the goodness paradox- updated

Watching Matt Kahn’s “Too good to be True” video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZjwTW-sjIto&list=UUHyGxx33FQ2cbZqPMh4hi_Q has provided me with some important understanding. About ten years ago Mary Oliver’s poem “Wild Geese” helped me release a lot of Catholic sin/self judgment for not being perfect, not always being loving or kind by a long shot. (Poem is below) It helped me get off my knees, always hyper aware of all the  ways in which I fell short of behaving in alignment with my intrinsic Divinity. I KNEW I was made of cosmic goodness yet was trained to look for and confess all the ways I did not live up to that true nature. After discovering this poem and other catalysts for change, I spent years letting go of the need to be the goody two shoes my Catholic fear of hell and damnation and my own inherent certainty of the this Godliness had kept me locked into,  caught in a loop of guilt and blame, chasing some impossible perfection, not able to live my life as the Divine being I KNEW I was. It made me want to go Home. I never knew where Home was, I just knew it was not here. Or so I thought then.

Listening to Matt’s UTube brought me full circle. No, I do not have to be good because paradoxically I AM GOOD. All attempts to be good draw into question my God given, my innate goodness. I do not have to try to be good because goodness is the truth of who I AM. All focus on the ways I am not good do not support my Divinity, my unlimited nature, rather they defile it with false charges. I increasingly understand that it is generally counter productive to focus on our errors to restore ourselves to our magnificence. It is more useful to focus on our innocence, our inherent goodness. Does this make sense? Is this clear? It has take  me so long to see this. My professionally and religious training as a child kept me focused on the imbalance, the lack, the sin, the flaws. Yet when I affirm my inherited goodness I do more to actualizing the embodiment of that true nature then all the mud slinging in the world can accomplish.

In this moment a sudden fog has descended on me, perhaps a solar flare or who knows what astrological influence or other factor is obscuring my former clarity. I do hope this point is clear as I consider it vital to our freedom. Our  focus on sin, on error has kept us locked down tighter then Alcatraz. The photos are from there. (see my Facebook page for photos of my recent visit to Alcatraz and the powerful Weiwei exhibit, click the “F” on the upper or lower right hand corner of each page). It is by focusing on our goodness, on all the things we do right, on all the gifts we have and are, on our uniqueness and glory that we most quickly return to a state of knowing. Please let me know in the comments if this is clear. This crucial distinction can help speed up our return Home. As the book says One hundred Years of Therapy and the World is Getting Worse, it seems we have been looking in all the wrong places to set ourselves free.

UPDATE:
During the night I saw another turn of the goodness circle. I saw that after having recognized how I was beating myself up for my perceived faults and sins, I needed to get off my knees and celebrate my own glory. It was vital I stop looking for what was wrong with me, rather celebrate my own majesty. Yet when the incubation period of this awakening game began 5-7 years ago, I was again brought to my knees, forced to surrender my will, my control, my plans for the future. I was taken into isolation and scarcity, losing much of what I valued, forced repeatedly to let go of what I was trying to anchor myself with. It sure felt like there must be something wrong with me to have dedicated my life to love and to end up in such scarify and lack, how could I be doing this thing called life “right”, I must be screwing up, yes? So challenging to see it was a universal process done to all of us to require us to let go of what we thought was our good but really was limiting us. Only with severe pressure could we quickly find our way to true freedom. It takes great vision and courage to sail through this process without self blame yet loves, this adds infinite grace to the process. Whether on or off your knees, may you trust and love yourself, knowing all is well and that you are in the right place at the right time.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting –
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver
Wild Geese