“Thou Art God. Thou Art Goddess.” We often hear these words as an affirmation of our value, worth, and potential. They serve as a reminder that we all contain an essence of the Divine within us but how often do we celebrate this divinity? Is it appropriate to constantly chastise, scold, or berate yourself or should you instead be celebrating your achievements, even the smallest, living in joy, and giving yourself permission to just be? How would you treat the Divine? Then why do you treat yourself any differently?
As a society as a whole, we have a horrible habit that has almost become conditioned into our psyches like a Pavlov experiment and that is jumping onto the negative of every situation. We’ve become so disillusioned with the world, so wearied by the same old shit manifesting on the news, and simply disenchanted that instead of focusing on the positive of a situation, we only note the negative. We miss how monumental a moment might be for ourselves and others because we’ve instead decided to criticize where they could’ve been better. We label it “constructive criticism”, wanting ourselves and them to believe we’re doing it from a place of love but is that truly the case? Are we actually wanting to help them or are we, in a twisted way, finding pride in the fact that they weren’t perfect? Is it because we feel ourselves incompetent and poor in our own execution that our ego feels a little solace that someone is worse?
Our Ego To Us All The Time
This all leads to a sense of judgement, especially of ourselves which I believe is dangerous. Dangerous in the way that we begin creating almost impossible standards for ourselves, knowing that it will be practically impossible to embody them, so we then can chastise and criticize ourselves for not doing better. It becomes a cycle that continues until we can recognize the value and worth of what we’re doing. More importantly, that we tried. As Sean Paul-Thomas says in The Universe Doesn’t Do Second Chances, “Better to have tried and failed than to have never tried at all.”. We may find ourselves getting flustered and stumbling in our speech while talking to a large group of people yet refuse to take into account how terrifying we may find public speaking to be.
Personally, I HATE having to do any sort of public speaking. My voice quivers, my knees shake, and my entire body will tremble. I scatter “ums” and “uhs” liberally throughout. It took until my Sophomore year in college before I admitted that while I knew I could do better, I had to celebrate the fact that I got up there in the first place! I managed to get through my entire presentation and make some sense. Once I recognized and celebrated my achievement, I could then look for ways to improve so I could do even better! It shifted my mindset and let me see it all as another peg in my ladder of accomplishments instead of another notch of stupidity.
We can be cruel and ruthless to ourselves, treating ourselves as if we aren’t worth anything which is a very depressing thought AND utterly false. Each and every single one of us is important and valuable, not because of any skill or talent we have to offer, but because we are divine spiritual beings. I don’t mean an ego-filled “I am God, bow before me!” sort of nonsense. What I do mean is that each of us contain a spark of the divine energy within us, within our spirits. I personally feel our spirit itself is the essence of the Divine but we’ll just stick to containing the spark of the Divine. This is what allows us to feel a connection to Them because that spark within us is remembering it’s place within the Divine as a whole. Many of us have heard “You are a child of God” which makes us feel special, right? Like God took enough time out of his busy day of creating day and night, earth and all that is, to create me. Little old me.
We know that God and the Divine do not make mistakes so there is a reason you are here and that reason? Because you matter and have value and worth, just as you are. You don’t have to be perfect in all that you do, and with very rare exception, no one is exceptional at first. The difference is not letting set backs and failures stop you from persevering in your pursuits. As Thomas Edison said, “I have not failed. I have found 10,000 ways that won’t work.”. So, if you truly want to succeed, you must remove those absurd notions of perfectionism from your mind and vision. Things take time and so do we. Enough with the self-judgement. Find something positive to celebrate and then list a couple of tweaks that can be made, some minor adjustments, so you can improve. Get out of the self-deprecating mindset and instead instill one of self-celebration.
Let this bleed into how you treat society as a whole. Is it fair of you to judge others, the other children of the Divine, the others who contain similar sparks of the Divine? I am speaking specifically of judgement of faults, failures, and fears. Where they fall short of our expectations. There is a difference between judgement of deeds (like abuse, crime, etc.) and shortcomings (failing public speaking, being late, etc.). Do we not deserve clemency? Do we not deserve to celebrate the positives? Life is difficult enough without unneeded pressure thrown haphazardly by our own selves just so we can continue a failed cycle that was doomed since we first gave it thought. Our failures and shortcomings do not define us. The way in which we handle them does. So remember: Thou Art God. Thou Art Goddess. You matter. You are valuable. You are worthy. You are important. It is through all of this, because of that beautiful spark of the Divine you hold within you, that you have permission to be overjoyed by the minute accomplishments and needn’t berate yourself because you weren’t as good as you had hoped.
And that includes yourself!
Brightest of Blessings, You Beautiful Spirit, You!
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