Soulshine

“Is it the facts you want about my daughter, or Lisa’s fancies? Charlotte was a late child. There were three boys and then, after a long time, this girl. A child of my old age, I’ve always called her… my ugly duckling. Of course it’s true that all late children are marked.” Mrs. Vale, Now Voyager (1942) Sometimes a child is negatively marked or branded by a parent. Sometimes a mom, who has always felt ugly, sees too many of her own hated physical features in a particular daughter; or sometimes a dad, who has always felt stupid, sees too many of his personality traits in a particular son. These parents project their own self-loathing onto their children. Mom brands the daughter who looks like her “my ugly duckling” and dad brands the son who just can’t seem to get a math equation right “you stupid numbskull!” If these children then accept these labels (lies) as valid, they will brand themselves with them. Every time the daughter looks in the mirror she will repea...

When you stand in front of that mirror and you’re beginning to cringe with discomfort, and the familiar old thought races through your subconscious mind “You are so unlovable,” remember this: You weren’t the first person who said those words to you. Someone else said them to you first. You accepted those words based on the false judgment of that person and you began the process of believing them. You started repeating them to yourself every time you looked in a mirror and you started that at a young age. You then became what you chose to believe about yourself. You made the conscious choice to believe the judgment someone else executed against you. And you can make the choice to stop believing it. Right here, right now you are the one who has to decide what you really believe about yourself. And you can choose to believe anything you want. You can choose to be anything you want. And you can choose to love what is—to love yourself just the way you are—if you really want to. ...

“I Am Who I Am” is who God is. It is a declaration of the God who lives in the eternal present. God is the God of the NOW, the present moment-- every present moment. God is not the God of the past or the future, but of the present. I am who I am is also all that we can be. We can all say “I am who I am.“ And none of us can be more or less than who we are in this present moment. So it’s important that we listen to and be aware of the I AM statements we each choose to own. Since we were small children, many of us learned, and have continually chosen to affirm, negative I AM statements about ourselves: “I am stupid,” “I am ugly,” “I am fat” “ I am worthless,“ “I am irresponsible” and “I am unlovable” are just a few of the bad I AM statements that have ruled our daily lives. These negative thoughts have produced much misery. And they’ve led us to believe the following: Overall, “I AM not good enough.” As a result, we have come to believe we are unworthy of love, of nurturi...