Our lives are like the fridge in the kitchen or the note board on the wall. Lots of things of various importance that we need to remember, access and deal with at some point all gathered together into some kind of system-ish. It all makes some kind of sense to us on most days sort of. There’s family and work and friends and associates, organizations and teachers and those guys you hang out with. There’s this team and that team, the thing you absolutely have to get done over here and then you can do this fun thing over there. Through all of it we wear the appropriate clothes, put on the appropriate mask, act the appropriate way so that we fit, we get along, we get what we want, we get through it.
And most of the time we keep all of that straight, we keep it all separate, and we manage to maintain our self identity in there somehow, tucked away from everyone else, hidden, safe, trying to be heard, speaking loudly in the silence, but getting overruled out there in the world.
What happens when someone decides they want to do what they planned to do before they came into this life, when they choose to take on the challenge/lesson/service that is the opportunity provided by this particular embodied life, things start to change. It becomes more and more difficult for pieces to stay separate. Things that were hidden start coming out into the light of day, that self identity moves out of its safe haven and starts viewing all the parts and refuses to accept them as they are, and what as survivable/acceptable because “that’s just the way it is” stops being even that.
A sorting starts happening that is as marvelous as it is devastating in that the pieces start getting put together into one whole tapestry. What not longer fits or no longer makes sense is taken off the board and something new that matches that self identity takes its place. As the voice becomes stronger and more confident the pieces are stitched together more firmly, the pattern begins to unfold, an entire garment is created. One that is beautiful and dynamic, comforting and soothing, one that supports us rather than rules us and is ever changing as life unfolds.
