You feel unworthy of grace or love or the sacred

This conviction that you are unworthy of what you most long for is a heavy chain, and I want to help you set it down, gently. Grace is not earned; that is what makes it grace — if it had to be deserved it would be a wage, not a gift, and the whole meaning of grace is that it comes to the undeserving, freely, so your sense of unworthiness is exactly the condition grace is for, meeting you as you are, and you need not become worthy first. The feeling of unworthiness is often an old wound, not the truth — the deep sense that you are not enough was usually absorbed early, from harsh judgment or conditional love, and now speaks in you as if it were simple truth, but it is a wound talking, installed rather than discovered, and a wound can be healed. And practice receiving before you feel you deserve to — if you refuse all love and grace until you feel worthy, you will refuse forever, for the worthiness comes through the receiving, so accept the love offered now, awkwardly at first, and let each receiving heal the wound a little. Where did the sense of unworthiness begin?