My Biggest Sin...

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Hi Reader -

I don’t think it’s a good idea to rank your sins, but my ego loves it.

Last night I had an illuminating moment in which I knew what my ego considered my biggest “sin” to be…

And when I heard it, I literally gasped.

The “worst” thing I’ve ever done?

BE ME.

As soon as I heard this, my entire body ached with how many decades I have believed that the worst thing I’ve done is to “be myself”.

It was like my entire life flashed before my eyes, and I saw moment after moment that I felt:

Shame for feeling an “unacceptable” emotion…
Shame for having a different opinion

Shame for wanting what I’m not supposed to want…
Shame for not wanting what I am supposed to want…

Shame for being a woman that doesn’t match the gendered role I was taught to be…
Shame for my body…
Shame for having a nervous system that reacts to life.

It’s no surprise that when I believed that being me was bad or wrong, that I would spend so much time trying to fix or change myself.

I recently watched this amazing clip from Dr. Gabor Mate, where he explains two human needs we all have:

1. Authenticity
2. Attachment

He says, “When belonging and being yourself come into conflict, a child will always choose belonging.”

I have chosen belonging so many times at the expense of my authentic self.

And I need to pause a moment to broaden what authentic self means here, because most of my life, when I heard ‘authentic self’, warning bells went off in my brain. It sounded like an excuse to be difficult, non-conforming, and recklessly selfish.

But the truth is, I betray my authenticity every time I suppress my emotions and judge that I should be different than I am.

Your authenticity is what reality is. It’s the innocence of everything you think, feel, love, and long for.

And when this is what is judged and suppressed, we will live in conflict with who we are.

As I sat in my closet in the dark, witnessing this insight into my biggest sin, it was a moment of reclamation.

This belief stops now.

Being me is NOT a sin.
Being me is My Divine Calling.

I’ve come a long way in how I perceive life purpose.

I used to really focus on how it was what I was meant to DO in this life.

The longer I live, the more I realize that my life purpose is who I am meant to BE.

And who I am meant to be is my authentic self.

An apple tree doesn’t try to be an oak.
It fulfills its divine creation in being the apple tree.
It doesn’t strive to be different, fix itself, or earn its place. It simply honors what it is and grows from there.

If you’ve been sacrificing authenticity for attachment, honoring your authentic self is an ongoing moment-to-moment journey.

There can be a lot to unlearn and repattern.

But the alignment of living true to who you are is worth it.

Now that I’m an adult and have learned how to love my inner child, I am finding beautiful ways to be authentic AND have attachment.

We need both. One without the other is incomplete.

It’s true that some people will naturally un-attach from me as I show up authentically (and they have…)

But what I have noticed is that the attachments that remain or are newly created are even deeper and more loving than ever before.

After all,

It’s hard to feel genuinely loved by others when you aren’t allowing your authentic self to be loved or seen by you.

So dear one…

Where are you giving up authenticity for attachment? What could happen if you allowed your authenticity to be welcomed?

You are a creator.
Feel, be, see, say, and do.
The light in me honors the light in you.

Namaste,

brooke

P.S. I realize that on the deepest level I am not my emotions, I am not my thoughts, and I am not my body…. But on the level of ego, which does identify with all of this, those elements become reasons to judge and reject myself. Authenticity simply embraces these elements as part of the human experience and loves what is without judgement. The result? A whole lot less suffering and the ability to live life with more love and acceptance.

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