Slowing Down into Not Enough

Today I gardened. It was the first fully sunny day in weeks, or at least that's what it felt like. We have had the sort of weather Seattle is famous for – the weather that makes Seattlites walk around with crazed, desperate looks in their eyes. It's the sort of weather that, after even the most wonderful day or evening with friends and fun and even entertainment, when you walk back to your car in the rain, again, and you have to drive home in the rain, once again, it just makes you want to cry. Or move.

So here I was, today, gardening, soaking up the sunshine like a Kansas prairie soaks up rain after a drought. And, like the dry, dry prairie, I felt like I could only take it in to the top quarter inch of my skin. It felt like the sunshine would have to pour into me for days in order for it to be enough.

Enough. That was my theme today – What is enough? When have I done enough? Am I enough? It took a few rounds of anxiety washing over me before I slowed down enough to recognize it. Then I did. Oh, right! Right now I feel like I'm not enough.

I had a whole host of stories describing how I was not enough in this situation or that – not enough to handle the task of getting my parents' house ready to sell, not even enough to finish weeding this one flower bed, not enough to get what I want, not enough to deserve love…. I also had a whole host of stories explaining that I am, indeed, enough. How could I not be enough?

But neither of those actually mattered. What mattered was that I was feeling "not enough."

Usually when I slow down and feel whatever it is I'm feeling it takes about two seconds and it's done. Compare this to resisting feeling the emotion and/or staying in the drama of the story, both of which can take forever, and slowing down sounds like a great recipe for peace.

And it is. But sometimes something else is going on. It could be the difference between feeling an emotion and facing down a belief. Today this belief that I am not enough kept coming up. It seemed that I had made an agreement with my ego that today I would look at it. Just keep bringing it up until it is done.

My teacher Judy Christenson has taken me through similar beliefs, or habits, before. Last summer, for instance, something came up which I had no idea how to deal with. Her advice was to just notice it and name it – "This is where I'm trying to make everyone else responsible for my self-worth."

So I paid attention and named it, for days. "Oh, this is where I'm trying to make my lover responsible for my self-worth." "Ah, this is where I'm trying to make my son responsible for my self-worth." "Ach! This is where I'm trying to make my work, my friend, this stranger, the weather, my reflections… responsible for my self-worth."

It got to seem kind of ridiculous. And I started to feel a bit desperate. How could anything outside of me give me self-worth? It can't. If nothing else can give it to me, how do I get it?

I actually reached a place of deep despair for about ten minutes. It felt like I had been busted in the most thorough way possible. "You don't get to make anything else responsible for your self-worth!" Fine. Then, really, how do I get self-worth?

That's when some final bit of resistance snapped, and I slowed down the rest of the way into the present moment. And I found it. Not so much self-worth, but Certainty that I exist. In that Certainty the question of do I have self-worth or not felt pretty irrelevant. That's a question the ego asks – "Do I have any worth?" When you are connected to your Self you are You, and those questions just don't matter.

That was a very profound moment for me. And here I am, 8 months later, asking if I am enough. Great.

No, really, great! Bring it on. I suppose it is possible to be human without having these question lingering in the background, or foreground. But it isn't my experience. And I'd much rather name the questions and bring them into the light than have them lurking in the shadows creating havoc. When I pay attention I can begin to give my ego a different assignment. Instead of its shadow job: "prove to me that I am not enough," it gets the helpful job: "show me everywhere that I believe I am not enough."

Then I get to name it. And by naming it accurately, and letting myself feel whatever is there, I get to transform it from resistance to myself into self-knowledge. Taking a cue from Judy my mantra of the day became "This is where I believe I am not enough."

Mantra is a beautiful, powerful thing. For thousands of years Hindus have studied the energy, or Shakti, of sound. They believe that chanting sacred mantras brings you into alignment with your Divine Source and can literally change your life – remove obstacles, bring you abundance, open your heart to God.

That might sound silly. How can chanting words over and over again change anything? The idea is that the sounds of the mantras vibrate at the level of Divine Truth. Speaking, singing or even thinking the mantra brings that vibration into your body and consciousness, and transforms it.

The same sort of vibrational transformation happens when you allow yourself to feel the emotions of this present moment. Again, it is a matter of aligning yourself with the truth. It is the truth of this, your, human moment. This moment is Divine. It is currently the most relevant and important part of your journey, even with all its apparent warts. Speaking the truth of this moment, and feeling it, brings you out of resistance to it, out of resistance to yourself. It brings you right smack into the present and into your Self.

For me, speaking the truth of my moment for the greater part of the afternoon sounded like "This is where I believe I am not enough." Speaking that truth, when it was the truth, brought me right back into my center. The anxiety would disappear.

Any time I felt the wash of anxiety again, or anything disturbing the calm, I checked in. Was this where I believed I wasn't enough? Yep? Okay. "This is where I believe I am not enough."

That took the adrenaline right out of it.

Actually, my mantra started to morph. After an hour or so it sounded more like "This is where I'm not so sure that I'm enough." That one cracked me up.

After five hours I had managed to weed about 1/5^th of the flower bed I was working on, which was one of four main areas that need to be weeded. I checked in and found that rather than feeling stressed out about how much more there was to do, I felt really great.

I actually felt the kind of gratitude for life that people talk about after facing death. Those niggling doubts and lack felt completely irrelevant. This – breathing, feeling the sun, touching the earth, getting to feel what it feels like to believe I am not enough, and then to remember that I Am, and enough doesn't even matter – was enough for me.