Struggling With Unworthiness And How I Found It in Nepal

I write this story with the intention of totally being real and vulnerable…

My first night back in the states after a month of traveling, I woke up at 3:30am, with a full download of the story below already in my head. While I’m no longer in a monastery meditating all day, I’m still in a serious state of clarity, reflection and intensified self-awareness. I got out of bed and sat down to type. And all this flowed out of me before sunrise:

I spent my last seven days in Nepal really working on something that I feel like has been holding me down my entire life. During my adventures overseas, these feelings just kept coming in, so hard like crashing waves that could almost ruin a whole day. I realized that there’s something I struggle with deeply, on a daily basis and made the intention to devote the rest of my time facing it and relinquishing myself from it.

It’s called unworthiness. It is a dangerous emotion that can block abundance, gratitude and awareness of our blessings. I also believe that if it remains unchecked, it can drag us all the way down to the point of not feeling worthy of life itself. I know, because I’ve been there. And I see it so clearly now.

After we booked my tickets to Nepal, I started to feel a little overwhelmed with these feelings of unworthiness. I felt undeserving. It was so easy for me to call my mom and tell her I want us to go on this trip. It was easy to take a month off from work and not make any income while I spent money traveling. It was easy to have a palace to stay in Kathmandu for free for as long as I wanted to, where I had a huge room to myself, all meals delivered to me and a highly educated guide who was more than happy to show me around every day. As it got closer to the day of my departure, I started getting more anxious. I noticed myself beginning to bargain with the Universe: Maybe I shouldn’t go. What if there is some one more deserving than me that should go? Maybe if I don’t go, someone else who needs this trip more will be able to go. Most people can’t just up and leave to travel like this. How come I get to do this? Am I really worthy of this trip? Am I Buddhist enough? Am I self-actualized enough? Am I practiced enough?

The thoughts would spiral so quickly that I would completely lose sight of my blessings and instead find myself is a state of self-pity. Because that’s what feelings of unworthiness do. They bring on a host of other negative emotions that build up on each other in the subconscious brain. And when we do not keep aware of them, we can find ourselves feeling unworthy of being alive. This is what I mean by ‘dangerous emotion.’  

A few weeks before my departure, one of my Lamas decided to give me a first edition book that was translated from Tibetan into English by one of our late teachers, Lama Kazi. In the front cover he inscribed, Tenzin-la. You are so loved. May you have all the Blessings of the Buddha. Love, Lama Palden. He randomly handed me the book wrapped in silk kathas one night and as I unwrapped it to find this precious text, I started to feel a little overwhelmed. I looked at him with so much gratitude and said, “this is amazing, wow, I don’t deserve this Lama. I’m just a young western girl that hardly knows anything. Why are you giving this to me??”

He looked at me with a concerned eye and said, “Why do you keep saying that Jane? Why do you keep saying that you don’t deserve things? I’m giving you this book, which obviously means you deserve it! You are very dedicated. You need to start believing you are worthy.”

That night as I walked out of the temple, I started to question myself and my feelings of unworthiness. Do I really struggle with this that much? Why am I so worked up over receiving this book? Why do I feel like I don’t deserve this?

I started to reflect on the romantic relationship I’ve been forming with the most beautiful woman I have ever seen. I noticed how many times I tried to end it because I didn’t believe I was worthy of someone like her. She is so kind. She is so loving. She is not jealous. She thinks I’m the coolest. She tells me I’m so smart and beautiful and she even gives me my space (sometimes when I don’t  know that I need it). She cooks me food and draws me bubble baths when I’m stressed. She sees the Buddha in me and acts always with the four truths at the forefront of her mind. She is my dream woman. And from the beginning I caught myself in patterns of self-sabotage, believing that I wasn’t worthy of a love so special and so pure, or assuming that the other shoe would eventually drop. Telling myself she was too good to be true, soon she will see that I’m not really all that. I started to realize that my own concerns over worthiness were blocking up my awareness of what a blessing this love has been in my life.

So, I decided that I would focus on the belief that I am worthy of love, I am worthy of incredible gifts, I am worthy of a beautiful home and a nice car. And most importantly, I am worthy of going on an incredible adventure in Nepal – and that I need to recognize this blessing and stop bargaining with the universe. Focus on the good Jane. I kept telling myself, you know, Law of Attraction stuff.

