Reflections

A session or an experience in life can bring lessons and realisations. Reflecting on these lessons and realisations helps us to integrate them into our lives, live and benefit from them. Reflections can happen in many forms; through writing, music, movement, art…. This is a place to share our reflections …

Take your space. It’s yours already. No one can take your space but you. And, in fact, fill your space!

In a session recently the topic of taking our place, taking up our full space in the world came up. It reminded me of my own realisation and coming to terms with this. It was once said to me, (or words to this effect): “you need to stop trying to fit around everyone. You’re trying to be some kind of shape that fits around everyone, and you don’t even know what that shape is. Stop it, it doesn’t work! Be your own shape in your own space. The space is yours anyway. Take up space, and take your place. It’s yours anyway. No one else can take it.”

And so I’ll pass the lesson on to you in case it’s something you’re thinking about. We might try to make ourselves so small, to bend and warp ourselves to try to fit in, or fit around people or fit a situation. We might make our lives small and not pursue our own dreams, interests or talents for fear of attracting attention or making a disturbance. For fear of being different, we might hold back from expressing our true thoughts and feelings. Afraid to be listened to or taken seriously, we might speak a little too softly and place ourselves at the fringes. But,, as many of us find, this kind of self denial always takes up space in other ways… often unpleasant …. and as Marianne Williamson wrote and Nelson Mandela quoted in his inaugural address in 1994:

“your playing small does not serve the world.”

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, 'Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous?' Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.” 
― Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of "A Course in Miracles"