“How can I discover how amazing I truly am?” you might ask.
How? Think of the word Namaste. How many of you are familiar with this word and know what it means? (The Light within me bows to the Light within you.)
Do you practice what it means? Do you really look for and bow to the Light within other people? All people, or just your peeps? Just those you like or impress you or those you want to impress?
One way to discover how truly amazing YOU are is by looking at how amazing others are first.
Have you ever noticed this? Often, when you value the awesomeness in others, they reciprocate. In this delightfully unexpected way, you can gain insights about how amazing you truly are! Trust me on this. By discovering/uncovering/expanding your curiosity regarding how amazing others are, you will grow the energy, and it will reflect back in your direction.
Others will acknowledge something in you that you didn’t notice or previously disregarded as of little value.
A recent example of this was an email discussion with someone about the virtues of Essiac Tea (an herbal tea allegedly formulated by a Canadian nurse, Rene Cassie many years ago that is very detoxifying and has helped numerous people with debilitating diseases, most notably cancer). In the course of our ‘e-conversation’, I mentioned that I’d had breast cancer. After the surgery, I had a visit with an oncologist, who suggested hormone therapy, mentioning that there was a good chance I would be taking it for the rest of my life. I chose to skip it, knowing that I could address my healing with my herbal knowledge, nutrition, and right thinking. The woman I was corresponding with through email commented that I was a “courageous soul” – that I could trust myself and my herbal knowledge enough in such a life-or-death matter. The truth is, I NEVER thought of it that way at all! I simply knew I didn’t need it, so I didn’t go there. As I reflected back on this later, I realized that it DID take courage. But in my mind, it was nothing. It was just what I felt I should do.
Why do we have the challenges that we do?
This raises the question, why do we have the challenges that we do? How do they serve us? Do you ever ask the question? How do your challenges serve you?
For me, my journey with breast cancer served me by giving me 7 weeks of time off all to myself to “think”. At one level, I was deeply happy to have this time to slow down; to move at my own pace and not have to feel guilty about it. (How many of you feel that the pace of your life just doesn’t match the pace you seem to need to move at?) Recovering from breast cancer surgery gave me carte blanche to stay in bed and give my soul the much-needed rest and attention it desperately needed.
Because I sought to understand my deepest motives, I never felt that cancer was a life-threatening disease.
Hence, I did not follow the oncologist’s scripts for hormone therapy. Nor did I feel like it was as scary a step as other life-challenges I was facing (like starting a business all on my own).
The point of the story is not that you should refuse to take hormone therapy if you have had surgery for breast cancer. The point is to honor your body; make your physical, mental, and spiritual health a major priority in your life. Allow yourself the gift of knowing the authentic you. (Spoiler Alert: Through my journey, I discovered that it is the resistance to acknowledging your authentic self that promotes/exacerbates illness and struggle. The bigger the gap between your authentic self and who you are presenting to the world, the rougher the journey.
Allow yourself grace.
Why not allow yourself some grace? Be open to noticing, to allowing awareness of how uniquely special you are. My self-esteem at the time was simply too low to believe there was anything special about myself. Just by chance, I discovered that by noticing lovely or special things about others (which arose sincerely and authentically from me), I was gifted with reciprocal acknowledgement. It should be noted that this did not always come from the person whose specialness I had commented upon at an earlier time. It was energetic payback I received, often out of the blue. The more unexpected it was, the more it delighted me. The simple observation from the woman that I was “a courageous soul” caused me to reflect and to decide that refusing hormone therapy had taken courage – along with a great deal of self-awareness – and I had never thought of myself in that ‘light’.
Namaste.