THE TRUTH ABOUT EVERYTHING, PART TEN: YOU ARE MEANT TO BE HERE!

That's right... HERE! In this place, at this time, on Planet Earth, in a physical body, being who you are, doing what you do, as you, now.

Welcome!

I'm not being trite in relaying this Truth About Everything. Contrary to what might seem obvious, most people don't take their existence for granted. So many human beings spend inordinate amounts of their lives trying to prove their "worthiness" to others, and to themselves, operating under an erroneous conclusion that one's right to exist and one's value as a person has to be earned somehow.

This mistaken idea comes from very early in childhood.

All infants, like all living things, are born with an innate sense of their own "rightness," taking their existence for granted, expecting to be met by life and their environment with all that they need to live. Newborns come in completely helpless and totally dependent on their caregivers, and yet they organically expect to be greeted with a huge welcome sign of unconditional love, acceptance and confident mirroring from the parents who brought them in. That's why babies cry so horrifically when they are not fully met in these ways.

When parents are not developed to a reasonable degree, and so the infant is greeted with the parents' fears, resentments, or neediness mixed in with the love, it is devastating. It literally feels life-threatening, creating unmanageable terror and rage in the baby. Unable to accept that the source of emotional and physical nurturance that they utterly need to survive is flawed and not fully adequate to the task of tending to the child's needs, the little one turns the pain and anger back against itself, assuming it must be the one who is flawed, not adequate or worthy. It's right to exist comes into question. This dilemma is most intensely present in the schizoid character structure, but it is present to some degree in virtually all human beings because none of us were born into self-actualized environments.

This right to exist question transmutes later on into the classic expression of the core conflict in the schizoid character structure: "Life is dangerous to my life."

This is from the Pathwork Guide Lecture: "The Illusory Fear of the Self":

"The fear of the self is the basic fear behind the fear of life and even the fear of death. Neither could the fear of others possibly exist without the fear of oneself.

When the self is no longer feared, neither desire nor fulfillment need to be feared, for the self then knows that desire will be fulfilled and fulfillment will be not an end but a new beginning."

Another common dysfunction that arises from the child's false belief that its own unworthiness must be the cause of its deprivation at the hands of its parents is that of perfectionism. I have written several pieces on the subject on FPL. 

This is from the Pathwork Guide Lecture: "Perfectionism Obstructs Happiness":

"Strange as this may seem, the more you accept imperfection, the more joy you will give and receive. Your capacity for happiness depends on your capacity to accept imperfection -- not in words or theories, but in your emotional experience.

Only in accepting, let us say, an imperfect relationship - and this by no means implies the unhealthy submissiveness that is born out of fear of loss or disapproval - will you derive and give joy in the relationship. Only through accepting your own imperfection can you begin to grow and experience the joy that comes from your own individuality."

Your parents do not, and in fact not even your personality self that you think of as "you" does not, determine the validity of your existence, folks. Your right to exist, and your worthiness of that existence, and of unconditional love, is a hard-wired given, an inherent reality, because... you are an expression of All That Is. And All That Is is not only eternal (Therefore, you can never not exist.), but the essence of that Source energy is what we call "love," and as the FPL Truth About Everything, Part Two reminds us: All Love Is Unconditional.

So, let's go one step further and say that not only are you meant to be here, wherever and whenever you are in the now, but when it comes to your existence itself, well... you sort of have no choice. In the introduction to the very first Truth About Everything post, I reminded readers that the larger laws of our known Universe start with: "You exist."

You exist. You are meant to be here. Yes, you may create suffering, or you may create joy. You can embrace life or embrace fear, or even indulge in the idea of "death." But you cannot not exist, and you cannot be unworthy of unconditional love. Get over it!