About a week and a half into my travels, we had a really packed day. We did about five days of traveling with our HH4H team. This particular day, we had an incredible itinerary of:

5:30am Flight around Mount Everest.

9:30am Check out of Hotel in Thamel.

10am Swayambhunath Stupa.

Noon Pushtaparanath.

1:30pm Boudha Stupa + Lunch.

4pm Drive one hour to Bhaktapur for overnight stay at Hotel Yechu.

Exciting right?

Well, I woke up really anxious that morning. Perhaps due to the insanely strong rice wine we were served the night before. It was dark as we took the bumpy van ride to the airport. I felt exhausted. I hadn’t had any time to just relax and give myself what I needed. I started to pre-meditate dread for the long day ahead. But once we were out with the planes and the sun was rising over Kathmandu, I started to feel excited. Sitting in my own row on a small plane to do nothing but look out the window and enjoy these gorgeous holy mountains was just the meditation I needed. I felt centered and calm again during that ride. Although my eyes were fluttery and heavy with exhaustion.

As we took the van back home and everyone discussed what little time we had to eat and get checked out of the hotel, I began to feel anxious again. I was so exhausted. I just wanted to go lay down and enjoy my coffee. I really didn’t want to get back on a bus and go to all of these places that I either had already visited or planned on visiting again later with my dharma friends. As we gathered in the dining room to have a quick breakfast, I felt my energy become toxic. A voice in my head told me not to sit at the table with every because you will poison them with your bad energy. So, I sat outside and ate alone as my mood spiraled down even more.

Once we were packed and headed for a nice walk through Thamel to get to the bus, the hotel manager asked me if I was sick and wanted a ride instead of walking. I told him I was okay and I would walk. I put on my headphones and caught up with the team, holding back tears. My inner-dialogue was abusive at that point. You are in Kathmandu and you just took a flight around Mount Everest and you aren’t even grateful. Not a lot of people can just buy a ticket to fly in a circle and land in the same airport and you are just acting like a spoiled brat now. Everyone sees it. Everyone is looking at you and seeing what a spoiled little girl you are. They can see how moody you are. You get to go to three sacred sites today and you don’t even want to. What is wrong with you? You are toxic. You are so unworthy of all of this. Someone else deserves this experience, not you Jane.

I sat on the bus and pulled out my mala, reciting mantras, desperately trying to free myself of these feelings. Om mani padme hung. Om mani padme hung. Om mani padme hung. I was very aware of what was happening, but I could not seem to stop my ego from badgering me. Tears kept streaming under my black sunglasses as my inner voice bullied me into a dark place.

My other mom, Linda, even took a picture of me in this state. I didn’t know it but she showed it to me later. She could see that I was struggling, but she thought I looked beautiful. And as I shared with her my feelings of unworthiness, she was so understanding. And she told me it was okay.

We arrived at Swayambhunath, AKA Monkey Temple and I immediately went to the stupa to begin practicing Kora in hopes to relieve the desperate state of self-pity I was falling into. As I walked in a clockwise circle around the golden stupa, spinning prayer wheels with my right hand, counting my mala beads with my left and reciting Om Mani Padme Hung over and over again, I actually started to feel myself lighten up. I circled and circled and circled and felt the lotus of my heart begin to blossom. I felt the darkness get just a little lighter. Then I saw my team start to head towards the exit and ran up to follow. Om mani padme hung. Om mani padme hung. 

We got onto the bus and I felt a little lighter. Then our tour guide told us where we were going next: Pushtaparanath, a famous Hindu Crematorium.

What?? A crematorium??? Memories of traveling in Germany to see every Holocaust remembrance site flashed through my brain.

“Mom, why are we going to a crematorium? I don’t understand. Why would we want to go see this?” Those were some of the first words I had said that day. I could tell she was a little irritated with me.

“It’s a UNESCO site Jane. Obviously, it’s important to people here and we’re going to find out why. If you don’t want to go, you can stay in the bus.” She said shortly.

Yeah, stay in the bus in this heat, great idea. I could feel the darkness and fear come on again. Try to open your heart to this experience Jane. Maybe there is something to learn. This is the first Hindu site you’ve seen. There must be something cool about it.

