What I Learned When a Cosmically Elaborate Plot Closed My Business
My business closed down.
“It won’t be permanent,” my Inner Guidance shared with me. “Right now you have another kind of work to do.”
Accepting this guidance didn’t only mean a 21-month pause on income. It also meant closing the valve of validation from the people I served who confirmed that I was worthwhile in the world.
As a mentor for lightworker musicians, I hold clients at high levels of accountability through the uncomfortability of deep transformation so that they can more freely live their soul’s purpose as world consciousness musicians. The result? I witness miracles as these music medicine holders (who I come to love deeply) liberate themselves from inner blocks that have held them back, sometimes for decades. What could as potently validate that I was worthwhile as a contributing member to humanity than doing this work?
Until my Inner Guidance invited me to shut it all down, I didn’t know how tenaciously I had defined my worth by my career. Now with the absence of my work and nothing on the horizon to replace it, I was questioning whether my very existence held meaning at all. Without living my passion, and without the glow from clients confirming to me that I had indeed found my calling, life became excruciatingly lonely, and painful.
I began this new era of vacancy with a frantic search to fill the void. However, no pursuit fulfilled me quite as much. And then, more and more was stripped away. A health condition settled into my body and I could no longer attach myself to the identity of being healthy. Even yoga was too much for my weakened body. I lost a couple of my best friends and sat in mourning. By that time, I was hardly surprised when an East Coast music tour that my partner and I had carefully planned for over a year vaporized like mist within hours. As I pleaded for answers, my Inner Guidance lovingly waited for me to get panic, escapism, and despair out of my system. After writhing and resisting, I finally accepted the empty, gaping void and collapsed in it. I had no more fight in me.
Deep in my inner abyss, I found gems, two of which have become the most precious jewels I have ever experienced as Emily Potter. I share my two treasures with you here, in the instance you find yourself on a similar journey and perhaps my gems offer you peace and refreshment.
Gem 1: Everything is a cosmically elaborate plot orchestrated for me to Know My Worth.
The power of that sentence unassumingly docile there on your screen electrified me so forcefully that I could barely breathe for three days. Everything in the Cosmos meant every person, place, circumstance, and situation I ever found myself in has all been intricately orchestrated with minute precision on all levels and all dimensions for me to know my worth. Knowing my worth meant externally validating sources have lost their power. My clients, my career, my money, my relationships, my health, my music, my plans… I wouldn’t go so far as to say these things are silly. No way. I am grateful when I have them and feel sad when I don’t. They just don’t define me. Let them come or go. I am enough with or without them.
Gem 2: I don’t have to contribute anything, ever, to Prove My Value.
Can I still consider myself a worthwhile part of humanity if I’m not actively contributing anything substantial…for years? How about for a lifetime? Unless you’ve sought to fill your own inner hole on this one, you cannot possibly know the quest required to answer this question. I still have caverns to explore, but at the time of this article I am at a resting place of peace, and the answer is a most solid-ground, deep-rooted yes. When there’s no hole, there is no one and nothing required to fill it in. So tell me how beautiful/wonderful/fabulous I am because of all my contributions. Or don’t. Tell me how lazy/entitled/horrible I am because I don’t contribute to making this world a better place. Or don’t. My worth is not based on anything I ever say or do.
You and I are enough because we exist.
Knowing my worth begets equanimity no matter what comes my way, and I see now that equanimity is exactly what my Inner Guidance desired for me. If I am led to mentoring my beloved lightworker musicians again, all the fulfillment I get from that work will feel really nice. But doing whatever it takes, even closing my business down for almost two years to really know my worth…feels even better. Sitting in the emptiness with myself alone has been the greatest act I could have done in becoming the vessel of service I desire to be.
