shining

From: "Reeve Chace" 
To: clburke@carolyn.org
Subject: shining
Date: Wed, 16 Apr 1997 12:02:21 PDT

Carolyn,

I don't know you, but I was reading your diary on the net and I came upon this passage: "Were I to let go - to let myself relax and to become my own potential I am afraid I would shine too brightly in comparison to others. Should I do so anyway? And what if I'm wrong and I'm just failing to live a full life for a foolish egoism?" I have often felt the same way. It is a rather paradoxical way to feel - you think you are so great yet you don't have the self-esteem to attempt to fulfill the potential that your ego is sure you possess. Nelson Mandela addressed this fear directly in his 1994 inaugural speech. I hope his words move you some as they did me:

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us. It's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give others permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence autmoatically liberates others."

-Nelson Mandela, Pres., South Africa, Inaugural Speech, 1994

After reading this for the first time I felt thta first bit of permission, as Mandela says, to fulfill my own potential. Who am I not to? Who are you not to?

Please e-mail me if you get this. I'd like to know what you think.
Your kindred spirit in cyberspace,
~Reeve Chace