Over Top Of The Wound

One of the most fundamental ways we split from our soul comes from learning that we can’t rely on, or trust, ourselves.

The particulars of everyone’s circumstances are unique, but the underlying impact is the same. At some point, you learned that you couldn’t trust yourself unless your circumstances were maintained.

The events that cause these splits don’t have to be particularly traumatic — it could simply be the ongoing buildup of feedback, intended as encouragement. Maybe a loving parent just wants you to do your best and keeps nudging you in a direction that isn’t in alignment with your own natural path.

And sometimes the events really are traumatic.

Either way, from this split, our life becomes a product of not trusting ourself. If I don’t trust myself, and I grow up in poverty, where I’m left is unable to trust that I will be able to land on my feet, regardless of what happens.

To deal with this, I devote my life to ensuring I have enough money, so that, when things go wrong, I don’t have to rely on my own resilience, creativity and art to move to what’s next. Instead, I’ll just have money in the bank.

Having money in the bank isn’t the problem. Personally, I like having money in the bank.

The problem is that earning that money is an attempt to outrun the underlying issue.

The more money you get in the bank, the more the underlying issue gets buried. Paradoxically, the problem looks less and less like a fundamental break down in your trust of self, and more and more like the solution you are layering over top.

What that means is that you end up chasing more money because there never seems to be enough. Which is literally true.

If you can’t trust yourself, there is always a risk that things will go bad, and you won’t have enough money to cover it.

The example I’ve used here is money, but you can play mad libs and substitute any strategy — any attempt to overcome whatever you believe will provide you security against your own perceived failing.

The way out is tough, because our life will arrange itself to meet the belief we have about what we need, and we’ll live our lives in such a way that it continually proves our insecurity true.

More succinctly, if we’re talking about money, you’ll end up living your life in such a way that there really never does seem to be enough money. Anytime you feel your panic rise up, and someone suggests that the problem might not be money, but internal, you’ll end up pointing to your bank accounts, your bills, and so on, to prove that they’re stupid.

Obviously the problem is not enough money and the solution is more of it.

The path out of this requires slowing down. Breathing. Taking stock and noticing the pattern of never having enough money, making more, feeling relief, and then starting back at the beginning.

If you can start to see the pattern you’re in, then you can start to choose something different.

And from there, you can begin walking the path back home to yourself.