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Becoming aware of the darkness and the light inside of us, along with all the shades in between, is how we fundamentally learn about who we truly are. Being courageous enough to look inside and embrace all of it; the dark, the light and the in-between; could be the very beginning of a collapse. That’s one of the main reasons why we don’t do it! That, and the fear of loosing our identity, which ties us to the familiar and gives us the comfortable illusion of security. However, there has to be a breakdown in our so called identities in order for us to find out who we truly are.
So much of the identity crisis we live today is an attempt to try and fit into a role that was pre-designed for us by others. We are the Black, the Indian, the Jew, the Chinese, ad infinitum. So many are the categories and roles that the status quo asks us to fit into, that our attention is fixed on the outside of ourselves living little room for us to be in touch with our true essence.
It is time to have a break down. It is time to let loose the scream kept inside for so many years. It is time to fully acknowledge the traumas that we have been through and to look at them in the eye instead of medicating them and keeping them away. This is an absolutely sine qua non for us to begin our healing. It is our journey of learning that brings us closer to our true nature, our divine nature. We need to loose our way in order to find ourselves and gravitate toward incompletion without fear. How much easier would our lives be if fear of failure was not an option? How much easier would it be for our children to be self sufficient, conscious and fulfilled, had they not be given the burden of trying to be perfect at everything? And how much more free would we be as adults if we learned to listen more actively and generously instead of trying to have all the answers?
We need to sit with failure and with the cracks. We need to welcome the things that we were once thought dangerous and make peace with them asking first “what is there for me to learn from you?”. Many things that today are considered crisis in our lives would be considered learning opportunities. The breakdown of concepts and status quo would be a celebration of renewal and rebirth. Concepts that were handed down to us as absolute and immutable would be an invitation to exploration without fear and attachment. Hanging on to what is perceived as “the only way“ would no longer be “the only way“ and we would be able to see beyond, to have space to expand our intellect and our heart and find new solutions. It might be a scary thought at first, but we ought to let go of the mentality of scarcity and embrace the mentality of abundance that is the normalcy we were meant to live in. Yes! The normalcy of nature is to be abundant and generous, to share, to live in peace with one another. But please do not take my word for it; just look at nature! Nature cooperates and co-exists with harmony. Wherever we look we see this pattern. We don’t need science to tell us that; simple observation of nature will do the trick. And so, as animals that we are, we are capable of following this same pattern. The problem arises when we begin to think of ourselves as separate from nature, separate from others. Separate and superior. This M.O. has been a recipe for disaster. It became our official functioning model as human beings. Ergo, if humans are the superior beings in nature, then one must try to be superior to other humans in order to assert oneself as a leader, an important person, a human of value. One’s worth is measurable by how much one has conquered, how much one has, how much one dominates.
This unsustainable model has blinded and kept us from what is our own measure of success, our own worth and has put an external yard stick – land, slaves, relationships, trips, money, cars, clients, etc – ahead of our own internal compass of what success and happiness truly mean to us. And so we must look at how much we conquered, won over, in order to understand how good we are and to make ourselves believe that we are of value. Instead of looking inside, recognising and owning our talents, and asking how we can contribute, we asked what we can take and accumulate so that we can have any value at all. We were taught that the we would only become perfect later in life after years of studying in universities, accumulating diplomas signed by someone else who has done the same thing, acquiring possessions and “friends” around us, worked in respectable institutions. Then maybe, finally, we would be recognised by others as of value, of worth, and then we could die in peace knowing we left a massive legacy.
The invitation is to let go of the fears and let the light in through our cracks. Our beautiful and celebrated cracks, and not our intact, rigid selves, patched with years of repression of our true feelings. It will makes us confused for a while. It will makes us angry perhaps. And it will makes us see what is possible and what is waiting for us on the other side of this frantic run for perfectionism: Paradise.
