Since I was a little girl, I always felt I didn't belong here. Like I’d come to this little blue/green planet from the stars with my cosmic family for vacation or something and woke up only to forget where I come from and find that I’ve been left behind. To this day, I still look up to the stars and feel more at home than I ever did anywhere on Earth. I’ve always seemed to view the world through a different kind of lens; one that often got me in big trouble for asking too many questions and challenging the adults around me; one that also sometimes got me picked on in school for being “weird”. Do you mean not all kids felt like adults were always either hiding something, feeding us kids fairy tales or didn't know nearly as much as they claimed to know…and felt comfortable calling said adults out on these things? 🙂
Yes, I was that kid…the one who didn't listen very well and was often disruptive in class. In this day and age, I most likely would've been diagnosed with ADHD and prescribed Ritalin to curb my “rebel child” tendencies. And perhaps those traits my Mother has stated were my most difficult, but hold her favorite memories of me as a kid (getting kicked out of Sunday school for asking the nuns too many questions, for example) would never have had a chance to bloom.
What I love about my Mother is she embraced ALL of me, ALL of the time. She always encouraged my weirdness, my creative spark, and no matter what interested me, if she saw it lit up a part of my soul she would support me 100% and I love her dearly for that. It always made being the “weird” kid a little bit easier in a world that didn't seem to run the same way I did. And as I grew into a teenager, the angst that most teens feel was ever so present in me as well. However, rather than merely being ticked off at curfews and too much homework, I chose to focus on things that were “jacked up” in the world such as government corruption, secret societies, and how there is SO much more to life than what we are taught to believe.
My time alone was spent penning words of fury about how we are not taught to love ourselves and our differences but instead taught to conform and be like everyone else. How we are shown on TV what beauty looks like, what junk food is cool, what music is “in”, how to dress, how to talk, how to walk, how to breathe, how to EXIST!
It pissed me off so badly, and even more so that no one around me seems to care much at all. Here I was a 16-year-old girl with concerns about the Gulf War, Social Security, Income Tax, and the apparent psychological takeover of humanity, while my peers were worried about getting rides to the mall, football games, and how to convince their older brothers to buy them beer. And while I participated in the latter, my mind could not help but dwell concern on the former, and that only made me feel more…weird.
In an attempt to balance me, I would escape into music and nature as often as possible; often skipping school to go hiking in the Pennsylvania Mountains, and hitting up as many outdoor summer concerts that I could. The freedom I found in both nature and music is what set me free. It was the yin to my yang; the right-brain to my left-brain. But I was still bitter. I still looked around at the world at large with judgment and confusion regarding the state of things; resenting how unconscious the collective seemed to be.
As I grew and learned of meditation, yoga, Buddhism, Reiki, and other spiritual teachings, practices, and modalities, I thought I had found the key to the door I’d been pounding on for years. Not only did it all create peace within me, but it allowed me to finally meet people that thought the way I did; people that wanted to talk about things besides the weather and had hopes and dreams on how to change the world into a more positive, conscious place. I dove into my spirituality with a vengeance and for the greater part of my 20’s I felt like I had learned so much about the world, how we got here, where we go when we die, what we’re doing here and why, the workings of the Universe, what I now call Source…you name it. If it was considered “spiritual” I had read about or studied it.
I also learned so much about my own inner workings and my place in this world; where I was headed and what I wanted to be. But I was all the while denying my “human-ness” by repressing it within myself and judging it in others as well. Because even after all of this, I was still pissed off that people were seemingly satisfied with their 9-5 jobs and paying their taxes, and voting for the next talking head. I was convinced that the world would not change for the better until everyone just woke the hell up! Somewhere along the way, I thought to be “spiritual” I had to deny what it means to be human. But it’s often in losing ourselves that we find ourselves…
“The main thing in life is not to be afraid of being human.” -Aaron Carter
After 9-11 and even again after 2012, I began to notice the waves of people that were awakening to both personal and collective truths. More and more we're beginning to question that something was not right in the world. A beautiful thing had been put into motion, and meanwhile, I was also awakening to something as well. This wave instilled a newfound connection to humanity within me. I had always had an innate sense of compassion for others, but this was different, this was DEEP. I was proud of the collective consciousness, to the point, it would often bring me to tears. And this eventually leads me to a profound truth that was vital to understand that what I had been denying for so many years was the key to my wholeness and to maintaining balance within myself. My re-connection to my human-ness, to the ability to appreciate the purpose of why we’re here was re-ignited and lit a spark within me that has only since grown stronger. As humans, we are here to learn and to grow, and what may look like ignorance, or like blurred lenses, or apathy is often just a necessary part of the growth process that each and every one of us goes through in our own way. And the beauty of life itself, the essence of creation lives through us in the experiences we have as we grow and learn. And what is even more beautiful is when we each discover that we’re all walking our paths and that it best suits us to focus on where we are headed rather than worrying about how far ahead or far behind others may be on their own paths.
“The essence of being human is that one does not seek perfection.” -George Orwell
So, you may have been expecting this article to be paragraphs of advice on how to embrace your human-ness, but I’ve chosen to disguise that advice within a story of my own awakening into my own embracing of my very own human-ness. But fret not; I still offer 3 vital tips for carrying out this very same deed for yourself…
- Love the journey. Above all, let your dreams be your guide, but never forget that it’s all about the journey. And it’s not necessarily about “making things happen” as it is about allowing them to come to the surface. We are all where we are meant to be, no matter where we are or how hard that might be to swallow. And it’s how we get to where we’re going, who we meet along the way, the lessons we learn, the advice we offer, etc. that make up our experiences. So, no matter how many mistakes we make, as long as we keep trying, and continue to move forward and participate, we are honoring our roles as co-creator beings. These experiences we create become our memories, which are forever etched in our hearts and they deserve your utmost attention. So, be in the here and “right now”. Nothing deserves your attention more than this very moment.
- Love Yourself. When you love who you are (ALL of you), your human-ness inevitably gets its due share. Being human is AWESOME! It’s not the Universe’s way of “dumbing us down” as I once thought. It’s the Universe’s way of honoring itself, by splintering its consciousness out into these amazing co-creator beings (that would be us humans) and granting them free will in order to bring consciousness back to itself via experiences here on Earth. How freaking COOL is that??? And when we create from a place of love, the world around us reflects that love back to us in unimaginable ways.
- Love All Others. When you realize that we are all part of the conscious collective, that we are all energy adding to it and therefore are all connected, it allows one to see that when we show kindness and compassion to others, we are showing that same kindness and compassion to ourselves as well. We reflect the world how we feel about ourselves, so if you follow #2, then #3 should be a breeze!
Perhaps love is what stirs the winds of change after all. And perhaps it is what always has.
Tamara Rant is a Co-Editor/Writer for CLN as well as a Certified Reiki Master, heart-centered Graphic Designer, and a Conservative voice in social media activism & awareness. She is an avid lover of all things Quantum Physics and Spirituality.
Tamara posts new original articles to CLN every Saturday.
This article was originally created and published by Conscious Life News and is published here under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Tamara Rant and ConsciousLifeNews.com. It may be re-posted freely with proper attribution, author bio, and this Copyright/Creative Commons statement.
Nice
wonder what’s going on when your share button won’t work?