As we got closer, the smell burned my eyes. All I could see were platforms of burning sticks and smoke across the river. Incredible sites of painted priests and Hindu temples, and so many tourist groups walking with us.

As we sat down on the tall steps across from the site to listen to our guides explanation of this place, I saw a family begin to lower a dead body onto a silk shrine.

I felt sick, covering my face to shield the smoke with my scarf, trying to avert my eyes.

Looking around, everyone was watching. Huge groups of tourists were just watching this family lay beautiful orange and white silks over this dead body, covering it with orange marigolds. Lifting up the body and sliding it down a ramp to cleanse it in the river, then pulling it back up to carry towards the flames. I started to walk away. I couldn’t watch this. It didn’t feel right to me.

Then the bullying voices appeared. Wow Jane, I thought you were Buddhist. Aren’t you supposed to be okay with death? Your teacher would tell you to meditate in a place like this. Imagine that is your dead body being carried. Imagine that is your mother or your sisters. You should be accepting death at every moment, not walking away from this. You call yourself a Buddhist practitioner and you can’t do this practice? Wow Jane, you so are nothing but a little small western girl who will never realize anything. Look at how shook you are by death.

My level of nausea began to kick in so hard that I was actually looking around for an appropriate place to vomit. Everyone seemed to be in such awe of the ritual they were seeing. Watching this family in one of their most vulnerable grieving states as if it were a show for us.

I started to accept that this simply was not what I came to Nepal to do and felt entitled to feeling that way. As I pushed back more tears, my friend Jenn looked at me and said, “Jane, do you want me to walk out of here with you? You don’t look so good.”

With a heart full of gratitude, I nodded yes, please, and got up with her to start walking out. She rubbed my back with one hand as we walked and said, “You know, it’s okay to feel however you are feeling right now about death. It’s totally your life and your experience. Don’t feel like you have to be all cool with this, I get it.”

I nodded and shared with her my gratitude for her words and her actions. It was one of those small blessings I really needed. She helped me walk back into a place of light, where I wasn’t so damn hard on myself for not being excited about seeing a dead body being carried into a fire.

We got back to the bus and I realized most the team had followed us. I thought to myself, perhaps they too were feeling how I was feeling, but they put on a façade like everyone else.

During the long ride over to Boudha, I reflected a lot. I re-committed myself to seriously exploring these feelings of unworthiness by observing my inner-dialogue. I could see how my subconscious thought patterns quickly manifested a negative experience.  

You can read the rest of this inter-mixed story of my travels here.

(Because the day did indeed get much better, soon that link will have a story attached to it).

But, allow me to get back to my point:

My thoughts and feelings of unworthiness caused a serious spiral that day. As I tried to practice awareness and focus on my blessings, my subconscious seemed to have a stronger hold on me than I could manage. I realized I had more work to do that I was even aware of. I felt a little helpless for a moment and dwelled on what tools I had at my fingertips. For the long bus ride to Bhaktapur that night, I decided to finish listening to my favorite book on tape: Breaking The Habit of Being Yourself. A book I had already listened to twice, but I wasn’t yet totally ready to commit to the practices described in Part Three. As I listened, I took detailed notes and planned for some serious self-reflection time during my last seven days where I would be alone for a semi-retreat at the Ngoedrup monastery in Kathmandu.  

According to Dr. Joe Dispenza, here’s what I had to do: After a good twenty minutes full body meditation, I was to explore my feelings of unworthiness. Truly face them. Not focusing on the good, but focusing on every single aspect of these negative emotions. I was instructed to describe what kind of person I am when I am unworthy. How I think of myself, how others see me, what I hide from others, what my inner-dialogue looks like, what other emotions roll in, how the emotions feel in my body and finally, what actions I habitually take when I spiral into these feelings of unworthiness. Instead of using pen and paper, I used my laptop so that I could quickly get out every single thought, feeling and memory that came up during this practice.

Every day of my seven days in the monastery I spent a few hours doing exactly that. Meditating myself into a deep Alpha state, reviewing and revising these feelings with detail, reflecting on whether or not they came up the day before and what they felt like. Observing the damaging habits that kept the ego in control and committing to breaking them. This practice is about really, really focusing on the negative emotions. It felt kind of against my nature to dive into these emotions and write so much about them every day. But, the awareness this process brought me was so incredibly effective. I strongly recommend this book and this practice to everyone reading. By the end of those seven days, I had written about 14,000 words of pure reflection, motivation and intent.

