Connecting With Your Innate Worth (It’s Complicated)
It doesn’t take much scrolling through spiritual social media to see that we as a whole have some worthiness issues. Endless waves of inspirational posts trying to convince us that YOU ARE WORTHY. Worthy of life, worthy of love, worthy of your dreams. You are enough. There is nothing wrong with you. You deserve happiness. You deserve the life you’ve dreamed of. KNOW YOUR WORTH. Claim it (and charge appropriately.) Is it working yet? It’s like we’re all trying to convince ourselves and each other of something we know to be true but can’t quite reach. But if we can’t convince ourselves of it no matter how many affirmations of I AM WORTHY, I am worthy, I am worthy, I am worthy, then where do we find it? Where do we find this worth that is supposedly inherent in our existence? If we can’t seem to access it no matter how much good we do, how successful we are, how many clients we have, how much money we make, how much we shed or accumulate, who does or doesn’t approve of us, then where do we find it?--this elusive worth always slipping from our grasp, keeping us looking and reaching just one more step ahead, always positioning us just left of center. Is there a way to stop the runaround and finally come home?
Intro
Hello dear humans, thank you for pushing play on this episode of Falling Into Soul. I’m McCall Erickson, a lifelong student, explorer, and writer in the field of inner healing and transformation. As such, I’m here to share my experience and nuanced understanding of the alchemical processes that awaken, reveal, and keep the soul well in this swiftly moving and challenging world. I especially love exploring the more confusing processes of soul awakening that don’t get a lot of airtime in the spiritual mainstream.
In this episode we’re talking about WORTH. Why is it so hard to de-tangle our worth from anything but our very breath and existence? It’s not enough for most of us to simply awaken to our true nature, to understand that our worth doesn’t depend on our success or on who does or doesn’t like us. If knowing that were enough, don’t you think we’d have gotten it by now? It takes a more complex and deeper journey to heal the core wound of unworthiness embedded in the western psyche. After decades of working inner alchemy with myself and others, I’m going to share with you what I’ve noticed as one of the BIGGEST obstacles we as spiritually awakened humans encounter when attempting to align with and live from our core worth. It’s definitely trickier than you might think.
Recently I came across a post on Instagram by Thais Sky that said “your work, your life, your relationships, will feel so much more fulfilling when your worth isn’t always on the line.”
My first thought after reading that was–wow wow YES that is absolutely it. I have especially experienced this in recent years. The FREEDOM that comes from connecting with my innate worth or what I often call the unbreakable core within or The Philosopher’s Stone–and living, working, relating with others from that center place without my worth constantly being at stake.
And then my second thought was … if only if only if only. If only it were easy to connect to our worth and be done with it. For many of us, it’s not enough to merely awaken to the knowledge of our spiritual nature, to know that we are children of the universe and as such, are innately worthy. We can awaken to this understanding, we can know it in our minds, but to embody it, to really get past our hang ups about it, to go through the alchemical process it takes to actualize that worth in every cell of our body so we can permanently align with and live from that core worth is a whole thing. A whole journey.
Which is what this podcast and my work is all about–the depth journey of alchemy that takes us all the way to the core.
In order to understand why we have such worthiness issues and why it can take so much alchemy to restore this connection with our inherent worth, I think it helps to understand where the disconnect with our innate worth even comes from.
