"Who are we, not to shine?"
Nelson Mandela
Sometimes we doubt ourselves. We battle insecurities, we allow fear to creep in. Perhaps we feel inadequate on a particular day about a certain thing. Doing 101 days of yoga is a huge commitment. That's almost a third of a year. With jobs, spouses, children and all the trappings of everyday life it's no small feat. Doing something that spans a good chunk of time allows for unexpected events to sneak in there and throw a monkey wrench into our plans. We keep going. We take it one day at a time and we work around that illness, trip, power outage and just schedule a double. We don't throw in the towel. Why would we? We've only just begun! Here on day 16 we march forward, brave little yogi soldiers. We won't listen to any of our internal excuses. Those excuses are not afraid of failure, rather they are afraid of success. During our moments of doubt and fear not only in a yoga challenge but in life they shrink back not from our darkness but from our light. Sometimes we wonder, who am I to complete this yoga challenge/be successful/marry my dream spouse/acquire my dream job/move to my dream location.
Who are you NOT to do any of that?
Who are we, not to shine?
5 comments:
This is a great post, but I think the quote is mis-attributed. I think you took it from this:
Our Greatest Fear
It is our light not our darkness that most frightens us
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 and fabulous?
Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God.
Your playing small does not serve the world.
There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other
people won't feel insecure around you.
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.
This quote has been attributed to Nelson Mandela from his inaugural speech, but in fact, it was written by Marianne Williamson and never spoken by Nelson Mandela.
You are right, Marianne Williamson did in fact write that poem, which I almost included in this post, but wanted to save for another post. I LOVE that poem. I got the Nelson Mandela quote from a book called "Meditations from the Mat" written by Rolf Gates. He started off a chapter with that exact quote and cited Nelson Mandela as his source. Perhaps the book is wrong. My heart was in the right place though! And I'm still going to use the Marianne Williamson poem later. ;)
Ooooooh! thanks.
Thanks M for the post and to Tom for the poem. It is one of my favorite poems and a powerful reminder that there is Divine within us and we are called to bring it forth, harness our full potential, and share it with others.
Lovely, Michelle. :)
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