WORTHINESS

NO PENANCE, NO PUNISHMENT, NO PURGATORY

Photo of withdrawn person with protective palm facing outward from Andriyko Podilnyk on Unsplash.

Your worthiness doesn’t fluctuate. That’s the main impression I’d love for this writing to make on you.

How deserving you are of happiness & well-being right now doesn’t change from one moment to the next.

Your worthiness is never contingent on what you have or haven’t done. Or how well you’ve done it. Or whether you’ve done enough.

The Universe is not evaluating & grading you at all times, so if you’re still living as if that’s what’s happening, if you’re still doing that to yourself, I invite you to play with another possibility.

I invite you to understand, fully embody, and live into your actual, inherent, unwavering worthiness.

Why you might think your worthiness fluctuates
You were raised by unhealed people who believed that worthiness varies based on all kinds of things. You grew up in a culture that still holds that as truth. You were subjected, often with the best of intentions, to constant evaluation, reward & punishment, and messages of what you should & shouldn’t do according to others (who didn’t even agree on all the particulars of right & wrong). It makes sense that you thus decided you had to earn your worthiness and that you were constantly at risk of losing it. You did whatever you needed to do in response to that—worked hard & harder, strove to be good, hid things, omitted information, lied outright, defended, rationalized, begged, charmed, fought, fawned, fled, froze. …

What (routinely) makes you feel undeserving
Whether you believe it a little or a lot, I’m inviting you to notice right now what makes you feel undeserving, what you think can strip you of your inherent deserving of all good things at all times—a worthiness that’s actually never in question and can neither be earned nor unearned.

You might think you no longer deserve to feel good, succeed, be loved, or experience well-being of any kind under some of the following conditions:

• You’re in a bad mood
• You snapped at someone or, worse, yelled (or, worse …)
• You lost it; you stopped behaving like everything is okay and you’ve got it handled
• You’re having judgy thoughts & you can’t get out of them
• You didn’t do the thing(s) you think you must do to be well (yoga, exercise, meditation, morning rituals, eating just right, whatever)
• You’re not dressed as you like to be dressed or you’re having a bad hair day
• Someone around you is in a bad mood or has disconnected from you so you walk around with the vague or acute feeling you’ve done something wrong or it’s your fault
• Someone you love is having a hard time and you think you should have somehow prevented this
• You’re all in a wrinkle about something that’s not your business and some part of you knows it’s not your business (and you make that a reason to feel bad about yourself and/or keep reiterating your position on the matter instead of making it a reason to come back to your business and reconnect to your inherent worthiness)
• You haven’t tamed some beasty thing you think you’re supposed to have all figured out and it’s crawling around in your mind
• You’re strapped financially and focused on what’s currently (and maybe historically) not pretty about money in your life
• In any or several realms of life, it looks to you like your life isn’t working and things definitely aren’t working out for you
• You acted in a way or did a thing that represents something you don’t like about yourself, and you wish you were or think you should be beyond it
• [fill in what else you see in your self-witnessing]

So what happens when you (inaccurately) think your worthiness has notched down?

Photo of silhouetted person walking under sky at dusk or dawn from Ryunosuke Kikuno on Unsplash.

What you do when you feel undeserving
It can look a lot of different ways to believe that here & now, you’ve lost your worthiness badge, you’re unworthy, you don’t deserve … Here are some typical ones:

• You stay sad, mad, or in any flavor of bad mood
• You move into each next segment of the day expecting things to feel bad or not go to your liking, thus having a whole bad day that you might carry into sleep and wake up with the next (& next & next) day
• You start mentally sabotaging what you say you want by reviewing why you can’t have it (and your reasons may be totally unrelated to your current self-perceived unworthiness, but they were launched by that & further reinforce it)
• You engage in more direct self-sabotage by taking or failing to take certain actions
• You start fights with others
• You push away connection with & comforts from people, animals, nature, music, water, good food, etc.
• You put yourself with people you don’t like, stay indoors, stay in bed, go ascetic or overindulgent
• You deprive yourself of fun, pleasure, creativity, whatever nourishes your soul
• You stay in situations & relationships that aren’t right for you in the name of working harder or somehow fully earning the right to leave
• [I invite you to add your favorite self-punishments or ways you stave off well-being or withhold it from yourself]

I don’t want you to live this way! Do you?

