Have you ever felt frustrated? At any time, or about anything? Of course, you have, and so have I. Truth be told, I have been frustrated more times than I can count just this past week alone! Frustrated as a friend, a father, a partner, a lover, a songwriter and various other assorted “roles” I play. I’m speaking figuratively, of course, about the “roles” I play, and I don’t actually feel frustrated all the time. By and large, I consider myself a spiritually optimistic person and do my best to serve the world in an encouraging way. Still, there is this sometimes menacing voice within me that arrives in the form of self-doubt, deep seated insecurity, unworthiness and fear, and it appears to be committed to sabotaging my every move in life, or at least my confidence in the choices I make and the progress they afford me.
Mind you, this “voice” provocateur is not always right in my face with its insidious espionage and duplicity. No, it does give me a break here and there, but, usually just long enough to allow me to cop a feel for the innate, creative beauty, power and potential in the universe, the unlimited capacity for love and healing, and the excitement about the opportunity to seek my peace at this particular moment in time amidst this veritable symphony of cacophony and distraction that we call life on Planet Earth. Then, after a little breather, the assault continues.
Truth be told, I give my little egocentric saboteur props for the ruthless relentlessness with which it pursues its prime directive of frustrating my masculine confidence. It is a highly skilled, precision surgeon. It attacks my parental confidence in every issue I experience with my daughter; it taunts me in the ebb and flow of physical and emotional intimacy with my partner; it ridicules my creative and material successes with incessant chatter grounded in lack and unworthiness. If all else fails, it simply makes an all out frontal attack on my peace of mind, until I feel totally broke down, wore down to the nub of my soul and I wind up defensively reacting in fear to virtually every obstacle, hurdle or challenge the world can throw at me.
Sometimes, it feels like I may never get it right, and even more so, that I have never gotten it right. That despite all of my best efforts and purest intentions, I am somehow failing in the game of life and that the gold that I seek, whether material or spiritual, will evade me in this life. I fear I won’t have enough love or money or respect or enough of anything to support and sustain myself in my old age. I judge myself for the failure to have already created these things in my life, and I judge myself for judging myself. I judge myself for my shame, my regret, for even having fear in the first place, and so much more. The “voice” taunts me that by my age I should have mastered this peace-balance thing. The simple truth is, I haven’t mastered it! In my humanness, I am just like everyone else, susceptible to being knocked off center by the challenges and opportunities life presents on a moment to moment basis. It gets to the point to where I just want to scream: WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME???
Life Wants More OF Me…And Of You!
Sometimes, I wish I could pretend I didn’t know the answer to that question. It feels like it would be so much easier to restore my peace if I just didn’t know what I know. But, you see, I know that I know the answer. Life doesn’t want more FROM me. Life wants more OF me. My authentic masculine self. My creatively powerful self. My divinely loving self. My spiritually confident self. My naturally peaceful self. The parts of me that are not only undaunted by the challenges of life and love, but are excited at the opportunities they represent when they present themselves.
I know the difference between the two perspectives and I am not without some experience in listening to and for my authentic inner voice, the one that is grounded in unwavering spiritual confidence, and then following its lead. If I weren’t following its lead, I wouldn’t even be writing this article. My ego would never agree to me shining the light on its malicious strategies, at least not in public. If my ego is out of the way as I write this, I guarantee it will be laying in the weeds after I publish it to try and persuade me it was a mistake. Fortunately, for me today, I am unattached to whether it does or not. Today, I am only interested in revealing my own True Self to me.
In the past, I have usually shamed my self for breaking down at all. You see, to me the breakdown, any breakdown, was caused by me not being strong enough, solvent enough, confident enough, loving enough, creative enough, smart enough, any enough was never enough. I was just not good enough. To add insult to injury, for me, I wasn’t good enough, because I wasn’t perfect. I’ve been wound so tight that nothing short of perfect would ever be good enough. Only when everything is perfect would I allow my self to accept I was good enough. Talk about expectations. Imagine what it must be like to be my daughter, or my lover.
Life’s Relentless Pursuit For Authenticity
Life is a relentless process of breaking down, breaking open and breaking through in order to release more of the love at the core of our being. Life can’t get it or take it FROM us. It can only help us to realize there is more of it at our core waiting to be revealed and expressed. It is our choice to demonstrate it. Therein, is the age old rub. We are responsible for manifesting it and bringing it forth, first to ourselves and then to the world.
One thing is for sure, the relentlessness of life’s process is not suited for the faint of heart who do not yet understand its purpose. It can, and often does, feel discouraging, and that is dramatically understating the matter. However, we should all take heart, for at the core of our being, we are all gods and goddesses infused with all of the power, strength and God given resources necessary to achieve life’s goals on its terms. We are not here to set our own terms on life, but rather to accept life on its terms and then go about the task of thriving and reveling in the ebb and flow of life’s currents.
So, the next time you feel like life is about to crush you beneath the cosmic wheel of fate, in the instant you feel you are about to lose your tenuous hold on the universal thread from which you are dangling, remember life is not taunting you. Life is not breaking you down to turn you into inconsequential dust in order to lord its superiority over you. Life is breaking you down so you can break through. It is serving up an opportunity for you to get more out of life by being more authentically you in your life. For my part, I will do my best to do the same over here. Maybe we will meet up some time and get a chance to talk about how its going for one another.