I’ve noticed something with my actions lately. As an adult I still find myself afraid of getting in trouble. Which is quite hilarious, considering I have no one tracking my actions these days. As children, we can often find ourselves navigating the approval of those adult figures in our lives. “Don’t do that!” “Thanks for helping.” “You are so good” “What were you thinking!?” “You can make better decisions.”
Old habits die hard and as functioning adults we sometimes still look around for someone to tell us we are good. If you don’t think you’re one of us, answer this question: Have you ever seen a cop car and immediately slowed down even if you were going the speed limit?
There is this idea that at any moment we might get in trouble or that we could do something wrong. It’s the scary monster under the bed and it’s name is SHAME.
Why is this a problem? It creates a barrier between good and evil. Between Heaven and Hell. Between right and wrong. It keeps the group of goodies over here and the group of mess ups over there. It literally splits us in two as a race and as a self. It asks us to keep our good in front and our bad in the back. Unless, of course, you have a drink in your hand and then it’s socially acceptable to let the “badder” out.
This patterned programming becomes an unbalanced and fragmented way to live. It leaves us walking around with a portion of ourselves present, but our 8-year-old hellraiser alone. We have a lot of hellraisers walking around this planet not knowing what it feels like to be loved. Many were hellraisers at a young age and told they weren’t good.
Is it our job to love them?
That can sound like dirty work. Only the hellraisers were able to love the hellraisers when you think about it. Like Jesus loving the outcast. It takes a special someone to not be afraid of doing the dirty work.
Here is the truth. Hellraisers aren’t from Hell. They just walked in the shadows long enough to relate to the dark and bring it into the light. They are the doorways. They blaze the trails of change because they are bold enough to stand alone. They can leave a room silent by cutting through with truth. They become those that we follow and in the next breath those that we abandon. We do this to others and to ourselves.
The next time you get it wrong. The next time you make a mess of things. The next time you wander into not so good territory. Maybe, just maybe, that is the time to love yourself the most. Maybe we can start to gather up all the hellraisers within each of us and form a big Motherly Unconditional Hug. What would it look like if we deeply loved all aspects of ourselves? The amount of shame that some of us feel lays like a weighted blanket, one that is holding back the world from coming together again.
You are GOOD. You are BAD. You are ON the path. You are OFF the path. You are RIGHT. You are WRONG. It is all expressions of the divine. You are the yin and the yang. The sun and the moon. The light and the dark. Without the dark, we do not appreciate the light. Without destruction, there can be no creation.
I heard about a study done recently, where a group of high school students were simply told consistently, they were good at math. Many of them didn’t have the scores in the past to reflect this, but they were all still consistently given the same message nonetheless. All of them saw significant increases in their scores. The power of our words upon others can literally shift them into a different version of themselves.
What would it look like if we took all our hellraisers out dancing? Probably be quite fun!
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