Card: “Heart Maze” Deck: Pixie Oracle from Spirit Speak
lol.
That’s a bit of a provocative, clickbaity subject line, I admit it.
I’ll start by saying this:
Of course, you are special. You are precious.
Infinitely so. Incalculably so.
But that’s not what I’m talking about here. So let me back up a bit, explain.
Growing up, I wanted so badly to be seen and recognized as gifted.
I wanted confirmation: I was special.
I grew up in the church, and even though I tried to contort myself into what they wanted me to be for a long time, I was never quite able to.
But worse: while I was trying, I always had this sense I was missing out on something.
Everyone around me talked about being “touched by the holy spirit.” They talked about having spiritual gifts. Receiving prophetic words and sacred visions. They talked about feeling God.
Meanwhile, I didn’t feel a thing. I was very jealous of those who did. Everything would be so much easier if I could just feel something, if I could know I was chosen.
If I’d been marked by God.
If I’d been able to sense even a spark of aliveness within the confines of the church, it would have been easier to just be who and what they wanted expected me to be.
Instead, I felt nothing.
I wasn’t special.
I wasn’t one of the Chosen Ones.
Later, I subconsciously carried this resentment into the mystical spaces I was exploring (though occasionally it would make itself conscious).
When people talked about
supernatural experiences
seeing ghosts
witnessing UFOs
psychic phenomena
communicating with guides
and more
I would feel the familiar sting:
Why don’t these magical things ever happen to me?
(Later I would realize they had been all along, but that’s another story...)
Why am I not one of the “chosen ones”?
Why am I not special?
The myth of special has harmed so many of us. Because it has left us waiting.
Waiting to be recognized. Waiting to be granted permission. Waiting to be singled out. Waiting to be lifted onto the pedestal. Waiting to be crowned.
Waiting for the proof that it’s okay to want what we want.
Because it has been "foreordained”.
Because it’s “written in the stars”.
Because we’re “special”.
The myth of “Special” is a trap.
Because it siphons away your power and asks you to place the onus of your fate onto others who will see your Greatness and say,
“Go ahead, take your rightful place on the stage.”
So we just keep waiting and waiting, waiting to be noticed, waiting for Someone Else to validate our specialness.
We wait for others to give us permission, to “see” something “special” in us.
We cede our authority to the myth of the “Chosen One”
And when no one arrives to announce “You Have Been Chosen!” we sit back, our worst fears confirmed.
Sigh. We knew it. We are not special, after all.
When will we wake up to what’s really going on here?
It’s subtle, and it’s a sneaky trick of the ego.
We think we are waiting for an invitation, for someone to show up and permission us and extend a hand and tell us it’s okay and say we belong here and soothe our fears and promise there’s actually nothing to fear because it’s all been foretold.
Deep down we know that’s not really going to happen, and yet…
We continue to wait for some mythical figure to announce “we are chosen” and declare our specialness, because it allows us to evade our responsibility to our own audaciousness.
If someone else is supposed to choose us, then we don’t actually have to decide anything.
We are no longer responsible for ourselves; we have passed the weight of that responsibility to a nebulous “someone out there”.
We have opted out of the challenge of deciding.
Of making a choice.
Of being the Ones to Choose Ourselves.
It’s scary to have the audacity to choose ourselves because
what if we fail?
what if no one gets it?
what if no one hears us?
what if everyone misunderstands?
what if no one gives us permission?
what if we make fools of ourselves?
what if we’re bad at it?
what if people laugh?
what if we fall?
It’s a big responsibility.
But it is ours alone.
What if we were to trust, unequivocally, that we are gifted?
What if we released the myth of “specialness”? The myth of the “Chosen One”?
We all carry gifts.
We just need to trust what’s here, reach out and receive them.
But:
the only person who can do that for you?
is you.
Until next time.
Stay weird,
Lisa
GAH!!! You are such a magical wordsmith. Another profound article, thank you thank you thank you