BEHOLDING YOUR OWN WORTH

By  Meredith Young-Sowers

It always amazes me how spiritual lessons and opportunities for a new and more empowering perspective appear when we’re willing to ask questions of our reactions rather than only accepting the usual explanations of blame and fault.

In this field of integrative healing and spiritual exploration, we place a great deal of emphasis on how we process information and experiences. We realize that it is truly our perspective that makes the difference between feeling invalidated, unseen and unloved versus the opposite. But, interestingly, we spend less time on appreciating the significance, the impact really, of the environment which feeds us a certain picture of ourselves.

While the spiritual goal is to remain removed from the positive and negative projections and perspectives other’s hold of us, nevertheless the way others act toward us, or the way we believe and interpret their actions and attitudes become the lenses through which we view our own worth. The boss who continually undermines our efforts and fails to value us in ways that are meaningful teaches us that we have little value. The doctor, minister, priest or rabbi who tells us that they know about our bodies, minds and souls better than we do, diminishes our trust in ourselves and keeps us entangled with those who espouse authority because we believe we have none. The family gathering where everyone else seems to be valued and embraced, but our efforts to receive the same attention are dismissed or worse ignored leaves us feeling unloved and unsafe in intimate situations.

While we may go into trying situations fully intending to hold our own and not succumb to what we know will be diminishing, still we often find ourselves slowly acquiescing to play the role that others have assigned to us. Sometimes we are not just visiting a toxic situation, we are living so deeply enmeshed in it that we will fight
to stay there even when the obvious is pointed out to us.

Our desire to fit in with others is pivotal to our community-loving spirit.In our basic human need to fit and belong, we strive to be seen and acknowledged by the people and relationships that show us who we believe we are. When we speak the same language, eat similar types of food, drink familiar beverages, understand the same moral codes and values, we can find a place at the table. But during our lives we are asked to walk in unfamiliar settings and hold our own – remember our worth – and this is when it gets tough and we need to move from trusting these tangible forms of connection to an intangible form of connection to our true self.

The changes taking place in our lives are constant and continual. Our favorite pair of sneakers fall apart leaving us strangely bereft as if we’ve lost the good old days; our cat develops a serious ear infection just as we’re ready to leave for our long-awaited holiday; our daughter calls with the bad news that after months of trying to get pregnant, she still is not; the glorious pink and white peonies that we’ve counted on for the centerpiece of our big anniversary party are unexpectedly destroyed through a torrential rain storm. These are life’s little changes that we lament but can recover from. Life’s larger struggles come when a major development seems to tell us we may not survive physically, or that our life style, or way of being in the world may be coming to an end.

In our struggle to belong, our sense of our own worth is the price we pay. We give up our personal perspectives in order to fit in and be loved. But the power of the divine hand in our lives changes that, as we ask to wake up to the truth of what thoughts and feelings limit us, and why we place ourselves in especially difficult situations  where it seems impossible to grow spiritually, and find balance emotionally and physically. How then can we behold our own worth, realizing the power other people and circumstances hold over us, influencing not only our actions but also our beliefs about ourselves?

The word behold, tells us that we are viewing, expressing, making room for our worth, because it is God designed. Worth is about soul—having soul—believing those who come from soul more than those who come only from intelligence, and trusting ultimately our own soul and its song of inspiration.

Beholding our worth leads us in the direction of spirit, to show us that we need to be aligned with the energy of love in our deep heart if we hope to behold our own worth, or that of others. In Jesus CEO, author Laurie Beth Jones writes about the leadership qualities exhibited by Jesus Christ. In one chapter she reminds us that to behold a person is to do what Jesus did when he kept long and direct eye contact, and focused concentration on that person, so that she or he felt like the most important person in the room. To behold our own worth then is to hold or embrace ourselves in the moment, whether or not we feel seen or acknowledged by those around us.

In beholding our own worth, we realize that ultimately we can sense the experience of love within us that isn’t connected to other people or forms. This experience of worth comes from being held, touched, embraced and loved by Divinity in whatever form has meaning for each of us.In times of trouble we can reflect on the experiences of knowing love and the value and feelings of worth that grow from our various positive encounters. There was an article in our local paper about an ordinary man who had found worth within himself by doing a simple thing for a neighbor. It seems the neighbor had a stroke and was unable to fasten the buttons on his shirt. The author of the story stopped by each morning on his way to work to fasten the man’s shirt buttons. Divinity is in every experience where value is to be had and worth is to be activated within us.

In times of distress when we are feeling overrun by the mindless, senseless and destructive conversations that fill the airwaves around us, we can pull up a few remembered experiences of worth and value, that counter our unconscious desire to fit in, even to the exclusion of our belief in ourselves and confidence in our worth.

And finally, in our thoughts about our ways of beholding our value and not losing faith in ourselves and our lives, merely because we’re not valued or believed by those around us, we can remember this little story: a small boy asked, “Mommy, do you know what Jesus said when he stepped out of the tomb on Easter Morning? TA DA!!!”

That same wonderful sense of having arrived in a new form, of beholding ourselves as truly spiritual beings, filled with the light and inner knowing that Jesus demonstrated on that morning two thousand years ago, allows us today to imagine a new form forourselves. This new form means we are less able to be influenced by others who are caught in their own fears and assumptions and that we are more captivated in behold our own worth.

Young-Sowers, D.Div., creates a unique and intimate style for maximum learning and heightened experience. Based on her 25 years of experience with clients and students Meredith founded The Stillpoint School of Integrative Life Healing and has written several bestsellers including Agartha, Angelic Messenger Cards, and Wisdom Bowls. She is a widely sought after speaker whose recent presentations have included conferences at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, Yale School of Nursing and St. Francis/Mount Sinai Regional Cancer Center.