Dismantling Significance
Dying to the need to be importance
DISMANTLING SIGNIFICANCE
Feeling unimportant
I want to start this writing by acknowledging the deep significance that each one of us is. A significance that can never be earned, taken away or possessed is inherent to every single being in existence, including you. Our minds may never be able to fully grok this significance, yet that doesn’t mean it isn’t so. We are born completely significant and will die equally significant, even if no one sees us exit, and even if we didn’t accomplish everything we had hoped we would.
Despite this inheritance of significance nearly everyone struggles with feeling significant. It manifests in different ways for different people. Some search for significance in needing to be needed, others try to get it by doing things exceptional well, acquiring stuff or making lots of money, and still others attempt to get it by being seen or known by a “significant” other or by lots of people in social and global ways.
Because we’ve either forgotten or are in denial of our significance, it seems as though something is missing from us. We think the only way to regain what isn’t there is by filling it in with more. We fill our “more” plate up with activities, events, projects, friends and family in order bury the felt sense that we are not significant. We take on roles and sign up to be a part of things we have no desire to be a part of, just so we feel like we matter.
If we navigate underneath this pattern what we find is a deep avoidance of feeling unimportant.
No one wants to feel unimportant, yet almost everyone is feeling it. This sets up an inner conundrum where we resist feeling unimportant, yet we feel it all the time. We subconsciously believe that if we let ourselves feel unimportant we will suffer, so with all of our unconscious might we protect ourselves from feeling unimportant by engaging in ways we think will keep us feeling somewhat important. While this strategy sort of works as a management technique to avoid pain, at some point it backfires. We either burn ourselves out, or life gives us some kind of massively destabilizing situation which enables us to no longer avoid what we are feeling.
You may wonder why go through the work and layers it takes to get to the core of feeling unimportant, isn’t that the opposite direction?
It does seem that way on the surface, however whatever we avoid controls us. If you avoid feeling insignificant than you will do whatever it takes in order to not feel it. This includes doing things out of integrity, ignoring yourself and always having an underlying feeling of inadequacy no matter what you do, how perfect you are or who knows and loves you. The only way to move through this is to feel the insignificance you avoid. When you do this all of the guarding and defense that is created in your mind and body in order to not feel releases. This is your liberation. No longer does what you avoid control you because you are with it.
DYING TO THE NEED TO BE IMPORTANT
The best kind of death
Let’s say you’ve now been with your feelings of insignificance, you might wonder where does one go from here? From here we are free to be ourselves, inclusive of our feelings of feeling not important. Some people have the misconception that after they’ve been with the pain of feeling insignificance, that they are supposed to all of the sudden feel their inherent importance. Maybe, and maybe not. One thing is definite though, you will be in more acceptance of your feelings of unimportance.
Due to this greater acceptance, many of your behaviors and strategies to get validation from things and through others ceases, and with this immense pressure and relief. A body that resists feeling insignificant, and one that feels the insignificance that is there to be felt, function very differently. One is tight, restricted, bound up and agitated. The other is relaxed, feeling, chest/heart open and allowing. While we think that feeling some of these intense emotions will kill us, they actually make us much more available to ourselves and life. It doesn’t mean we always feel how we wish we felt, but it does mean we feel what we are feeling.
With this acceptance we begin to die to the need to be important.
This is really the best kind of death. It doesn’t happen all at once, but is a gradual process. Some people might call this ego death, but that is just a fancy spiritual term that is often more conceptual than lived. When we no longer need to be important we still contribute, have relationships, do activities and create stuff, its just that it comes from a different place inside of ourselves. There isn’t as much striving to ensure sure that things happen in a certain way. We have quite a bit more flexibility in what occurs because our identity isn’t dependent on the outcome. We can still be incredibly passionate while at the same time rolling with life as it presents itself to us. We dance with the energies of creation rather than constantly trying to steer the ship in one direction. Things might go how we think we want them to and they might not. The devastation of the “might not” lessens and often are able to see how things are working in our favor if when we think there not.
This makes us much happier people.
We are happier with ourselves and enjoy life more even with all of its challenges and roadblocks. This is not an obstacle free life, but it is one with less resistance to the obstacles. When we weren’t aren’t trying to get importance we free up a lot of energy. We are less tired, drained or adrenally exhausted. We sleep better, digest better and feel more rested. Our muscles relax and our bodies heal. We know that what’s here is just what is here, both in its enoughness and its inadequateness. There is no longer this incessant aspect of our identity that is driving the boat of our body and life attempting to get its importance.
We arrive at a place within ourselves where we might still desire to be liked, included, and have a sense of belonging, purpose and place, yet when none of those things appear to be present, we allow it. The personalization isn’t as intense even if the longing is still present. When it seems things are working out well for everyone else, but that your life isn’t as abundant or flowing, you just allow that as well. The less we fight, the more we open, and the more we open the more we can receive what is already here. Through this way we become less and less defended and more and more available to ourselves and the life we are living. The one that is here right now and meant for just us.
Dr. Amanda Lalita Love, DC, MSA, L.Ac
Network Spinal Chiropractor & Somatic Healer at the Sanctuary for Heart Magic, a Mentor for Heart-Led Healers at Soul Luminaries & the Writer of The Everyday Divine.
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