Purgatory pause or self-imposed limbo
In summary, you start believing in a punitive Universe again (Do you believe in a punitive Universe?), probably with yourself as the punisher-in-chief. You think you need to be in some sort of limbo for a while, as if you must undergo some purification before you deserve anything in life that rcould be heavenly (like ease, fun, money, fulfilling work; harmonious connections with other sentient beings; feeling healthy or at ease in your body, looking good, liking yourself; getting to work, play, love, and live with people you like and can be fully yourself with; and the list goes on).

Wait—is it true that your worthiness doesn’t go up and down?
I dunno, seems true to me. It’s a more empowering belief that I think brings out the best in us. And I can’t think of a graph where fluctuating worthiness actually gets charted except in our faulty unexamined belief systems where very old & inaccurate stuff prevails. More important & more relevant to you, I invite you to explore that for yourself. At the School for The Work of Byron Katie (which I attended seems-like-just-yesterday in 2006), Katie asked us, What if you could move without a trace from one moment to the next? She invited us to believe that we could. (And she has always invited folks to run their own experiments, saying, “Don’t just take my word for it.”)

You might ask yourself:

• Do I live in a punitive Universe? (I would say, only if you make it so.)
• What good comes of feeling unworthy so much of the time?
• What good comes of putting myself in some existential time-out instead of shifting quickly into what feels better?
• What is served (except reinforcing a false belief in unworthiness) by punishing myself instead of simply course-correcting & moving forward?

Note that moving forward could certainly include a well-placed apology, making amends, paying something back or forward. I’m not saying you need to go into denial about having moments when you don’t prefer how you just felt, behaved, chose, spoke, whatever. We will have such moments as long as we’re alive! I’m definitely saying that you might look at how long you hold yourself as wrong & undeserving and how much this results in your walking around feeling wrong & undeserving a good chunk of your life.

I’ve written about swift course-correction before (type it into the search bar on my website!). Given what you’ve observed about young humans:

• Are we supposed to get it all right from the start, or learn some things along the way, often through trial and error and a certain number of mistakes (and experiences of so-called failure)?
• Are we supposed to have it all figured out, or gather deeper understanding and better life skills as we go?
• Are we meant to be sweet [steady, polished, clear, patient, …] all the time? (Is that possible? Is that desirable?)
• Are we meant to know every right-thing-to-do and instantly decisive toward the right choice and easily follow through?

Isn’t all of this a life’s work? Is there a time limit on trial-and-error? Can’t we keep experimenting and keep growing and keep bumping into something that hits us as off and keep course-correcting toward what feels more aligned as we go? What if you trusted your inner guidance system and your own strong internal moral compass more than a belief you should never get it wrong, followed by punishment & purgatory and staking yourself deeper into the camp of unworthiness?

Another invitation to soothe yourself
I invite you to a grand experiment of soothing yourself when you feel bad. Not judging, not punishing, not analyzing, not trying to figure out where you went wrong, not seeking to justify your position, not allowing yourself to keep simmering in bad-mood sauce till you (somehow) earn getting to feel good again. When you feel bad, even if you’re sure you’ve done something wrong, disappointed yourself, fallen short of your idealized self, just feel better. 

Soothe yourself. Give yourself kind messages. Make choices about where to put your attention that would feel good to you now, not make you a good person (by your currently warped estimation of what that means when you’re in that bad space). Course-correct toward the wanted, starting with managing your feeling state and just going easy on yourself and others. Then take actions when you’re ready to take the ones that actually serve you.

You are inherently worthy!
If you’re alive, you are worthy of a wonderful life. You are worthy of a good day, any number of good segments throughout the day, a good NOW. You are worthy of love, health, a body you feel great in, work that deeply fulfills you, wonderful relationships with other sentient beings and rocks and things, time in your happy places, laughter, wealth, freedom & mobility. I could go on. I invite you to go on.

And move on quickly when you’re feeling bad about yourself. Refuse to live in a senseless illusion that’s robbing you of this moment and sometimes whole days, weeks, months, and years when you get stuck in false penitence.

Love & blessings, Jaya

As I was engaged in this writing, this daily message came in from Abraham-Hicks Publications:
Many believe that Source is outside of them and that you are separate from Source and being tested in some way. But only you can cause the feeling of separation from Source. That is what all negative emotion is.
  Source is never withholding from you. Source is always focused upon you, surrounding you with appreciation and unspeakable love.

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