Our Deepest Fear: Reboot

I’m taking one of Marianne Williamson’s greatest quotes, in my perspective, to the next level with a (r)evolution of bliss. Let’s go!

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us.

Marianne Williamson

Another way to say this? It is our bliss not our despair that frightens us most. Wild, huh? Well, let’s go deeper…

No matter how much we struggle with our “bad” circumstances in life, i.e., how we struggle with money or lack of, with our outward appearances, with addiction or recovery, with mental illness or mental health, with physical impairment, physical illness or western medicine and its medical systems; what we are more frightened of is not all of that. These are the struggles that people document all day everyday – in books, in newspapers, on the news, in talk shows, on social media, on Thrive Global and others like it. All we have to do is look around us and we can pull what we need to illumine our path and find our way. Everybody is doing some version of this. However, bliss… who knows what the hell that looks like? (And I don’t mean bliss from a drug or any other external factor… that’s not bliss. Frankly? That’s more of despair.)

We are more frightened by the bliss we would dare to experience if we simply surrendered to what’s within us. “Surrender? You say, surrender? That’s a frightening proposition!”

Bliss is our natural state. It is who we are. But we have very little idea of what that means, of what that looks like – living from the state of bliss. Who can tell us what to expect? And are they legitimate or just fakin’ it? Probably they’re not real, because real people have problems… and lots of them. We. are. not. comfortable. with. life. being. that. good… or that easy. Frankly, who would we be if we didn’t have the upheaval, the deprivation, the chaos? And if we can’t see it in front of us, then we’ll deny it as our birthright. We’ll deny that no battles are necessary to have this type of happiness, this type of bliss – this bliss that is the very nature of our souls.

In the end, we would feel better if we had to do something to earn it, do something to be worthy of it, or do something to fight for it. That is our learned default.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?

Marianne Williamson

We wonder if we are enough when we are just ourselves, and no more. We compare ourselves to others trying to judge if we are enough, if we have enough, if we feel enough, if we sense enough, if we know enough, if we shine bright enough, if we can learn enough, if we… you can finish that for me. We find all sorts of ways to add more to who we are, and we are rarely satisfied with life as it happens to us.

It is so not a problem to want more – in fact, want it all! Just don’t feel the need to make wrong, thereby scrubbing, what’s already before you – what you’ve already done. Downplaying who we are or who we have been is acceptable, even admired, as self-deprecation, and we feed our need to seem like less so that we don’t ruffle any feathers around us.

You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.

Marianne Williamson

I’ll say it again… Downplaying who we are is an acceptable, and lauded, mode of self-deprecation. You can’t just say how great you are, you have to offset it with a remark against how it might be perceived by others thereby making it more acceptable to say. Whose standard of acceptability is that?

We dive so deep into the delusional fear that our egos will take us over, become unruly and then we’ll lose ourselves in the presupposed darkness that we forget to simply revel in the light of who we are right now.

We forget that it’s okay to revel in who we are. We’re unsure because we don’t want to look like fools; but what we don’t know is that this very act is our “shrinking so that other[s] won’t feel insecure.”

We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it is in everyone.

Marianne Williamson

The Millennials and Gen Z’ers have their fingers on this pulse. Entitlement (yes, entitlement) is a way of expressing that it is your birthright to have whatever you want; to know that you are worthy of it all. We older generations often accuse the younger generations of being entitled, with a negative connotation, because we’re so used to being deprived. It’s okay. It’s evolution. We learned it from Baby Boomers and their parents who lived through the Great Depression. (And even we are entitled in their eyes.)

We think deprivation is how it’s supposed to be. We’re only beginning to see that we can have anything we want, as the Universe is truly capable and willing to give it all to us. Feels like bliss fulfilled, yes?

On social media, we’re all saying constantly, “Hey, I love this,” or “Hey, I’m special.” And now, this entitlement is not limited to the few, it is for the many. Because we can all be special and unique together. Who’s trending? Who just went viral? How many likes do they/I have? By that same token, we don’t all seek out the same avenues or outlets by which to express how special we are, and this is what makes life such an adventure.

Our bliss is expressed when we each embrace how special and unique we each are. When we make each other wrong for our unique expressions, we go to negative emotions like cynicism or skepticism or jealousy. Those emotions are not even close to bliss on the emotional scale. And while it’s not imperative to experience just bliss, we could allow ourselves greater range of motion and emotion by just letting go of those negative emotional patterns.

We could just revel in the joy of each other, and stop having to prove anything to anyone (like how “real” we can be by our own cynicism). Our value would be in our enjoyment, because it’s ours and not anyone else’s.

And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

Marianne Williamson

When you notice someone’s pure happiness, don’t you fall in? Isn’t it infectious? When you notice someone really enjoying something, don’t you get curious and want to know what they’re enjoying? Could you just fall in for the sake of pure enjoyment, letting the value judgments alone?

As we each express our bliss, others witness it and are inspired to express theirs. It is the evidence of our interconnectedness, and the honor it is to be a part of this world. I am honored to be a part of this world with you.

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