If it needs defence, it’s built upon a lie

If you need to defend an aspect of yourself – that you belong, that you should be included, that you are worthy, valuable, lovable – you’re already experiencing the antithesis of what you’re defending.

The pain of separation from yourself

That inner experience of feeling unseen or unheard, feeling that you aren’t valued or loved for who you are is very painful. And you might think that the pain was created by whatever triggered you – whether that was someone saying something, someone not saying something, or any other external event.

The truth is, the pain was there before. Long before. Since childhood at least, and prior to that, also, inherent in that confusing dualistic human condition of ours. So, it wasn’t the trigger that created the inner experience of exclusion, it was the experience of inner exclusion that created the trigger.

The outside-in perspective

You might have it the other way round, as most of us normally do. You think you felt the way you felt because of what they said or did and so you believe that you need them to change for you to feel good.

This outside-in thinking – the idea that the world outside of us creates our experience of life – is how we’re conditioned to think. But it’s not helpful. For a number of reasons: first, you are then at the effect of other people. And so to be okay, you need to control everything and everyone outside of you. And so, you end up solving the wrong problems and then 20 or so years later (in my case at least) you find that not only have you not solved them, they have compounded and gotten more unbearable.

“What you’re looking for is where you’re looking from.”

The inside-out perspective

Your experience of life is generated entirely from within. The world, as you see it, is a projection. There are eight billion people on the planet and eight billion worlds, because we all see through our own perspective. The seeing includes a seer. And when the seer or their perspective changes, the what’s seen changes, too.

I was very relieved when I discovered this – because now I only had one tree to bark up on. My own! The tree of me! Only one problem instead of a world of problems.

The trigger is an opportunity for authenticity

From that inside-out perspective, what triggers you points to an aspect of your inherent worth, goodness and love that you are not in touch with.

And that is the opportunity. It’s an opportunity for letting go of the false belief that love, worth and value are something you need to earn and get, rather than what you inherently deserve and more importantly who you always already are. It’s an opportunity for letting go of the false belief that love is conditional. And any other false beliefs you might be having. These false beliefs are what is essentially creating the pain you’re experiencing — because they’re separating you from your true nature.

Love and value are your nature

Love loves. Everything. It doesn’t require that you perform for it, it doesn’t require that you deserve it, it doesn’t require that you have certain characteristics and not others. True love is unconditional. There isn’t a single aspect of you that is not that love–your fears, your concerns, griefs, shames, sadnesses, failures, guilts, manipulations, defences, attacks, activity, passivity, honesty, dishonesty, confusions, illusions, delusions, incessant chatterings of that voice in your head–anything and everything that may cross your mind and anyone’s mind. It’s all lovable.

The real connection you’re longing for

The trigger is an invitation for return to your inherent truth. It’s a possibility to re-integrate an annexed aspect of yourself. An opportunity for a deeper homecoming that moves you closer to your full authentic expression, more fully embodied within your truth.

In the deepest sense, the opportunity is for a deeper connection–with yourself. This is the connection that you are looking for. The pain of exclusion isn’t because someone else ignored you, it’s because you’re being excluded from you true nature.

This is the experience of separation that hurts the most – the separation from yourself.

You are what you’re looking for.