Where The Worthiness Issues Come From
I’ve never heard anyone frame this better than the beloved spiritual teacher Adyashanti in his talk Healing The Core Wound of Unworthiness (I’ll put a link to that in the show notes. Seriously and truly thank you, Adyashanti). He talks about how in western cultures, the worthiness wound runs much deeper than in eastern cultures. In eastern cultures, the operating myth is that you’ve just fallen into a state of forgetfulness about your true nature and you’re worth which causes the pain of separation from it and from god. It’s much easier to remedy a mere state of ignorance or forgetfulness, a mere misunderstanding. But for us in the west, the operating myth (which originates from and is enforced by many of our religions) is not that we’ve merely forgotten our true nature and worth but that our true nature is essentially flawed and bad. Not that we’ve made a mistake in forgetting our true nature but that by nature we are mistaken. Something is essentially and inherently wrong with us. I mean…how do you come back from that? That is an incredibly deep wounding, a deeper separation from god than mere forgetfulness about who we are. This exists in the western psyche as an operating belief even before the life trauma and personal story starts unfolding for us. It’s already there. So it can’t just be remedied through knowledge of our true nature or only by healing our personal trauma, although that is a part of it. It actually goes beyond the personal. This wound of unworthiness was already there in the psyche before the personal trauma happened. So it takes a much deeper and a bit more mystifying type of journey to remedy the core wound, the core belief that we are inherently flawed.
Since I work within the context of alchemy and Mystic Love, I will use these two frameworks to provide some context for the journey home. I’ll do my best to demystify this rather mystifying process.
Because most of us in western culture struggle with this belief that is embedded in our psyche that we are inherently wrong, we spend a lot of our time trying to make up for that, trying to prove our worthiness, trying to validate our very existence. And why wouldn’t we?This unworthiness a low-grade, sometimes high-grade motivation that underlies all our actions and deeds. It’s always there. It’s the motivation for so many of our choices, desires, and actions. And we can never quite keep up. We can never quite make up for it.
And one of the trickiest things about being spiritually awakened, and, by spiritually awakened, I just mean having some sort of awakening that lets you know your true nature extends beyond your physical existence, so one of the things about that, being spiritually awakened, is that once we get a taste of that awakening, we use this to validate our existence and worth. But awakening doesn’t mean the core wound of unworthiness is automatically healed, it just means we have some other tools to heal it with, or sometimes cover it up with. Instead of the ego attaching our worth to our physical nature and material things, it starts to attach our worthiness to spiritual things. Spiritual practices, spiritual gifts, spiritual wisdom, spiritual service.
I think this truly is one of the most confusing things of the whole Great Work of Alchemy and one of the trickiest twists to identify and undo in the psyche. We awaken to our true nature, to our innate creative and spiritual gifts, to what feels like our true purpose and calling, but the ego is still using that to validate our worth and existence, so we aren’t quite free. We aren’t truly liberated. Our worth is still tied up and at stake in all we do, it’s just that we’re using spiritual things, we’re doing spiritual things to validate our worth and life. And it feels like it should be freeing us because it’s spiritual. What else could possibly be more worthy of our time and effort and thus prove our worthiness than spiritual endeavors, spiritual gifts, spiritual offerings to the world. And the hardest part of all is that we can’t always immediately see the ways the ego is attaching our spiritual awakening, our gifts, our goodness to our worth. If we could always see it, it would be easier to get out of it, right? But we truly cannot get out of it by our own devices and good sense.
So how do we get free?
Well, some of us may not possess the mystic heart that desires this level of liberation, so if you’re fine where you are and your soul isn’t calling you on, stay where you are, go where you are called. I mean that with all my heart. The journey to true liberation is maddening on so many levels, and sometimes truly devastating in the level of disillusionment it takes us to. But if you do possess the mystic heart that is hellbent on taking you all the way, all the way to liberation and union with the Love that obliterates and disappoints all your small notions of love, then you will most likely be called to live through the living hell that is dark nights of the spirit and subsequent distillation.
I talk about these two alchemical processes a lot in this podcast, but let’s talk about how they relate specifically to healing this core wound of unworthiness.
Simply put, going through the dark night of the spirit and distillation will strip you of anything to pin your worth on, anything to validate your life other than your own breath, your own sheer existence.
