The Pedestal We Build/Idealizing Others

By Lori Lines

Growing up, our parents or primary guardians seemed larger than life. They could tackle any task, answer any question, and do no wrong. In a child’s eyes, the adults that nurse them when they are sick, help them navigate the world, and shower them with love, are perfect. As we grow out of the ages of innocence, we may start to perceive of the humanity of our guardians. Imperfect, questioning, wounded, and in need of healing. It is difficult for some when they realize that their parents are human and fall short of their ideal of what a parent should be.
 
It is often not until we are older or parents ourselves that we can fully embrace the fallibility of our parents with grace and compassion. Though for some, this understanding is hard to find, and no matter how pure and well-meaning their parents’ intentions are, their children feel resentment, heartache, or spitefulness towards the people they once so idolized. 

This manner of viewing elders and caregivers from childhood is often encouraged. Viewed as respectful and considered a sound way to model qualities that children should aspire to, putting our parents on a pedestal is a dynamic that we are conditioned to accept.
 
As we grow, we may adopt the same way of viewing all adults, superiors, and advisors. In school, we may idolize our teachers and coaches. We emulate and aspire to be like our more successful counterparts, managers, and bosses in the professional world. When we seek guidance and healing from counselors, therapists, and lightworkers, we also raise them up on a pedestal of reverence and admiration. 
In fact, the more spiritual an individual’s purpose or vocation, the more we tend to revert to the conditioned response of idolization. Just as we did with our parents in our youth, we encumber our spiritual teachers, healers, and mentors with high expectations based on our own idealized versions of who we think they should be. This idealized version is often a projection of who we think we should be or who we believe these lightworkers are supposed to help us become.

Some believe there are benefits to viewing lightworkers and spiritual healers in this way. Often, by painting the mentor with the brush of projection, it enables us to better visualize who we wish to become. The idealized guide can serve as an inspiration, motivating transformation, because “if they can do it, so can I.”
 
Yet, like our parents, lightworkers are fallibly human. They are their own works in progress, seeking healing from wounds and trauma and illumination along their path of enlightenment. Unfortunately, this humanity is often overlooked. Then again, who can see it when they are so high aloft the pedestals they have been placed on. Sadly, when they fall short of our projections of perfection, they are villainized. This villainization is rooted in the same resentment, heartache, and disappointment of our youth when confronted by our parents’ imperfection. Instead of being a reflection of our hopes and dreams, the lightworker becomes a projection of our unhealed wounds.
 
As unfortunate as the whole dynamic sounds, it can serve as an opportunity for healing. When these wounds rise to the surface to be slung resentfully at our parents, healers, guides, mentors, and leaders, we can instead use them to reawaken to our divine purpose of release, renewal, and enlightenment. When these people “let us down,” it is often because they “fail” to possess qualities that we wanted to see in others or manifest within ourselves. It is essential to ask ourselves how we can be the embodiment of who we long for others to be, how can our journey of self-actualization help us grow into the people we have always needed.
 
We are on the precipice of transformational times and ascending the matrix. It is more critical than ever that we must be who we need for ourselves. While it can be encouraging to grow with others and motivating to be inspired by others, we must learn to follow our own path, trust our own intuition, and manifest our own growth.

It is time to embrace your own sovereignty! Shake free from the doubt and the fear of not having all the answers. The time is now to turn the same faithful trust you held in your parents, or the lightworkers you’ve encountered, inward. Trust yourself and the journey even if you don’t have all the answers because no one does. After all, the whole reason for your journey is to discover them! 

In love and truth,
​Lori Lines

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