Let go of the small idea you hold of yourself and others...

"Our worst 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. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous?"


Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God; your playing small doesn't serve the world."

That quote by Marianne Williamson might be one of the most popular quotes I have heard people verbally speak, as often as it is quoted in print.


It came to mind this morning how often I have been caught in the trap of smallness both by my own proclivities and by those of others. If you have that habit of agreeing with someone's idea of you which keeps you from feeling joy or traps you into a small place of story, or if you find yourself being a miser who is holding someone else in a very tight place, then maybe today you can let those stories grow a few inches taller...let some joy and forgiveness into the center of it.

Another author and inspirational speaker, David Whyte, has a terrific poem on this same subject of not shrinking, "Sweet Darkness." Recently I attended an event at the Mount Madonna center where I had an opportunity to listen to him recite the poem. And, I was reminded that we are all greater than the illusions we create to cause ourselves and one another pain.

Sweet Darkness- by David Whyte

When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.

When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.

Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes
to recognize its own.

There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.

The dark will be your womb
tonight.

The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.

You must learn one thing:
the world was made to be free in.

Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.

Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn

anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.


_

There are sad moments when humans want to be stuck in the small petty stories they tell themselves and others but what is to be gained from that?


Let your love blossom into having enough heart to heal the pain, embrace the taller version of your soul while you elevate the greatest parts of those you love. It can be done.