Contemplations on "Enough"

  You know whatever path we walk in life, whatever spirituality we follow there always seems to be someone - or a couple people even - telling us it's not the right path for us. Usually the argument boils down to being told you aren't enough of something; you don't have enough ancestry, you don't have enough of a connection, enough of an understanding, enough experience, enough approval. Not enough, kid, sorry go look somewhere else, or call it something else...and in that moment it always hits hard, that feeling of being judged and found unworthy.
  The thing is we are all faced with these challenges, we are all judged as not "enough" by someone somewhere. And when we face that challenge there are two ways to respond; you can let the other person's judgement control you or you can look deep inside and decide for yourself. It easy enough to fold under the pressure and say that the other person must be right, to see ourselves as less because someone else is telling us we are. That's the easy way, for sure. But the better way, I think, is to look inside and see for yourself what you find there. The temple of Apollo at Delphi had the words gnothi seauton carved above the entrance, "know thyself", and it's a good aphorism to live by. Know yourself, and judge for yourself whether you are enough...and if you find yourself not enough than do some soul searching about why that is and what you can do about it. Some of the most profound insights I have had about who I am and what my spirituality is have come from being judged not enough by others, because it is through that challenge that I am forced to really look at myself and what I am doing and decide for myself whether I am enough or not. Sometimes I found that the other person was right, that my own path had taken me away from what I was identifying as and into something new and different, or even that I had misunderstood the entire thing from the beginning. Sometimes these moments can offer an opportunity to re-assess and find firmer footing or a new approach, even help to find a whole new direction to go in or re-connect to roots we had lost over time. Other times I found that I was indeed exactly where I needed to be and that being challenged on it actually made my connection stronger by drawing my attention to it. Finding the Truth in these moments is a matter of honest reflection, of letting go of what I want and seeing what is actually there.
  Being enough or not enough is a choice we make, because in the end the only person who can really make us unworthy is ourselves.