The personality is a mask. It’s like a vehicle. A car you get into and drive around in. I’m not a car person at all. People ask me what kind of car I have and I genuinely have to stop and think about it. I’ve only had it a couple of years. From time to time I notice I haven’t been in it for over two weeks.
If I don’t have to go anywhere, I’m a happy girl. That has nothing to do with anything, except this: I don’t feel as identified with my personality as I used to. I’m not identified with my car or my schedule.
My personality used to be obnoxious all the time and so I thought I was obnoxious all the time.
When I finally began to see that I am not that personality, I could set it aside.
That’s when I started to lose the sense of shame and guilt and weakness.
Because I began to realize, really and truly, that I am not that. I am that I am. And there is no weakness in the I AM.
When we’re living from the true Self, the true identity, honest to God, there is no weakness. What gets perceived as vulnerability is something else entirely. In my experience of my true Self, there’s no weakness. None.
The judgment came first. I was judging myself as weak, as not good enough, as something’s-wrong-with-me. Feeling needy was scary for me. That’s where the shame lived.
I don’t feel needy anymore, because I really rely on Spirit.
It doesn’t mean I don’t have needs. I have a need to take time off from work sometimes. I have a need to connect with someone. I have a need for more money to pay my bills, and these things happen all the time. It just isn’t scary anymore.
These needs are not craving, wanting, needing. They’re more like: “I’d like to go to the store today.”
The fear goes away. The need remains, and the need is fine.
People tell me I seem so comfortable being vulnerable. Here’s the thing. When I’m sharing a tender spot, I don’t necessarily feel vulnerable at all. What looks like vulnerability from the outside is really tenderness. Tenderness with myself. Tenderness with others.
The weakness and the vulnerability got transformed.
They didn’t get managed or hidden or worked around.
They got healed. And what’s underneath them is tenderness.
SATURDAY – FREE FORGIVENESS WORKSHOP If you’d like to practice this kind of honest looking in community, my FREE Forgiveness Workshop on Saturday August 29 is a beautiful place to begin. Click here now to learn more and register.
SEPTEMBER: My Finding Freedom From Fear Bootcamp is 90 days of moving out of coping and into real trust, faith and listening to the higher wisdom, together. This is my longest running program – popular because it is such a game changer. Are you up for truly moving past fear? I only offer this once per year – We start in September! Click here now to learn more now.
SEPTEMBER: How about some free classes with great ACIM teachers? Living A Course in Miracles: Release the Worry, Rest in Trust is open for registration now! Worry isn’t natural. It’s a habit, and habits can be dissolved when we’re truly willing. That’s what we’re doing together September 10 through 13 in my FREE series. 5 teachers, 8 classes, 4 days, and every one of us has walked through the worry ourselves and come out the other side. We’ll look at what worry actually is in the mind, why willpower has never once dissolved it, and how to hand the future over so we can rest even while life is still unresolved. Not denial. Not pretending we’re fine. A real change of mind. It’s FREE, and I’d love to have you with us. Register now so you don’t forget at powerofloveministry.net/Release
NEW PODCAST EPISODE: I Took God to Couples Therapy with Neda Boin. We can put ourselves through so much and call it devotion. The harder it gets, the more committed we think we are. Neda Boin lived that for years, and when she finally sat down with God about it, what surfaced wasn’t the thing she’d been trying to fix. It was sitting one layer underneath, and it’s the layer almost none of us look at. If you’re forgiving faithfully and peace still hasn’t come, this is the one I’d like you to hear.
