Are You Going To Be Fully Rendered?
Or continue to just live by proxy?
Hello,
It’s Sunita here.
It's complicated.
We arrive at birth with our true self.
But we have not yet, for the most part, as a species, used that understanding in how we parent.
We parent with the tools we have inherited. These tools are at best, limited in their usefulness at the top end of the parenting spectrum, and downright dangerous and harmful at the bottom end.
Our knowledge of the life-long damage that can occur to our children when we are unable to, refuse to, and/or are incapable of logging into their true nature is growing.
Sadly, that is just the tip of the iceberg of adverse childhood experiences. (You can take the ACE Quiz for yourself if you haven’t already. It is an important number to know for your projected health and well being trajectory in life.)
But often, it easily takes much less than childhood trauma for us to lose our way in life. Being a social animal, we are designed to be part of a group. We crave a sense of belonging. Familiarity and recognition are the hallmarks of a comfortable relationship.
So, the pressure on us to fit into what is considered the norm by a large group of people is immense.
How can we do that without betraying our true selves?
Is there a way?
Of course, we are unaware of all of these complex conundrums when we are infants and children. Even into our late teens and young adulthood, we may be ignorant of the toll conforming can take on us.
We showed up with great enthusiasm to the stadium.
We were cool. We were hip. We were willing participants of the show. We took selfies with our friends and shared them on social media just so others (ironically most of whom were strangers to us) could see how much fun we were having.
After a while, we weren’t sure if it was really fun being there or we were just hearing an echo of the word fun.
A hollowness started to grip us but we were too invested in appearing happy to be there. We looked around and saw others bobbing their head to a loud chant like melody. We decided that leaving the venue before the show ended would make us seem awkward and force us to stand out.
So, we stayed.
Till the very end.
Finally, the show was over. Now if we can just get home, we thought.
Well, here’s the problem.
By the time we left the stadium, we had forgotten where we parked our car. We frantically checked every parking space till late at night.
“Maybe I didn't drive here?” we thought to ourselves. We started to doubt our memory.
Are we delusional?
But the the parking ticket in our pocket was evidence enough that we were not.
It became a full blown nightmare.
Do we get a ride home? Should we look for our car some more? Are we hallucinating?
Cut.
Losing our true self feels very similar to forgetting where we parked our car after a disorienting event.
But don’t worry.
We can never ever lose our true self. It’s parked in an off site garage.
It is always connected to us but we have to make the effort to locate it.
At the end of the day, our true self just wants to be found. It does not attach much significance to how and why it got dumped by us. Trauma, neglect, poor choices, ignorance, laziness, lack of resources, addictions, apathy, war, tragedy, famine, and any other cause of us living unconsciously is seen as one of the same by our true self.
Our true self wants us to get up and get to work on reclaiming it.
How do I know this?
Because I had to get up and do the work to find myself.
It wasn’t easy and it certainly wasn’t pain free.
But I had no other choice.
Because I had decided I was going to fight to reclaim my mind and my voice.
I was done living my life by proxy.
I hope you are too.
Until next time,
Moving forwards,
Sunita