Keeping the Sacred Flame

There are so many things we can be.  The possibilities spread out before us when we’re children, and we slowly whittle them down to a handful of possibilities when we grow up.  And even still, sometimes we find ourselves on a path we never expected.

We have a right and a need to explore these paths, to find our truest selves, to be the best we can be.  And yes, there will always be obstacles to these paths.  There’s never enough money, enough time, enough energy to explore them all.  We have to make choices.

We have to make choices.  But we need to make them fearlessly.  And, more, we need to make sure we are not standing in the way of other people’s choices.

We all have gifts and skills to grant the Divine.  But when we are blocked, not by lack of ability but by prejudice and arrogance, the Divine itself is blocked.  When people stand in our way by declaring us uppity and undeserving not through our own lack but because of our background, they deny the Divine itself.

And when we stand in people’s way and deny them and their Divine selves, we deny the universe of what they could have been.  Perhaps it’s a path they could not have completed anyway.  But that is their own choice to attempt – not ours to deny.  Not because of things that have no bearing on the subject.  (Denying someone admittance to a science program because they cannot do the science only makes sense.  Denying them because they come from a bad school does not).

Imagine what the would could be like if everyone was given a chance to be everything they could be, instead of giving only the children of the richest that opportunity.  Imagine what humanity could be.

Questions:
How do you stand in other people’s way?  Is it valid gatekeeping?  Or is it something else?
How do others stand in your way?  How do you deal with that?
What would you do if there were no barriers?