The Final Stages of Alchemy
Dark Nights of the Spirit and Distillation are the final two stages of the alchemical pattern we go through before total liberation, inseparable union with soul and spirit, inseparable union with god, the philosopher’s stone, the purified heart within, the unbreakable core, the love that encompasses all love and obliterates all small notions of who you think you are. Adyashanti calls this Redemptive Love and in my experience, this redemptive love bonds and fuses permanently with your being when you go all the way through the stages of alchemy. Uncovering the philosopher’s stone within is the whole point of doing the Great Work of Alchemy and it results in a permanent alignment with your inherently worthy core self. I often use the term Philosopher’s Stone, the unbreakable core, Core Worth or Core self interchangeably. They’re intricately and indelibly interconnected in my mind.
In order to get to that core, nothing, not even your good deeds, your life purpose, your successes, your holiest of intentions and desires, nothing can be standing in the way, your ego can not still be attaching to any of it, even and especially in ways you didn’t know it still was. (I’m sorry ego, I’m sorry I’m sorry. Yes, I know this is rough. Thank you for your service. Thank you for your resilience, thank you for looking out for me. Beautiful, troublesome, necessary ego) The Dark Night of the Spirit and Distillation help with this process, help get the ego out of the way and into alignment with our core worth. They help get us out of our own way where we had no idea we were even in our own way.
What is the Dark Night of the Spirit?
First of all, the Dark Night of the Spirit serves one main purpose, and that is to strip us of all attachment with our spiritual and creative purposes. I honestly feel like this is probably one of the worst things for the spiritual traveler to live through because during it, it feels as though you are abandoned by or disconnected from everything you once thought of as your salvation. God, your spirit guides, synchronicity, feeling connected to your spiritual purpose and gifts, creative energy and ambition. Your spiritual practices fade, feel empty, don’t deliver you in the ways they used to. It’s like all the things that used to spiritually feed you start tasting like bland mush instead of the richly flavored meals they once used to be. WHAT HAPPENED?! How is this possible? How, on your way to total union with god, can you feel so abandoned by god? And WHY? This is a big disconnect without much promise because what could possibly deliver you now that you’ve come so far, and where would it even deliver you to? When you’ve been kicked out of the cool club in the material world and the spiritual world, where else is there to go??
It’s so confusing. It can really make you feel out there, like you took a wrong turn. It feels backwards because it seems like at this point it seems like you should be getting closer to your purpose and clarity as to why you are here and the meaning of your life, but instead, you’re being called to live without that, disconnected from that, which feels impossible and counterintuitive. It feels all wrong. Like nailing your deepest dreams and best hopes to the cross. I mean, even Jesus said “Why hast thou forsaken me?” when he was dying on the cross.
We must allow ourselves to be forgotten and forsaken in all the ways we are sure we absolutely cannot be.
When we start out on the spiritual path of seeking and healing, we do so usually to answer the questions: Who am I really and why am I here? We need meaning. We need purpose. It’s hard to live without it. But until we lose all meaning, until we experience our worth being dependent on nothing, nothing but our existence, then we aren’t really free to be who we really are and do what we’re here to do. What we’re here to do or our “purpose” so to speak, will always be in the way, as a way to prove our worth and existence.
Having a purpose doesn’t validate your existence. Your existence validates your existence.
And realizing this in a very embodied and irrevocable way is what you can gain by living all the way through a Dark Night of the Spirit.
The tricky thing is that there’s no clear path to getting there, to getting through it. This cannot happen in a weekend workshop. This cannot happen in an intensive or immersion with your favorite life coach or guide. This is something beyond that. And I’m not saying those things don’t have their place. But they can’t touch a Dark Night of the Spirit. Nothing known or already discovered can. No one can teach or pass this on to you. No one can bestow it upon you. No one, not even you can decide when and how you are going to be carried through the dark night of the spirit over the threshold of initiation.
So what gets us there?
Giving it all up. Again and again and again. Even after you already thought you’d given it all up, there’s more. This is where distillation comes in. Distillation is the repeated Lift, Drop, Crash or Wash, Rinse, Repeat cycles that get us out of our own way. I talk about this in depth in episode 28 so I’m not gonna go into it much here.
