Light

“It’s entirely within your authority to determine whether you deserve to be held within light and warmth. No-one else can decide that for you – whether they’re your creator, your guardian or your destroyer – you are still the authority on whether you are enough. Only YOU can choose that.”

How the light decides to shine onto you is partly up to you. You might not like the sound of that, despite one screamingly obvious and powerful truth: it means that you get to choose to be in that light. Whether that instantly makes you feel terrified, or liberated, is also a choice. The reason that you might not like the sound of that is because it exposes two other revelations about your current situation that may be difficult to bear at a time of challenge.

The first is this: if YOU haven’t positioned yourself favourably, then YOU are part-accountable for unfavourable outcomes and that’s a hard fact to absorb if you feel cheated, hurt, discarded, shamed, lost or unloved.

“We can have suffered a great misjustice or loss without playing any part at all, and yet, the light still seeks us out because it always will. It is constantly seeking a way out from the dark, no matter how that darkness first came to be. That’s how light works. That’s what it does. In fact, that’s all it does. What you make of its warmth on your back and the path it illuminates is up to you.”

So, your life is simply a continuous opportunity to place yourself in light’s path, to curiously await the discovery of what it reveals. You might not like what it reveals – but that’s also the opportunity. To take a look at what is shown, and then continue to choose – to change, to persevere, to repeat, to quit, to change direction, these are ALL your choice. But if you didn’t position yourself in that light in the first place, then nothing can be revealed, nothing can improve, nothing can change, and as such: nothing can progress. And a state of stagnancy in stillness means that you will be left behind. Because the light will move on and evolution will happen elsewhere, without you.

The second truth that is uncomfortable to bear is this: if the light you seek IS available, and you opt in, then you are also accountable for whatever greatness that brings. It could reveal beauty, opportunity, strength, love, pleasure – but here’s the same challenge as before that you might fear just as much as pain and loss and shame: YOU are also accountable for joy. Not only in the present form of connection and pleasure, but you are also accountable for the sustainability of it, and people can find that responsibility even scarier than having to admit that they have avoided being in the light in the first place.

Because with nothingness, you know where you stand, you can become familiar with it, make friends with it even. What most of us do is make a living from it.

“We conform, we wear sacrifice and suffering as a badge, we complain about what we don’t have because it connects us to a community of other complainers who are also lacking. ”

But at least they are all lacking together, as a united force, a community. And guess what community gives us: safety, connection, identity and pride. And who in their right mind would want to give up all of those assurances?!

So I’m going to tell you the most beautifully liberating factor in all of this, even though I already said it out loud by saying it in the opening sentence, because sometimes we need to be told the same truth on repeat before we can believe it:

You get to CHOOSE. YOU are accountable for whether you have positioned yourself in favourable light. If you identify as a victim, as unlovable, as unfortunate, if you identify as simply not being worthy, or enough, and the light of opportunity and joy passes you by, then I wouldn’t expect you to jump up and excitedly follow it on a new path when it presents itself. Because that asks a lot. That asks for you to question everything – who you are, what you have been, where you are going, whether you deserve to be there, on whose authority.

“What can often scare us away from pursuing joy is not knowing what we would say if someone in an assumed position of authority stops us on our path and condescendingly says “Where do you think you’re going?”.”

I’m going to hit you with my final truth of this topic: this idea of authority, this concept that there are rules, structures and established institutions that know better as a result of centuries of reading clever books and wearing formal hats permitted by someone else wearing an even more ordained hat – this concept of authority is meant to keep us safe, sometimes even from ourselves and our own ignorance, so YES they have power, YES they have wisdom we might not have, but here’s my take on that:

The word Authority is from the Latin Auctoritus, which is a derivation of the word Auctor, meaning the originator, the creator, the promoter. The Auctor would be a person who increases confidence, not someone who limits the light that leads you to it. Because the Auctor would know better; this is what granted them the authority in the first place. They would have better experience, greater wisdom, deeper connection. The authorities in your current situation, have they demonstrated these values to you? Is your loyalty to them equal to their contribution in return? As a Confidence Coach it is my job to constantly question this for you.

“How can anyone in the world be better positioned to know YOU than yourself, to have experienced your experiences more intimately than you, to have any greater wisdom on what you need, love, fear, than YOU, to understand your sense of connection better than YOU? There is no greater authority of you, than you. ”

YOU are the one who increases confidence in yourself. Others can serve as guides, as providers, as supporters – but whether the light decides to shine onto you is partly up to you to CHOOSE to be on its path in the first place, then it’s entirely within your authority to determine whether you deserve to be held within its light and continue in its warmth. No-one else can decide that for you – whether they’re your creator, your guardian or your destroyer – you are still the authority on whether you are enough. Only YOU can choose that.

So when the light of opportunity, or connection, or hope next passes you by, and the voices of guardians, or society, of selective reporting, or of the church, or just the voices of people that hold the microphone and paid to be on your stage - when they tell you that you don’t deserve to be in that light or to stay in it for too long, question who made them YOUR Auctor. Chances are, when the light shone your way, you let them lead and block out the illumination that was meant for you.

Which brings me back to this beautifully powerful truth: YOU get to position yourself favourably within the light. In a time of challenge, your feelings are articulated with your thoughts and words. Your thoughts and words shape your beliefs. Your beliefs become your convictions. And in the end, it’s our convictions that activate change. Our response to change will determine whether we are worthy of that light, will choose to stand in it, have the grace to follow it, and the confidence to shine it on others as we pass them by.

Written with love, Tessa x