by Tara Joyce | Dec 1, 2016 | Cultural Creativity
I don’t want to feel this way any more. I don’t want to feel that I am ‘not enough.’ I want to see how wonderful and amazing I am—and how wonderful and amazing you are. It has been far too long that I have bought into the message that you and I are ‘not enough’ as we are.
In response to these feelings, I’ve decided I’m no longer accepting any message, internal or otherwise, that encourages me or anyone else to believe that who or what or why we are is ‘not enough.’ I’m done buying into it. It’s horseshit and it is created out of our polarized culture that thrives on encouraging us to feel separate, alone, and mindlessly focused on consuming in order to fill the void we’ve created together.
Not enough, not enough, not enough. Buy more, get more, perhaps then it’ll be enough.
I’ve decided to become like a superhero, vigilant to the messages that encourage us to feel like we are not good enough as we are. Fuck these messages, and fuck the cutting voice inside me who actually buys into its bullshit. Only I can give any thing the power to make me feel not good enough. Only I can choose to dis-empower myself. It takes my ‘buy in.’ I’ve decided it’s time I own this.
You and I are so much more than we realize—and that is the real truth. The breadth and heights of what we’re capable of is actually what we need to be reminded of—and yet our dominate culture has a different message. It sells us on ways to be more, better, faster. It fearfully sells us on ‘not enough’ in hopes we will buy into its offerings. It needs us to feel less than, in hopes we’ll feel we need it to feel whole. It’s a never-ending co-dependent see-saw we ride, if we allow it.
I’m buying out of ‘not enough.’ For it’s the only way I can see clearly through the noise and to the heart of my self. Doing my work to release this dominant message, I allow myself the ability to rise to any occasion, confident in knowing I am enough as I am.
photo credit: Ron Mader
by Tara Joyce | Nov 11, 2016 | Cultural Creativity
Who was it that decided
It was cool to be cruel?
Who was it that instructed you
To cover up your envy.
With cutting words
Used to feel oh so clever.
Holding your balance
On the pedestal you’ve precariously perched on.
Hoping to tower over
Your item of envy.
They need to be smaller
Small, like you feel when you’re around them.
Small, like you feel.
When you forget how beautiful you are
You can be so very ugly.
Your cutting words
Will never leave you feeling valued.
Self-satisfied
Masturbated, perhaps.
Your ego safely tucked
Behind your manufactured cool.
Maybe they won’t notice
How insecure you are.
You’re more beautiful
Than you act.
It’s a shame
You don’t know.
How your envy leaves you exposed
To what’s behind your performance.
You’re caught up in comparison
And your need to control.
How insecure you are
You’re trying to feel better.
Looking at everyone else
You never see the best in you.
Never getting that your beauty
Isn’t forced into production.
It’s yours
Naturally.
Clever and cool are words
That do not express.
An opportunity for love wasted
Beauty masked.
photo credit: Dori
by Tara Joyce | Nov 1, 2016 | Pay What It's Worth Pricing
Everyone can be your teacher, and everything can be an object of worship.
When you can free yourself from the scales of judgement in your lower mind—where one thing is held in higher virtue than another—in your higher mind, everything has the same value.
In this space, you see the teacher learns from their student, as the student learns from their teacher. In every exchange and in every relationship, there is value to realize.
When you can accept yourself and your true nature, you see this shared value. In acceptance of yourself, you lose the need to rank and weigh, and to judge any thing and any one as better or worse.
In this space of equanimity, you understand you create the value you give, and the value you receive.
What’s curious is that in this effort to understand our world and improve our self, we allow ourselves to realize the infinite value we possess.
photo credit: DorkyMum
by Tara Joyce | Oct 19, 2016 | Cultural Creativity
Note to Self: Don’t be concerned about what you do.
This does not mean what you do does not matter. To say it doesn’t matter is to veil my concern with apathy. What I mean is, do not be attached to any particular thing or way. Let you be enough. Know you are enough.
Good and bad. Accept you as you are. There is no one better that you need to be.
photo credit: Syahmir
by Tara Joyce | Oct 11, 2016 | Cultural Creativity
We see people and things not as they are, but as we are. How aware we are informs what we see—and how we see it.
Ubuntu – I am because you are.
People who don’t seem to get it are seemingly everywhere. We find them in our families, at work, and in all areas of our public and private lives; and it can be painful and frustrating to watch them behave so unconsciously. Even though we know true separation from them is an illusion, it’s not hard to find ourselves feeling intolerant of them, wishing we could be free of them.
Yet, they are a part of our world. We can not avoid them. We will deal with them—whether we want to or not, and whether we can understand them or not. The people who don’t get it may not be able to see what we can see, yet their vision is essential. They, like us, are in their own process of awakening. The light we each shine has a major purpose, to make the darkness more apparent.
As we shed light on what they cannot yet see, they too shed light on the unconscious places within us. What triggers us about their ways of being are places for us to explore. Through making the unconscious conscious, we see ourselves more clearly. Holding them in the light of our own energy, we do our part to awaken their light—and our own.
photo credit: Thomas Leuthard