I realized how I was subconsciously following one thought or emotion connected to my unworthiness would then lead to feelings of guilt, which would then lead to feelings of self-pity and shame and thus a downward spiral into strong anxiety and depression. I noticed how this pattern could unfold over weeks and suddenly I would find myself having the most dooming horrible day of my life. I observed all the times in my life this has happened. I observed and acknowledged the messages I received as a young girl who was born into a wealthy family in a privileged, white neighborhood. I recognized how my father always reminded me that I did not deserve the privilege he brought my family, because I didn’t work hard like he did to have everything we had. I acknowledged how confusing and troubling those messages were for me, especially when my mother’s family generously showered me with gifts and blessings as if they were my birthright. I acknowledged the guilt I have carried since I was very young for growing up in such a privileged world. I recognized how my feelings of unworthiness were what led me into to a life-threatening eating disorder. The belief that I wasn’t worthy of life nearly caused me to just end it. I recognized how my sexual identity was extremely impacted by the belief that I didn’t deserve an empowered sex life. The belief that I didn’t deserve true love or even true pleasure for that matter, kept me in the closet. I recognized and forgave myself for staying in an abusive relationship for so long, seeing how I just didn’t really believe that I deserved better. I acknowledged how far I have come from living in that guilt and how even so, there are still residual chemical emotions flowing through my body, giving my ego continuous power over my own self-worth.

Through this daily meditation and reflection, I made a prayer to the universe, acknowledging my down falls and offering gratitude for all the blessings I have had in this life. I visualized my unworthiness as strongly as I could. I saw myself putting it into a beautiful box, closing the box and watching cosmic hands of the universe take that box away from me, lifting it up towards the stars. And as that box rose above my head, it dissolved into light and fell back down to shower my body with positive, loving, cosmic energy that would replace the toxic chemical memories that once resided.

As I continued to commit myself to this daily practice, I stepped into a higher being. A being that lives in complete gratitude. A being that is so aware of her blessings and so aware of why she has received them. I saw how even though I didn’t believe that I deserved them, the universe continued to send me message after message that I indeed was worthy and that the blessings are going to continue, no matter what. I remembered the quote from His Holiness the Dalai Lama: “The Western Woman will save the world.” Why? Because she is privileged, educated and compassionate. I am one of those westerners. And I have a serious responsibility to make the world a better place. Every blessing I receive is a type of cosmic fuel to keep my work going, to keep the dharma wheel spinning and to keep the vibration of love moving through the world.

I’m not saying in any way that I totally transcended my feelings of unworthiness in seven days. But I am saying that I have fully committed myself to The Work and I’m already living in stronger alignment with universe and it’s plan for me. I’ve been able to clearly see the patterns of thought, emotions and actions that are little red flags along the way, letting my conscious brain know that I may be spiraling. I’ve listed alternative actions that I can start practicing in order to keep myself in alignment with feelings of worthiness and self-love. (For example, when I start to avoid seeing my loved ones because I believe that I am burdening them, this is a red flag, and I must instead actively fight that belief by reaching out and admitting that I need help). I have visualized situations that may trigger me into a dark place again, and instead, I see myself responding in a way where I hold onto my power and self-worth. I even did the hardest step, which is constantly in progress: working through associative memories that are branded into my emotional body. Facing my most triggering memories, working through every aspect of them and relinquishing them unto the universe to replace that toxic imprint with cosmic love.

I call this process The Work. And I want to say that it takes courage. Bravery. Commitment. Fearlessness. I believe that doing this work will help me in my next lifetime. I believe that this work will make me into an even more powerful being. I believe that I can transcend the shackles of my unconscious brain. I believe that this is what enlightenment looks like. I’m not looking for nirvana. I’m looking for freedom.

When the love I have for myself matches the love that the universe has for me, I will be truly aligned with my higher being. And with that, my powers of manifestation and love will be stronger than ever. Just watch. My love will change the world. I can feel it in every cell in my body.

And that, my dearest readers, is just the beginning of what I learned in Nepal. 

<3 Jane