Debbie Ford

Like the Buddha’s clay covering, your outer shell serves to protect you from the world, while your real treasure, your soul’s expression, is hidden within. Unknowingly, you hide your inner gold under a layer of human clay. And all you need to do to discover your real value—your soul’s gold—is to have the courage to chip away at your outer shell, the persona of the human ego, piece by piece. The outer shell is what keeps you from seeing the real light that lies within—your purest essence, your power, and your real worth. Until you are able to see who and what you are at your core, you will settle for the self that you know, and may endure immense and often needless suffering.

When your consciousness is clear, you can see that all you need to sustain and satisfy yourself already exists within—not on the outside of you, but on the inside of you.

Often, it takes a cracking open of your outer shell—some part of your life where you can’t make sense of things, where you run into an obstacle you can’t control or manipulate—to return you to the holy place within that can fuel and source a meaningful life. It is the events, circumstances, and experiences in the outer world that will ultimately expose the illusions that keep you stuck inside your human shell. You may have to lose your job or your money, experience the loss of a loved one or a betrayal, or become consumed by an out-of-control addiction to push past the closed doors of your ego’s mind. I can assure you that all your challenges are there for one reason only: to turn you inward