I have spent much of my life trying to fill a void I felt I had inside of me. I was like the person who cannot stop eating at the buffet because they are afraid that as soon as they walk away from the serving dishes, they will feel hungry again. The commodities I felt most severely lacking in my soul were love and esteem.
We hear the Golden Rule tell us: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So I spent my life giving others the love and encouragement that I wanted, expecting that I would feel it return to me in equal measure. I was once told that I had a deep well of love to give, and I gave it generously under the false notion that the well was replenished from external sources. I think my subconscious believed that I had to send out goodness to earn the right to be filled up with goodness.
There also seemed to be a theme running through my thoughts that I had to purge myself of the garbage that got in the way of the life force I so desperately wanted to fill me. It was my job to constantly clean out the muck, and to vigilantly guard against additional trash from dropping into my well. I had to keep a clean passageway so that the love I was craving could get in and fill me up. I had to empty myself of all the ugly thoughts and feelings to create space for goodness to come in.
The success of this plan was measured by how happy those around me were with me. Their approval was the goodness that came in and filled me up. If they thanked me, then I had performed well and the goodness circle was complete. If they did not thank me, then I felt an empty hole where I had given love, without receiving replenishment.
As I write this with hindsight, the pitfalls of this perspective are obvious to me now. No wonder I felt empty most of the time. Can anyone else breathe for me? Yes, the air around us is what flows into our nostrils, but the capacity to use that air, the expanding and contracting of our lungs, the extracting life from the hydrogen and oxygen that make up the air…this comes from within. As I breathe, I feel a mysterious union with the natural and the supernatural. When I inhale, I sense the life of God fill my being, and as I exhale, goodness is being dispersed into my atmosphere.
I heard so many things going to Sunday school that now have a richer meaning to me. I heard that God made us in His image and breathed life into us. Wow! I am like Him and the breath of His life is the breath of my life. I heard that God is good and God is love, and nothing can separate us from His love. So I am entwined and enmeshed in His goodness and His love, since His essence is my essence. I heard that He has given me everything I needed to live in goodness, so I am not an empty well needing to be filled because all I need is already present.
I have become aware of clutter that has accumulated in my soul, hindering the free movement of the breath of life through me. Some of that clutter was my perception that what I needed came from the outside. I now see that the love and esteem, along with wisdom and truth and strength to live emanate from the core of my being where God and I breathe together. Jesus was my example of perfect communion with the life force of God. Of course, He had no garbage obstructing His connection to God. So I have embarked on a journey to access a greater measure of the goodness within me. I am observing the obstructions along the pathways of life that flow from within me, holding on to what is real and dismantling what is imagined. This is what I call living life from the inside out.
