practicing for eligible

"There's so much more to who you are than you know right now. You are, indeed, something mysterious and someone magnificent. You hold within you - secreted for safekeeping in your heart - a great gift for this world. Although you might sometimes feel like a cog in a huge machine, that you don't really matter in the great scheme of things, the truth is that you are fully eligible for a meaningful life, a mystical life, a life of the greatest fulfillment and service."

- Bill Plotkin in Soulcraft: Crossing into the Mysteries of Nature and Psyche

Read more about Bill Plotkin here 

The part that strikes me is the "you are fully eligible." I'm not sure what LIFE feels is like for other people (gosh, I'll never know that), but I have certainly not seen how eligible I am to the world of experience for most of my life. I have been locked in a state of fear and was therefore ineligible for much of life's true experiences. There were all sorts of wants and don't wants lying within me, plus emotions, ideas, and creative sparks. 

Getting in tune with these things has indubitably been a bit of a roller coaster ride.  When I first began to allow myself to feel and to want, it was scary and hard. I had no idea how to do it for I had never done it before. As with any skill - yes, I said skill - I will always be mastering it, never perfected.  And although it may never be perfect, I am getting better at it and I know I will get really, really good at it.

I'm sure there will be more to finding my "great gift for this world" - but this is playing just one part in the journey to "a meaningful life...a life of the greatest fulfillment and service."