the suggestion –

on being enough

the suggestion that we just aren’t good enough is one of the stories woven tightly into the fabric of dominant culture. we tug on that thread and we find it tied directly to our own sense of worthiness, knotted deep in our own psyche.

but this narrative is not only ours to unpick, in solitude, in families, in communities. it is woven in patterns that repeat throughout every aspect of our world, reappearing in our concepts of hard work and merit, of education, in the images of the right body, of acceptable looks, abilities. it is imprinted on the very landscape. this story expresses itself through our economy, tied firmly to ideas of scarcity, of success as winning a competition, as beating the other. but even the winner is not good enough, and must continue to prove their worth, to hold eternal youth and never falter. extreme wealth gives no rest from this pattern, it is all the more committed to replicating itself, in never-ending growth.

there is work to do, on our selves, but it is not the work we might think we need to do. now, we must reclaim ourselves from this story, and as we change within so we change without.

in accepting our inherent worthiness, utterly without proof, we give permission to a whole other way of being to exist.

this is already happening. this is as much a part of the great unravelling as the concurrent, converging collapse. we sense this urgency, we feel it all the time. this moment is absolutely critical, and the new stories we work, drawing on ancient threads that pre-exist this narrative of trauma and guilt and shame, that instead see that we are okay just as we are, they are the ropes that will tether us in the brewing storm of our collective creation.

this is why the small work matters so profoundly. the pattern in my psyche repeats in my children, repeats in the patterns of my relationships, repeats in my nervous system, repeats in how i live each day. any shift in my pattern necessitates a shift in yours, and as we co-regulate, as we reaffirm that tiny spark of enoughness, healing is happening. it happens rapidly, once we spot it. we cannot unsee it, then, and it will reveal itself in every touch of our hands upon this earth. in the very language of our being.

then we cannot help it, we can no longer see education as merely filling up an inadequate bucket with what some people already know, testing the retention of it, grading people, filtering for rightness, awarding or failing, opening doors or shutting them. we were all already enough. we already learn just by being with each other, each being, all of life. we cannot help but learn from living, it is pure joy and fascination to be alive. our innate wisdom, our intuitive, instinctive being, in relationship, is enough.

then we are staggered at the vision of what could be, and refuse to accept what is justified in the name of a story that repeats in an economy of scarcity. clearly there is enough, and every being is inherently worthy, without proving it in some saleable manner. all should have their needs met.

like all other beings we are embedded within all life. no one is poor because they are not good enough nor rich because they are better. there was never any need to earn it, there is sheer abundance. this is no cost of living crisis, there are no debts, but what the earth regenerates and we may reciprocate with. artificially creating scarcity depends on us accepting that those who have wealth, earned it, and that our wholly individual task is to beat the competition to win the prize and keep on perpetually winning bigger prizes, compounding interest, owning more. it’s all a story.

we find the story of not being good enough in the diseases of our time. this idea patterned in the economy, in education, in religion, in parenting, in partnering, it shows up in our bodies. if we must perpetually prove we are good enough, but we never are, the control of the body to meet unattainable standards requires constant vigilance. we are exhausted, trying to break the code that would let us just be, in our bodies, in our minds, in relationship. we can only do that when we see the pattern, within our tiny fractal being and within the whole.

if there is nothing to prove, nothing to earn, if we are each of us already enough, how do we see education? economy? equality? age? our bodies, our homes, our communities, our ecosystems? this living place we live within?

we are not actually in need of fixing, improving, civilising, schooling. we have nothing to prove and we don’t have to earn the right to be. we are already beautiful, we always were and we always will be. status is irrelevant, because my being enough does not take away from you being enough. we are not in competition, because there is nothing to compare.

we cannot judge because there is no greater or lesser. we express unimaginable diversity.

we see pretty quickly that the hold on us that is all the ropes that bind us to that story of inadequacy – the one that fires up an economy of perpetual growth and feeds the shareholder profit motive, compounding wealth for a tiny elite – well. it is tight and grows tighter as the physical limits to growth are reached. now the pattern is of suffocation, overheating, pollution, flooding, cutting off circulation, drying up and withering. it is urgent that we stop.

we cannot fix this with the same mind that sees everything as needing fixing. better engineering will not save us. we must start within ourselves, and, deeply connected to life itself, begin to co-regulate. this is no singular act but that of many, many, many, shifting the patterns in all the multiple, innumerable moments of living. there are lots of us and we are ready. we can begin simply to say, we are all enough. we are inherently, unconditionally worthy, as all beings within a living earth are necessary, collaborating, co-existing.

how do we live today, tomorrow, this coming week, knowing this deeply in our cells, in a growing collective consciousness, reconnecting? what will we say to ourselves, and to each other? how will we eat, how will we dress, what will we do today, knowing we are already all we need to be? what could our household be like? how might needs be met sufficiently? what work is urgent, when we envision an economy where everyone’s needs are met within the boundaries of life? what does that look like in our day? what actual changes are within our reach this very moment?

this very moment, i relax. i say to myself and to you, at once, ‘you don’t have to earn it’.

– you are already everything, all of life living through you. you are loved just by being, and even when you cease to be, your every atom will go on shining in the collective light –

so a deep and profound trust emerges. i rest into the earth that holds me, i breathe life in and out, and so do you. there is work to do, but it is not the striving, straining, forcing, competing, colonising, conquering that was cultured in us. in the knowledge of our collective abundance, we can begin to live in resonance with life itself.

what shall we do today,

to help with that

transition?

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it feels like everything that could possibly blossom is, all at once, on the farm in late april. such staggering beauty.

here’s another snippet from that interview with the quiet rebellion. sometimes conversation draws out ideas in new ways. i love the collaborative nature of thinking aloud together.