When babies are born they can’t do anything for themselves. They can’t eat, walk, talk, or even use the bathroom. They are helpless. We must do everything for them. Yet we love them. We adore them. We make silly faces just to encourage them to coo. They are useless to the planet in traditional terms and yet we honor them as being one of the best things about living. They are authentic. In an artificial world, a taste of authenticity reminds us of our spiritual home.

When that baby starts to grow we start piling on expectations. At first, it’s expecting the child to follow our guidance, to not color on the walls or not run into the road. As they grow we expect children to perform well in school. If they dare act out or fail to thrive in the life-sucking reality that school has become we label them. If they fail to go to a 4 year college we assume they won’t amount to anything. So to summarize, we love them for the innocent souls that they are as infants and then we forget all of that and force them to conform to society’s interpretation of worthiness.

My worth is not tied to my salary, my state of health, the number of friends I have on Facebook or even whether you think I am a good writer. My worth was imprinted on my soul long before I became this human being by God. Maybe we recognize that when we see a baby. We long to feel that way about ourselves as adults, but feel too guilty, as if we aren’t worthy. The way I see it, if God allowed us to get this far (to be born) it was no accident. Loving ourselves for simply being present here is God’s desire yet many of us choose to live our lives according to man’s sense of worthiness rather than the laws of the universe, which is not only ludicrous, but utterly ineffective.

We have been raised to respect degrees. The more letters behind someone’s name the more we listen to their opinions, the more worthy we make them, even when our common sense steers us differently. You can certainly go through this life and achieve grand accomplishments. You can build a company, you can build a fortune, you can add a lot of letters to the end of your name, but it won’t change your worthiness as a human being. It might make your ego feel better, but the ego is a ruthless dictator, perpetually steering you to not grow but to hang your hat on your ‘distinctions’.

Stop trying to prove yourself worthy of anything. Stop living in fear of what other people think. The worthiness you are focused upon is a manmade distinction.

My bias is toward Christianity because it was how I was raised. All that it takes to appreciate how ass backward we have it is to spend just a short time studying the work of Jesus Christ, who I truly believe came here as an enlightened being to show us how to live in love. Jesus did not choose authority figures as his disciples. He chose the disenfranchised. He engaged with members of society that the rest of society deemed beneath them. He demonstrated that how we treated the lowliest of us was how we treated God because we are ALL from God.

Even if no one ever appreciates your unique self, in the eyes of God you are worthy. Once you no longer give a damn whether people like or respect you, you will be free in your heart and your mind. When you feel free, you radiate that out. Others will want what you’re having. It will have a cascading effect. People will stop caring about the Kardashians and start caring about the passions that burn inside of us.

When we stop proving our worthiness, and honor that we are all worthy, we stop craving external man-made symbols of worth. There is nothing wrong with prosperity, in fact, I see it as a very positive thing. All of us deserve it, but it is not the mark of soul worthiness and is often something we fill ourselves with to mask a barrenness that exists deep within us, a place where our soul longings quietly wait to be welcomed. I recently read a statement, that no matter how big your house, your bank account or how luxurious your car, at the end of your life, your coffin is the same size as that of the homeless man.

You are worthy simply because you exist.

<3

Erin