Guilt.

Shame.

Regret.

Mistakes.

Imperfections. Glorious mess of the humans we are.

Claiming our humanhood is almost harder than our spiritual hood.

I read a quote today that went something like this, “We came here to learn about human awakening, not spiritual awakening.”

And, that truly hit home. We all are spiritual beings, here to master human embodiment and awakening, relationships, and the inevitable challenges that come with that.

The further I have come on this human journey, the more and more I am learning how imperfectly, yet exquisitely mapped out it all is.

We meet the exact eternal form, the actor if you will, in our divine play, needed to have the exact experience we need to. To shift, to heal, to transform, to fall deeper in love, to remember love, to know and feel all the ugliness of our shadow traits unintegrated in our being and love them whole.

We didn’t come to just sparkle and shine. We came to light up the mess of our unconscious awareness. But, first we have to see it, to feel it, to experience it. It doesn’t mean it’s less than, or not a part of the whole, just that these parts of us are what we came to bring conscious awareness to.

Friends, family, romantic partners, jobs, financial woes, even success, gain, advancement, are all a part of this human learning school.

We just forget we came here to learn. We forget we came here to master our humanness, not escape it into spiritual enlightenment. But, to truly get in the dirt with these human qualities.

The greed, the jealousy, the hatred, the fear-mongering, the possessiveness, the shame, the guilt. These are the qualities of this school.

Mistakes are simply gateways to furthering our willingness to remember love, to remember forgiveness, to remember how in each transgression against self, or other, we are learning.

We are remembering how to live a life from the fullness of our being, not from the perceived emptiness and lack.

To claim this abundance as our birthright. That what someone else “has” is not something I don’t as well. The things I fear, envy, or hate in another is not something outside of me, but something within me as well. As within, so without.

It all becomes this mass production. A movie screen we can begin to see. We see the characters in our film acting out the very parts we need to evolve and remember our divine blueprint, activated in our humanness.

When we punish, blame or shame ourselves for possessing more shadowy traits, we are doing a dis-service to not only ourselves, but to this planet and to our own human evolution.

Shame is a mass trickster. It is a force that is smoke and mirrors, trying to steal our innate richness. It doesn’t simply let go, unless we can see the pure illusion in it.

When we make a mistake, we can recognize the underlying intention. When we gossip or speak unkindly of another, or when we transgress another, we can see the invitation of the deeper need trying to be met. Our shadows on full display.

We all have reason to act the way we do, even if “selfishly” or fearfully. These patterns come from our conditioning and wounding, and it is up to us, not the ones we think outside of us “causing” this reaction, to see that we are responsible for the emotional experience we have.

No one else can cause you to feel any way. Once we truly, deeply recognize this truth, we may begin to realize how each person we meet is a teacher, a lesson, a reminder, or an invitation.

To love ourselves, to love another, to be made aware of our wounds, to become conscious of deeper truths.

Only you are punishing you, when you continue to hold onto the past, and onto the perceived “mishaps” and “mistakes.”

The universe wants nothing more than for you to release yourself from the binds of self-inflicted punishment, shame, and shrinking.

It takes the courage and will of a human spirit, combined with the spiritual awareness, to know that our humanness is just a part of this experience as our spiritual enlightenment is.

Being human means to be in relationship. All life is inherently a relationship. Relating to self. Relating to “other.” Relating to our experience, to another’s experience. To life, to hardship, to wounding, to conditioning, to freedom, to liberation.

Relationship between mind and body. Breath and form. We didn’t come here to master perfection. We came here to master relationship.

And, to master relationship, we must first acknowledge our humanness. Acknowledge our fragility. Our vulnerability. Our shadow.

And, then perhaps, we will cease to stop projecting these denied parts of ourselves onto another.

So, please stop punishing you for being human. For you were made to be human. You were made to fall. To fail. To fuck up. To be flawed. To be beautifully broken. To be untethered.

And, also to be so intimately relating to your human and your spiritual essence.

When life presents us with challenge, with relating challenges, we can see these as the exact invitation needed for further self inquiry and growth.

No one outside you is truly “outside” you.

We can wear our humanness like a great burden, or we can wear it like the greatest, most masterful orchestration and ceremony of our daily life. To be a human, to be a spiritual seeker, is to be in relationship with all of life. And, to know the sacredness in it all, to know the sacredness in you, and in me, and remember the daily invitations of challenge and strife are awakening portals to our own designed, and destined soul-evolution.