Finding the Pearl of Your Essence
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The Pearl of Your Essence
Many people in our modern culture are dealing with life situations that they would love to move past. The problem is that our beliefs and our life situations from our earlier lives have conditioned us to think a certain way.
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We have all been through the gauntlet, seeing, hearing and learning things that have shaped us into who we are today.
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When the problems in our life keep us pinned down, we need to look back at the reason why we think the way we do.
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We all have the ability to be happy. We all have the ability to create a new path for ourselves.
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Whether you are dealing with relationship issues, unemployment, your job is not what you thought it would be, or maybe the illness you have is looking hopeless, you must continue to focus on two things. You have got to stay positive at any cost, no matter how hard it may be and secondly, you must look back to the lessons that got you to this point. You must find the pearl of your essence!
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The pearl is a beautiful thing and it is only found in a specific type of oyster. They are very rare and you need to look hard to find them. It takes work! To find our essence will take work too!
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For those of us who grew up in the 60’s and the 70’s, we saw some unbelievable things change in our culture. Young people were burning their draft cards, woman were looking for more rights, many activists were creating awareness around many issues.
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Men still dominated the relationships in many ways, especially as the bread winner. Woman wanted equality and it created much resistance in the household. Our culture still expected the woman to be the domestic engineer and keep a clean house, appear a certain way and to take care of the children. The men would hang out with the other men and very rarely the woman would be asked to join in. They were not allowed to find the pearl of their essence.
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In 1967 a movie came out called the Valley of the Dolls. The movie was based on a book by Jacqueline Susanne and was a look at how our culture had become one of medicating one’s self. Many of our parents were medicated with prescription drugs, while others were consuming copious amounts of alcohol.
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Children were being left in charge of their own dinners when the advent of the TV Dinner came into our culture. As children, we were excited to get the choice of different types of food to eat. What we weren’t noticing as much was that we were being left to fend for ourselves while our parents were working through their own dramas.
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Many women were having an enormous amount of pressure put on them to manage the household and in return, they were finding ways to take the edge off of their lives, since things were not turning out as they had once imagined.
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Many mothers would in turn put pressure on their children to look a certain way, act a certain way and if they didn’t do what they were told, they would be scolded for not behaving the way that they were supposed to.
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Think about this for a minute. Were you told that you needed to act a certain way? That you were not good enough? That you would never amount to anything?
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The word behave is an interesting word. When someone is told to behave, one normally expects this to be said to a child. The word behave is a derivative of the word behavior. In essence, when you are told something and you do not do what you are told, you are “mis-behaving”. This is based on the constructs of what the rules are. These rules are based on beliefs from a culture or a society. They are also from a generational point of view according to the family values that have been handed down of the decades.
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Many of the rules for “proper” behavior come from the social aspect of our culture. Many people watch endless television shows that fill our minds of what we should look like, how we should act and how we should behave. In essence, the word behavior can also be replaced with indoctrination.
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The definition of the word indoctrination according to Webster’s Dictionary is: to teach (someone) to fully accept the ideas, opinions, and beliefs of a particular group and to not consider other ideas, opinions, and beliefs.
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When we are trying to find our pearl of essence, we must truly search the past. We must look hard just as if we were diving for the very oyster that contains it.
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We cannot live in a place of hopelessness and sadness and expect to find our essence of who we truly are.
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We all have one thing in common, we were all born with the ability to flourish, to bloom and to shine in our lives. Many of us were held down by these beliefs of How we should be.
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Our parents did the best the could with what they had to work with. Self medication in our culture is alive and well. Just look at all of the ads for prescription drugs! Many of us are raising our children with many of the same generational beliefs that have been handed down over the years.
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Ask you self these questions:
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**Am I living a life based on my true essence, or some else’s idea of who I should be?
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**Am I allowing my children to be who they truly are, or am I demanding that they act a certain way?
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**Am I self medicating myself to forget about my life situation and getting through the day, day after day? Or, am I pursuing my passion in life and living the life I have always wanted?
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We all have the ability to live a fabulous and fulfilled life. We have all been indoctrinated to believe in something at some point in time.
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We all have experiences in our life that will shape us into who we are today. Many of us will make the choice to continue doing things the same old way, with the same old behaviors that were planted in our mind, never finding the true essence of who we are.
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Allow your self to be who you are! Dive into the sea and find the pearl of your essence! It is still there!
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Or you can choose to sit on the dock, staring into the water, wondering what happened, why things turned out the way they did in your life. It is there, it may be down very deep, it may be under a rock, or buried down in the sand. But it is there, waiting for you to take that plunge to dive into the sea of life, explore, seek adventure and change the way you live your life.