Original sin is a paramount belief in Christianity and many religions of the world. It says that the basic nature of human beings is morally flawed and full of sin. And that it is only through prayers and God's guidance and grace that we can manage this deficiency.

But what if the opposite were true?

What if we are light, love, and innocence on the inside and our moral flaws and deficiencies are wrapped around it like layers of an onion? And then after there are enough layers, we cannot access the love and innocence anymore.

After a while, we might forget what we are and all we can access are the layers of deficiency. So we just figure we are rotten to the core.

The original sin and deficiency described above seem a lot like the deficiency of our negative self-beliefs that we pick up during childhood. They all have some variation of being deficient: I am unlovable, I am unworthy, I am inadequate or not enough, I am incapable, etc.

So could we be confusing our negative self-beliefs with our essence? The enlightened spiritual teachers that have reconnected with their essence claim that there is nothing but light and love in there. Perhaps original innocence or original purity would be more accurate than original sin.

This deep core belief of original sin makes it really difficult to trust ourselves. Accordingly, we tend to not trust our instincts and intuition.

Instead, we reroute important decisions through our intellect, because our natural inclinations are not to be trusted. Yet our intellect is not very clear and objective due to it being affected by all those negative self-beliefs.

That is why trusting your heart, gut, and instincts is so courageous. It goes against everything you are taught to believe.

Who would've thought accepting that we are innocent and beautiful inside would be so hard?