Why I don’t believe “I am enough”

Back in 2017, I followed the internet trend of writing “I am enough” in bold red lipstick on my mirror. Looking at those words every day for months, it changed something psychologically inside me. Something invited beyond the mind’s perception of my smallness to see the inner sufficiency that fully exists here.

But years deeper into my journey, I no longer believe “I am enough”. I don’t write it on my mirror. I don’t chant it as a mantra. And I don’t teach it to others.

Nor am I here to somehow promote the shame that the feeling of not enoughness portrays.

But there’s something beyond the mind’s fear that you’re small, insignificant, and not good enough. And there’s something beyond imagining that you are.

Early on in my inner voice journey, I posed this question to source awareness:

Am I enough?

‘I am everything. Everything is enough. When you think that you are small, and you know that you are big, how can you be enough in the smallness? When you know that you are big, and you experience that you are all, enoughness is not a question that you would ask. Irrelevant. Laughable.

A week ago I was invited back to that space. Coming in with a different question the mind thought up, the inner voice brought that the mental question was its own distraction from the real question that’s being avoided.

That real question was, once again, “Am I enough?”.

There’s shame in all of us.

A deep sense somewhere near our core that we aren’t. Not enough. The shame is painful. So we hide it. But a mask of enoughness doesn’t heal what’s really wrong.

It doesn’t fix what we actually, acutely know and are innately aware of.

The mask of enoughness is a lie.

The truth is this: “I” am not enough.

But there’s a really big caveat to that statement, and it’s found in that word “I”. The little “I”, the human identifying as a separate chunk of awareness, is not enough. It can never be.

It’s not real.

The big “I”, which now comes through as the “WE”, the being that is entirely unseparated, the true awareness — WE are real. WE are enough.

This is known.

Then it’s masked with perceived separation from source, and identifying as a separate human being. Then it’s known that the separate human being isn’t enough. This is painful, and the belief in this is called “shame”, seen as bad or at least negative, and causes mental health issues.

So then the perception of not enoughness is masked with a cover of forcing on the belief that “I am enough”.

And that’s when we write it on the mirror.

But a red lipstick reminder can’t erase the inner knowing that the "I" the human perceives itself to be is not enough as its own separate container. The coverup is needed to get through life without tearing yourself apart with painful self-critique.

But when you’re ready to see the more that you actually are, to be the being that’s below the story of separation, there comes an invitation to let go of separate human enoughness and simply be all that is.

Which is what you actually are.

So I'm not writing this to invite back to the painful stuck shameful place of believing that you're not good enough and must try harder to measure up to some external standard.

Absolutely not.

Quite the opposite.

I'm here to invite from my own sense of relief for you to also experience what's beyond the entire build-up of separation > into not-enoughness > into concept of forced enoughness. 

For me, it was extremely relieving to hear I’m not enough, I never will be, and I don’t ever have to be.

It was relieving, because I could at once let go of trying hard to be good enough (and always failing, or if I happened to succeed, then basing my sense of self-worth and value on that success), and I could also let go of trying hard to cover up the knowing that I'm not enough. I could let go of making that knowing wrong. I could let go of fear of what if it's true. And rest in the knowing that it is true, and it's actually f'ing beautiful. And not at all scary. It's relaxing.

When you know something deep down, but you’re forever trying to convince yourself otherwise, it’s gaslighting. It feels forceful, like you don’t know what you do know, and you doubt yourself.

The farther I’ve come on this inner voice journey, the more these deeply held knowings that the mind held as painful are often revealed to be true. But in that revelation, it never plays in to the fear or the pain around it. That’s dissolved when the truth is revealed within Love. Sometimes our most painful fears are masking the most beautiful love.

There’s a sense of lovingness, and the “no” feels entirely different.

It’s like if you go to the judgmental critic, and you present your best work and say, am I enough, and they snort and go “no”! They write the F on your paper. And then you feel like crap.

Or you go to the inner being, and say, am I enough, and you hear “no” that comes in so much love, that you’re instantly held in the deepest peace. There's no judgement there. No sense that you failed. Only a realignment to what, and who, you actually are.

That’s a smidgen of what I’m trying to get at.

Because when what the mind fears the most turns out to be a reality that's held in love, there’s no more fear there at all.

When you realize and accept that the separate, made-up, little "I" that the mind imagines “myself” to be is not enough, and you recognize that there’s nothing true about being the small one at all, what you end up experiencing is freedom.