When we grow up, we create personalities based on our interactions. We hold these as a way of navigating life in a safe way. We cling to these as a way of making sense of life and how people interact with us. As souls, when we bounce up against one another it is helpful to feel a sense of understanding. If I can guess how you will be with me based on my expectations of you, I can stay safe. I can know how to behave and also know how you will treat me. When we are shifting our reality through soul work, we have tangible changes within ourself. I remember feeling different and often disoriented in my interactions with other people. I could barely sense who I was let alone feel how I should behave with another being. Adding to the disorientation was the knowledge that those I was interacting with could also sense the shifts that were occurring within me. I remember trying to hold onto who I was suppose to be for those around me. As if I could somehow save others from becoming disoriented too. But, Life did what life does and the pace of the shifts propelled me so quickly that I was moving too quickly for me to keep ahold of false realities. Was I the self of a week ago or yesterday or even ten minutes ago? Eventually, the practice was futile and I learned to be with whatever was in that moment.
My desire to remain what I thought people needed me to be was not based on my desire to deceive them. I wanted them to still love me while being lost in the sea of soup that had become my identity. If I was an untethered, unrecognizable human to myself. Who was I to them? I didn’t want it to matter, but it did. I needed to be needed by my people. My whole identity related to other beings. The good mother, the good wife, trusted friend, sister and child. Relating was everything to me and not causing discomfort to anyone was paramount…even if if I was the one suffering.
Unraveling is not for the faint of heart. I believe that we will all see the string of our reality be tugged at at some point in our life. Unhinged, mid-life crisis, break down. Society has all sorts of words for those moments…mostly negative. But, what if those moments are our break throughs. The nudges that we need to let our souls peek out of the mattresses the we have stacked upon it like the pea in The Princess and the Pea. We walk though our lives mostly never touching or feeling the depths of our beings. We mostly avoid going into the places that call for our attention until the tap becomes a vibrating gong.
Shedding old layers does create newness, un-recognizability and it creates the ability for you to feel your Truest self. When you are able to trust yourself to go through the fire and come out the other side, who cares what someone else thinks. When we fear who we are becoming, we instill fear in others. We don’t trust ourselves so others can’t trust us either. I will not sugar coat it as if that process is always easy. Dying to who you think you are can be excruciating AND truly liberating. If I am no longer performing the role of who I think I am, then my soul can take the lead. My soul can whisper sweet nothing in my ear and lead me in the sweetest dance of life. I don’t have to THINK about who I am, I will just know and that knowing will be stronger than anyones opinion.
