Article Highlights:

  • two sides of the coin
  • two energy pathways
  • a wonderful AHA!

Dear ,

worthinessWorthiness has two facets or sides of the coin – feeling worthy and feeling unworthy. As do all things in duality. Feelings of worthiness can be general (an overall feeling of being unworthy) or they can be specific to certain areas – for instance, regarding finances, love and other matters.

Worthiness also has two pathways for it’s energy: outgoing and incoming. You might feel worthy to receive but not certain about what you have to offer to others. Or conversely you might feel unworthy about receiving but not about what you have to offer others.

Instead, you might feel confident in neither, struggling with them both. Or you might feel confident of both and have no issues in your life about worthiness. These are ways of experiencing the very human matter of worthiness. Where are you regarding worthiness?

For me, my experiences around worthiness evolved into a certain knowledge of my gifts, a strength in knowing the value of what I offer or send out into the world. But I struggled with knowing my worthiness to receive. That is the energy of not-having, of lack.

Feeling less worthy to receive, I often felt I had to settle for less, or accept the crumbs or make due with what trickled in. It also made me likely to allow people to treat me less than well, and unlikely to stand up for myself in this regard. Sometimes this caused me to accept certain degrees of bad behavior from others.

Naturally, I created many experiences around this and attracted people to participate in my personal program. This went on for many years in my life. It affected my relationships as well my finances, of course. It created pain and difficulties as I attempted to work through it.

Like we all do, I worked on this, a lot, gaining understanding as I went. I tried so many things – from counseling and family/childhood work to surrender, release, energy work, prayer and ceremony. The work paid off – in many ways. I grew, I learned, I made changes. I benefited from the experiences around my feelings of being less worthy to receive.

I did increase my feelings of worthiness, though I didn’t yet understand that mostly I was strengthening my outgoing energy of worth – my gifts and service to others. My worthiness about receiving improved more sporadically and was more difficult to maintain. But I kept working on it.

You might smile in commiseration were I able to tell you exactly how many lists I created to send up in ceremonial fires of release and how many affirmations I studiously applied. But sadly, and to my growing impatience and dismay, “the cat always came back,” as they say.

A Wonderful AHA!

Until I learned something very simple. Eradication of unworthiness is not the key! The task is not to get rid of unworthiness. The goal isn’t to never again have another feeling of unworthiness. I could just stop all that thinking and stressing and striving. What a relief!

The trick is to realize it is a valid and… well… worthy… experience in life to feel unworthy. It’s far more effective to feel gratitude for the experiences and to lovingly accept when I have feelings of being unworthy to receive, instead of trying to stop ever feeling unworthiness.

This sounds immediately suspect and highly undesirable, I know. It seems to suggest I should give up and accept my lot as one who feels unworthy to receive. That’s not what I’m suggesting at all, however.

Accepting that I have feelings of unworthiness means offering myself love and compassion and understanding about this. It means not judging myself harshly about it but instead forgiving myself for feeling unworthy. It also means realizing I am human. This allows me to step away from the exhausting and endless task of trying to stop ever having these feelings. It is ok, and it’s ever so human to feel unworthy. It happens. That is lovable.

Self-acceptance allows the issue of worthiness to return to neutral, being neither positive nor negative. Then I’m no longer stuck in duality, chained to either this or else that. There’s no longer a judgment about which side of the worthiness coin I “should” be on. It’s no longer something wrong with me. I don’t have to choose a side of the coin at all. No more sides = freedom from duality.

Freedom from duality is a wonderful thing! Freed of the tension and stress of should and shouldn’t, the fight can stop and peace can come into my being. When released from the dilemmas of duality, unworthiness can be brought to neutral. Balance is restored.

When neutralized, it’s no longer a hot spot pulsing and energizing itself, increasing in intensity. And I am no longer at war with worthiness, or myself, or my life experience. PHEW! What an amazing relief!

Welcome to Wholeness!

By loving both my worthiness and my unworthiness, I can experience something new: my wholeness! Instead of worthiness being split into its good side and bad side, there is only the wholeness of it, warts and all.

Then, finally, things can arrange themselves differently. Do you see? There is no split. No feeling of what I am not, but should be. No duality. That is neutralized. Such relief.

Freedom from the belief
that my unworthiness is wrong
and will ruin my life…
priceless!

Both worthiness and unworthiness become simply a part of my wholeness, accepted. There is no longer a judged and cast-off, separated out, part of myself doomed to call for experiences to show me it is there in need of love and integration. That understanding is worthy taking in fully.

That was a little gem of a game-changer for me. Quite an AHA. A cause for happy dancing in my life. The task, the secret, the key? Love. Love is always the antidote. And today we’ve thought deeply into how it works with duality and impacts our innate worthiness.

It doesn’t mean I, or you, will never experience lack again, or never be ill-treated by another. It doesn’t mean I’ll never feel unworthy. It means I can just love myself when such things happen, instead of judging it and starting to work on it. Then duality isn’t triggered; wholeness stays intact creating flow and solutions to elevate life’s experiences. I think that’s a fabulous thing to know how to do, don’t you?

Balance is wonderful, isn’t it?
In loving self-acceptance today,
Mayet MaHulili Leilani

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