I was talking to a friend who mentioned that she often felt worthless, a failure, a waste of space. I pointed her to a place where she could finally see that there was infinite worth in feeling worthless, that even worthlessness had a rightful place in her, that as a child of consciousness, as a wave in the ocean of life, it was worth something, and that she was vast enough to contain ALL waves - worthiness, worthlessness, and the rest.

Why should she limit herself to just feeling one thing all the time? Why should she be 'the worthy one' and nothing else? Was she really so contained, so small, so bounded, so limited? Was she not, in fact, the wide open space of consciousness itself, the no-thing that holds everything, making space for all of life?

Worthlessness was her guru, waking her up from her trance of worth, shattering her limited, one-sided image of herself, enlightening her to the true indefinable vastness that she was. The true worth she had always sought was actually hidden there at the very heart of her most intense feelings of worthlessness. They just needed to be faced, met, embraced, that's all. They were simply lost children, looking for a home in her, having been denied entry time and time again up until now.

Standing in the midst of worthlessness, we discovered that we were truly worthy of it. Our feelings of unworthiness have so much worth, and there we truly meet, in intimacy. How ingenious that worth would hide inside worthlessness - the last place we'd ever think to look. This play of apparent opposites is stunning.