How can we heal and transform ourselves so that our true light, wholeness and depth of being can be expressed in the world?

1. Face our fears.
2. Accept that suffering is part of the human experience.
3. Accept our whole self, naked.

Why is suffering such an important component in this formula?

Suffering is real, it’s human, it’s inescapable.

As much as we fight it, deny it and hate to admit it, suffering is unavoidable. So long as we suppress it, it wears us down, weakens us, defines where we place our energy.
Acceptance of suffering, loss and hardship is a great human challenge we must all face at some point in our lives. Accepting suffering frees up a lot of space to be real, to heal and to face our fears. The fears often completely disappear in fact when we can accept suffering as part of life.
Much has been written in personal growth circles about what is essentially “positive thinking,” yet this supports the big lie. Not enough focus has rested in feeling our feelings, expressing our true nature and becoming authentically whole as wonderful creatures of dark and light, masculine and feminine, yin and yang. Being naked is how we reveal ourselves.
Delving into what our essence is, is a lifelong task. What is it and why is it so important?
When we are able to be naked and vulnerable, we reveal our truth—we can finally be set free by not having anything to hide, not needing to suppress our shadow or deny who we are.
Our wounds cause us to seek connection via the false Gods of excess and self-sabotage in whatever our vice (alcohol, drugs, food, etc), which never bring us to being authentically whole. It only takes us further away into numbness, escape and futility.

“Nobody can take it back with silence or push it away with words. Nobody will protect you from your suffering. You can’t cry it away or eat it away or starve it away or walk it away or punch it away or even therapy it away. It’s just there, and you have to survive it. You have to endure it. You have to live though it and love it and move on and be better for it and run as far as you can in the direction of your best and happiest dreams across the bridge that was built by your own desire to heal. “
~ Cheryl Strayed