I remember the day Pete and I brought home our firstborn, Megan. We spent many sleep-deprived days and nights mostly in awe of her.
Sometimes Megan cried and screamed, and sometimes she cooed and smiled. She did not seem to prefer one response over another. Emotions flowed through Megan like clouds through a vast, blue sky. She was not yet influenced by the lenses of should and shouldn’t. Life simply was. There were no stories in her head about what was going to happen later in her little baby day. There was no regret or despair about what had happened moments or hours before. There was this-here-now; Life arising moment by moment, showing up as cooing and smiling, then showing up as weeping and wailing. It was all perfect. There were no filters to obscure what was.
As far as we could see, our sweet Megan was complete. She was worthy, resilient, and full of love and OK-ness. Those things, of course, had nothing to do with her. They were not based on her abilities, talents, or intelligence. They were not related to the condition of her soft, baby skin, her robust health, or even her gorgeous blue eyes. Her completeness and innate perfection were part of something much greater and universal to all of Life.
As babies do, Megan grew up. Right on cue, her clear baby lenses began accumulating filters. She quickly learned ideas about "me" and "mine." She developed preferences, learned concepts of time, space, and "other." She learned to make simple predictions. Before long, she picked up on social cues, learning to make sense of good and bad, and right and wrong. Layers of new beliefs subtly informed her growing sense of "this is who I am."
By the time Megan was a teenager, the lenses through which she saw the world were pretty well set. And like all normal, healthy teens, she had no idea that she was viewing the world through a thick veil of filters. Like most of us, she believed she was simply viewing the reality of life. "This is who I am, and this is how life is—or at least this is how it should be."
And if you stopped reading there, my guess is you would say, "So what? She has her perspectives and I have mine. Why does any of this matter?"
And, as my favorite pastor in the world, Carl Frazier, says..."Here's the thing..."
It matters because it's not really about perspectives as much as it's about who we believe we are. It matters because most of us are showing up as if we are separate and disconnected from the world around us; separate from that perfection of Life we were as newborn babies; separate from the innate worth, resilience, love, and OK-ness that once so obviously defined us.
It matters because, when we have no idea we're seeing the world through a clouded lens, we say things like "They shouldn't be like that" and "This never should have happened." We judge, categorize, and label people and circumstances through our own filters of lack, fear, and insecurity. And we have no idea we're doing it.
It matters because we don't see the world as it is; we see the world as we think we are. So it makes sense to take some time to rediscover the truth of who we are beneath the filtered lenses.
Who we are, at our core, is whole, connected, complete, strong, worthy, resilient, and full of love. We are not our conditioning, our learning, or our filters. We are greater than that.
This is all really good news, actually. There is nothing you need to ADD. Nothing to FIX. Nothing to manage or control. It is not on you to change or scrape away the layers. There is just an opportunity to be curious, to explore, to be open to seeing with fresh eyes.
There's a whole new world waiting to be seen, one that is so much more expansive that you've ever dared to imagine.
If you'd like to learn more about experiencing the energy of raw emotion, free from the stories your mind loves to tell, check out my video called, "Fragile and Sensitive" on YouTube.
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