame on you!”
There is ALWAYS someone around who is waiting to feed you a shame sandwich. But why oh why do we eat toxicity and pain?? Why do we eat something false?? You are love. You are NOT bad at your core. You are Love at your core. And this covers all aspects of being human from your physicality and what your body looks like to your intellect and how your brain works to your emotions and how you feel or don’t feel to your spiritual path and how you practice or don’t. And so much more. All of you, every part is love.
So, then, why do we behave as though the opposite is true? It begins with the consummation of wanting to BE GOOD. As humans we are obsessed with being “good.” In my book, Organic Formula, I wrote about this phenomenon, which I’ve named the Good Program. It is the NEED to BE Good that is the fuel of the Good Program and that which gives rise to shame. Humans don’t want to feel or think that they are bad and so strive to be good. You may think, what’s wrong with that? Because this striving to be good has hijacked our true nature, which is Love. And being good and being love are not the same thing.
Love is Light. Shame is darkness. Love and light are who you truly are. Shame and darkness are false expressions because the constructs they exist upon are false. Namely, that you are bad. Again, the antidote is Love. Being the love and the light that you are wholly resolves shame and darkness.
Shame won’t just go away with mental knowing or understanding. But it can be resolved when acknowledged. When shame feelings and thoughts come up, those feelings and thoughts that you are bad, you can acknowledge them. And then you can speak to them. There’s a lot of things you can say but here’s a few: 1) that’s a lie. 2) that is false 3) I reject that thought and feeling as untrue.
To change our constructs requires being awake and consciously choosing different thoughts, which ultimately will bring different feelings. Never before has there been a more power-full time to be Love. To be Truth. To be WHO YOU ARE. No thing is outside of you. Including love and what’s true. You are Love. And you being you (love) is what’s TRUE.
