Just by Being, You Are A Thing of Wonder. Reclaim the magic.
Human beings – we’re a funny lot, aren’t we? All that time and energy we put into trying to make ourselves something higher, better, more special, more important than being a human. All the money we spend. All the teachers we hire, all the magic potions we take, all the books we read. All the oppressive doubt and self- scrutiny we put ourselves through, sometimes give away our sleep to, even our very happiness and inner peace.
It’s not quite enough to be a human really is it? There are too many ways to fail, to mess up, to get muddy and befuddled and muddled. Muddy and muddled and befuddled are so unspiritual sounding. Surely there is something better – something purer, something clearer, something brighter and more Instafacebookbumpersticker worthy? And how may inherent wrongs do we need to right in ourselves even to get close to being that?
Where to begin? It’s an exhausting journey even to think about to undertaking. Beginning any journey from the starter block of failure makes it a hefty uphill climb.
So many of us seem to go through life as if through one long turbulent affair – falling in and out of love with being ourselves, at an impasse between embracing and rejecting the life we are in just as it is. Anyone who spends enough time absorbed in social media, other peoples’ judgements, the so-called wellness industry, spiritual psychobabble and your own self- dissatisfied thoughts, can be forgiven after a while for believing that being a human being is your real trouble in life. Surely, your journey here on earth is not to experience yourself as human, but to transcend it – become something “other”. Not what you were born.
Is it?
Let me remind you of something you already know. Let me remind you of the miracle and the gift you already are. Not a gift that needs returning, exchanging, repairing or altering like a dress you got for Christmas that doesn’t quite fit the universal dress-code. Let me remind you that you are a miracle of creation that doesn’t need to perform, pass a test or change itself to prove its value. And that in every moment that you give yourself permission to be human, you are claiming and experiencing that miracle.
How quickly we forget. A lot of magic went into the making of you - a unique being, here, right now, in this time and place, on this planet Earth. You might not have happened at all, but you did. You are and you are here. Want to know the odds on that?
How likely is it that that you are here now, reading this, sitting where you are sitting, about to do whatever it is you are about to do next?
From a biological point of view, the chances of any of us being here depended on that one sperm fertilising that one egg in that one moment. And roughly the chance of that is a one in one thousand, million, million. That’s one with fifteen zeros after it. One quadrillion to one.
But then, we have to multiply that up by the chances of your parents being born – again, for both of them the same odds.
But why stop there?
If we take this back to the beginning of the human species – about 150,000 generations – we get an answer that any of us being here is about as likely as getting a parking space at Noosa Main Beach at midday on New Year’s.
It’s a chance in one followed by more zeros than there are atoms in the universe. The chances of this moment you are having are pretty much zero.
That’s more than special. That’s a miracle. And it is in this miracle that we journey. And we journey with other miracles – the people who have somehow arrived in our lives. How small and transient we are all in the infinity of space. But how important that should make us feel.
We have nothing to apologise for and everything to acknowledge and honour ourselves for.
And while we remind ourselves of that, let’s take back some of those apologies we may have got into a habit of making and which denigrate the real magic of ourselves and our lives. Here’s a quick checklist of things to stop apologising for in order to reclaim your natural right to be human, living with celebration a very human life.
- Stop apologising for being busy. Your business is the eternal harvest of all your life’s fruits: love, purpose, action, adventure, thrill, creating, nurturing, bonding, nesting, resting, living.
- Stop apologising for not slowing down. Everyone has their own natural speed. Where did we get this idea that speed is wrong? It is nowhere in the rest of nature. You wouldn’t ask a panther to move more slowly. How quickly we can grow, how quickly we can learn, how quickly we can turn a situation around. Like the Ferrari, we are built for speed – lets enjoy that.
- Don’t apologise for being vulnerable. Your vulnerability and softness nuance your humanity with texture and depth. That’s what makes you compassionate, connected and a good friend/son/daughter/partner/lover/colleague to have. That’s how your heart is able to experience the whole spectrum of life so that you can feel that you are living, rather than watching life from a distance.
- Don’t apologise for saying No. No is your golden key to liberate a Yes that would otherwise have to stay locked up.
- Don’t apologise for healing and growing. Nature has wired us for healing and growth. Sometimes we have to shed a skin, leave something or someone behind, in order to keep our beings healthy and thriving.
- Don’t apologise for any part of yourself – from the way you look to the way you are. Love yourself unashamedly. One day you won’t have this body. One day you won’t have this life on earth. If it takes forgiving yourself in every moment in order to experience a reunion with your miraculous free self again and again, do that. We are wired to be whole and we can collaborate with that by connecting positively to every cell of our being, or abandon wholeness by abandoning ourselves.
Every time we deny our humanity, we are setting ourselves at war with natural selves. Every time we embrace it, we are embracing the whole of humanity, the whole human spirit and the spirit of the universe.
There is a great Sanskrit word in the early meditation texts – “Aham” – meaning I Am. Aham is your North Star, your guiding light to the home you have inside your human being and your feeling totally at home on earth for the little while you are here. The moment you grasp you are allowed to be who you are, you’ve got it. You’re free.
Do you want the quickest instant affirmation of being human you can take with you anywhere in life?
Here it is:
Place your right hand on your heart. Place your left hand over it. Can you feel your own precious heart beat?
You’ve got this and the universe which created you has your back. Off you go.
Written by Alison Potts - Innate Being
Alison will be offering a workshop entitled "Back To Bliss: Weaving Magic Through Your Everyday Life at our Bulimba studio in September. For further information flow through the below button.