How To Get Over The Threshold?
The Dark Night of the Spirit and Distillation combined are intense and advanced alchemical processes that amount to a big initiation. I can’t stress enough how big of a deal it is and how long it can actually take. It can take years. Rounds and rounds of it. Way longer than you think it should. Way after you already thought you’d gotten there a hundred times before already. When you no longer care whether or not you’ve gotten there, you’re getting a little bit closer.
I’ve observed is that pretty consistently true with anyone who goes through dark night of the spirit and distillation, that no one who goes through this believes it could possibly be taking as long as it takes, that it could possibly go this deep, be this disappointing, disillusioning, and sometimes devastating. It’s really hard to believe it until it happens. The thing the dream, the purpose, the meaning you are sure, and by sure I mean sure in all your spiritual ways and intuitions and knowings will save you, deliver you, redeem you does not. It simply cannot. And really, this is the gift, that nothing known saves you.
Moving from a false sense of worth ("I deserve...") to True Worth
What eventually carries us across the threshold is something else, something that comes in from another angle. From a source we can’t immediately name. It is grace that comes for no reason at all. Love that comes to us for no reason at all. The grace and love that is inherent in your very breath, absolutely separate from anything you have or haven’t done. This grace, this love is given. It’s not doled out by merit or status or achievement. Once you experience that so fully and completely, worthiness becomes a nonissue, a moot point. The word “deserve” doesn’t have much place in your lexicon. When we are still operating from a false sense of worth, we believe we deserve things because we are worthy. Because I’m worthy, I deserve love. Because I’m worthy I deserve to be happy, I deserve to succeed. I deserve to have what I want. I deserve this or that. But once you experience this love and grace that happens for no reason at all, that comes from nowhere, delivers you to intimacy with life in all its manifestations, you realize It’s not about deserving. It’s not about worthy. It’s about what is and what isn’t and being able to open directly to it regardless.
While I was finishing up my notes for this episode, I read the most brilliant line in Ann Patchett’s new book These Precious Days. I’ve been reading at night before bed and I smiled once again at the way these things always find me in perfect time.
She was speaking of the lifelong success she’s had as an author, she says…
“I’d been afraid that I’d somehow been given a life I hadn’t deserved, but that’s ridiculous. We don’t deserve anything–not the suffering and not the golden light. It just comes.”
That tilts the axis, doesn’t it?
And what a relief. To realize it was never a question of worthy or deserving, that life itself owes us none of the things we once thought it did, that breath itself is the gift, and to wholeheartedly be able to receive that gift of breath no matter what else does or doesn’t come from it.
Ahhhh this is what is available to us through the journey of initiation I’ve been speaking about here. The sweetest, deepest, most abiding relief in the world.
It’s easier to tune into and honor the timing of your own life, the seasons of your soul, your creative flow when your worth is not in question. It’s easier to let the true flow of your dreams, your desires, and deepest calling reveal itself to you in its own organic way and time when your worth isn’t dangling there waiting to be proven by it. It’s easier to work with others, to love, to hang on and let go when you know in the deep within of you that you are okay, even when things are not okay, no matter who does or doesn’t choose you, no matter what life does or doesn’t bring your way. It’s easier to let things happen and see what happens. It’s easier to take your time, take a nap, make a mistake, get it right or wrong, whatever it takes.
It’s easier to just live when your worth is already decided.
And your worth is already decided. It has always already been decided.
Outro
Dear amazing people, thank you so much for listening and for supporting my work. If you’d like to support further, visit the “support the show” link in the show notes. Small recurring donations mean so much to me. They help me the most to keep this podcast running and set aside the time it takes to write books. Thank you to all who support me in this way. It is such an honor to be a part of each other’s lives in this small and big way. Until next time, be well in soul.