ANGELIQUE ELECTRA
How does the phrase — “I am not enough” — become an imaginary banner in our lives? Is it something we are born to as we separate from the magical space of the womb? Once separated, do we feel a a large void created of lostness? The reverse of wholeness? Does all our safety goes away once we emerge from the womb? Are we born into a new void of helplessness?
We are born feeling separated. We cry as babies, grieving the loss of oneness. As we grow, While our cries fade away, we can begin to generate sighs of self-disappointment, even as we achieve enviable goals. The existential angst can remain…the haunting feeling of “I am not enough.” When that thought stays with us, it can become a syndrome, a depression, or a basis for making decisions that holds us back from realizing and living the unity that we actually never lost. We seek that sense of oneness again, in each relationship, that perfect job, that perfect home or car, or even that perfect appearance or way of being. We are always seeking to meld ourselves into a person, place or thing– to feel that sense of oneness again. Nothing is ever enough. So how could I be ENOUGH?
That thought can become an “ANT” — an automatic negative thought, churning quietly in the background. That we are are incomplete, don’t measure up, cannot “be” enough runs like a tape. When am I am enough, I will finally be who I want to be, and have what I want.
I’ve come to believe “enoughness” is a spiritual dilemma. We are always seeking to free ourselves to some ideal….some notion of perfection that is supposed to get us to “enough” — an endless circular. It’s a sprinting, exhausting race to the flag post called “Enough.”
Seeking “Enough” is the search for a holy grail. It can be relentless. Its the “holy land” which will open our rose petals for full self expression, uninhibited and whole. We long for the Voice inside to remind us, that as a progeny of our version of the Divine, there is no such thing as “enough” or “not enough” because we’ve never been separated at all.
Years ago, I once attended a Byron Katie workshop. She stands for truth-telling, to ourselves. She helps to transform thought systems by questioning them, very simply. I remember someone in the audience shared her ongoing anguish that “I am not enough.” Byron looked at her , and gently smiling with deep compassion, responded: “Enough for What?” In that moment, I felt a huge shift. As though hit with a shattering bolt, I deeply realized how fictitious the thought was, and how impossibly immeasurable “enough” was. There was no way to ever create a metric to measure it. It was a black hole that had no end. It literally made no sense.
As creatures of relativity, we compare ourselves to our ideas about others to create the illusory metric of enough-ness. We gauge whether we look or act like others do. We are constantly assessing whether we have the talents, skills, looks or achievements that others do. When we think we fall short, deep self-disappointment and even self-deprecation can follow. We can feel like “fakes” or imposters as well. In that case, however, we also swim in yet another fallacy.
We’re not here to mimic one another. We are here to inspire each other. Most of all, we are here to be uniquely ourselves, and allow our own brand of selfhood to emerge through our own evolutionary process. We are each meant just to be as unique as each snowflake’s design among so many other snowflakes, creating the oneness of snow. We each have what I call a “divine design” to celebrate and nurture. There is no measure for that, but inherently infinite. There is no “enough-ness” as there can be no true comparison between you and anyone else. There isn’t supposed to be!
You do You and I’ll do Me.
Ultimately, we can decide to swim in our own lane of self-definition. But don’t imagine a desert where you see mirages of “enough-ness.” Instead, see a vast ocean of possibility, and cultivate a deep knowingness that your own divine design, like a rose, is slowly opening its petals to reveal the rich center inside, that knows it is infinitely perfect.