Being Human Isn't Personal

I’d just finished putting into words what I wanted help with when John, my prospective coach, asked, “How important is your story to you, Mer?”  Even without the ability to say why, I immediately sensed how much my answer was connected to my experience of life.  

As pieces of my crazy psychology turned up during our coaching sessions, I’d often sarcastically comment, “I’m an expert at that,” or “Yep, that’s my specialty.”  Though I didn’t catch on for a while to what he was pointing at, he’d inevitably respond with something like, “Yea, you and eight billion other people.”

I began to sense that neuroses were something to laugh about, not something to pick apart or try and fix. A favorite memory is the day I told him I somehow knew if cancer came back I’d be completely fine and yet I was constantly grappling with fear that it would.  As he repeated back to me in his heartfelt way the absurdity of what I’d just said, he just couldn’t help himself and was soon doubled over.  Never heard such a warm, genuine, lovable laugh.  Knowing he sees everyone as sane, I joked through my own tears of laughter, “I’m pretty sure you just found your first crazy client.”  The balm of that moment still makes me grin.

What he said next didn’t land for several days but was more than worth the wait.  “The difference between you and me,” he said, “is that you think there’s something on that pattern of thought, and I know there isn’t.”  He was pointing to one of the most liberating truths imaginable - that who we really are has nothing to do with the thoughts swimming around in our head, no matter how long we’ve played in any particular pool of thought.  The dance between our inner knowing and insecure thinking is never a problem when we know, or even glimpse, that only one of them is real.

I marvel at the gold I’ve uncovered in looking to see how I’m like every other human rather than how I’m not.  It’s out-loud-laughable when I think of the 30 years spent grinding around in what I thought was my specially-wounded psyche, trying to claw my way back to the sunlight with every imaginable method and technique.  Looking, instead, to see how divinity wrapped in a human package actually works has given me worlds more than messing with my psychology ever could, the least of which is to see that being human isn’t personal. 

And even though I'm just baby stepping into living from the space of who I actually am rather than from my made-up self and its crazy thinking, I'm already walking in a whole new world.  I'm home.  And I’m still chuckling that all the peace, safety, lightness, and freedom I’ve been trying so hard for so many years to get to has always been right here in the God-material I’m already made of.

Knowing we’re nothing special is the best news in the world, because if every human gets lost in their story and tries to do life from their own thinking, then it’s okay that we do it a million times too.  And if all of us are actually made of love, wisdom and possibility, then every time we think we gotta do something to be okay or what looks like a problem is all on us to solve, there's nothing to do but come back home where all the heavy lifting is done for us.  Nothing better than having a whole bunch of jobs off our plate.  And you know what?  The coolest thing in the world is when we start to sense that we’ve never really left home in the first place.