Let the Cracking Open Begin...
So who are you? No, Who are you really?
Are you living a life that is true to what you desire, or are you living a life that your parents, friends, or faith traditions want you to live?
My parents thought I SHOULD marry a girl and have two children, my parents thought I SHOULD get a job out of high school and not worry about further schooling, My mom thinks that I SHOULD call her every day to confirm that I love her.
So Many “Shoulds”
Well, I call my mom way less than once a day. I have become a life-long learner and enroll in all kinds of courses continually. And I turned out gay, but married a very nice man, no children yet, but I will keep you posted.
All to say, HOW many of us are living the lives we desire?
Have you been living INTO what your life CAN be, or are you living in the “ I SHOULDS”?
Are you brave enough to take a look at this? Let’s try to shine a light on it.
When we come into this world we are a raw ball of “Potential”. Philosopher and Psychologist, John G. Bennet called this “Potential” our “Essence”.
Some Christian, Judaic and Muslim theologians feel that you are born with a set goal or “destiny” that is to be fulfilled over your lifetime. Many believe that over our time on this earth we will find our way to completing our cosmic mission.
That is all well and good, but our world is far from nurturing in this capacity. Our society has put in place many cultural “norms” that do many things, but very few of them actually promote the growth of our “Individual Human Potential”.
You see, we come into this life innocent and vulnerable. Our parents and our care givers try, the best they can, to germinate this human seedling. And our parents attempt to love and encourage us, and along the way, right all the “wrongs” that their parents imposed on them. Convinced in the end that our “Potential” will grow into a wonderful human being. One that will make them proud.
One problem. No matter how much we, as parents, think we are nurturing this “Potential” we will be unable to protect this tender seed from hurts, fears, shames and traumatic gifts of our unconscious society.
And so, no matter how much it is loved, this “Essence” meets the world and is hurt, frightened and affected by Life.
But in these meetings, something quite strange and remarkable happens.
According to Swiss phycologist, Carl Jung, in order to adapt and deal with the negative aspects of life, this “Essence” begins to defend itself.
The “Seed” of who we are, begins to create a crust around itself to protect it from further hurts and wounding. Jung called this crust our “ego structure”. It looks and behaves an aweful lot like our “Essence”. And, Through our lives we do quite a good job of establishing a solid defence to keep the Seed of us from “feeling”, and being “affected by”, life.
We do such a good job of crafting this protective ego, that we begin to cut off connection to the “Essence” of who we are. In our busy 20s and 30s we start to live solely through this robotic and automatic part of ourselves.
This Ego part of ourselves knows how to survive and not feel pain.
This part of ourselves has learned all the “right things to do and say” so that it may receive love, affirmation and attention. THIS Ego has learned how to survive in a callus and sometimes cruel world.
And, This is all well and good until one day, in our later years, we meet a situation where we respond to something or someone, and we realize that our response was automatic. It was not an answer that was crafted from what we needed or wanted. It came out of our mouths before we could even check-in with ourselves.
This is the moment when we start to wake up! We realize we are no connecting to who we REALLY ARE.
Armenian philosopher, George Gurdjieff, taught how we human beings have become “automatons” and have lost connection with our “Essential Selves”. He shared how that feeling of “Who am I? and why am I here?”, comes from a crack in this “crust-like Ego structure”
In this one moment of realization, we suddenly see that we have been living our lives in pursuit of something we do not even want.
“we have spent our lives climbing the ladder and when we get to the top we realize the ladder is leaning against the wrong building.”
This realization, we often call “the mid-life crisis”. And without deeper reflection, many people try to “fix” this “unusual feeling of emptiness and disconnect” by filling up their lives with more things, more people, and more intense experiences. Not at all realizing that these things will not answer the questions of “who I am and why I am here”.
They fail to seek out ways to reconnect to the deeper parts of themselves. They refuse to “STOP” and turn inward. They refuse to slow down to hear what they truly need and value for happiness.
It is not about connecting to what the world says we need, it is about listening for what the heart of us desires. That which has been with us since we were born.
This is about taking time to realize, listen, and act from the “Essence” of who we are.
So, dear friends we have a choice. And as humans, many of us have forgotten that we can make choices, we may have to feel a bit of discomfort in this choice-making, but we all are gifted with our own agency.
Through, self-reflection, self- awareness, and slowing down, we have the power to begin a process of “cracking” our automatic egoic living. The crust that we so often identify with, can become porous and yielding.
But first we must stop and ask ourselves “who are we really? And whose life we are living?”
If your answer does not align with what you feel deep down in your bones, you may be ready for a bit of self-discovery and personal reflective work.
I began my search to connect with my mysterious “Essence” thirty years ago. Using all kinds of self-awareness tools like, the Myers-Briggs type indicator, that reveals how we function, the enneagram of personality, that helped me see the wounds that motivate me, and finally I started exploring “that which is greater than me”. Some of you may call this Universe, Creator, or perhaps God. But by opening up my mind and my judgements, I started the first step in revealing my potential and also uncovering who I am destined to be.
Our second step in wakening is OWNING what we uncover. Too often we allow self-realizations to fall to the wayside because they are too painful to face, or we are too swept away in our busy lives to actually accept them as truths. Here we have accepted society’s lie that life can be painless.
Have you seen how many ads there are for “Pain Relievers”? But life is definitely not without pain.
One of my early teachers, David Walsh, would say to me in these moments of realization… “Don’t confuse pain with a little discomfort”. In order to grow in new ways of understanding ourselves, we will have some “growing pains”.
The third and most important step to reconnecting to our Essential selves is one of “Action”. We can all talk a good game, but when the rubber hits the road, what will we do?
In my life, I can wish to be more connected to who I am, I can be aware of ways that I can grow into a fuller, more satisfied human being, But will I make the tough choices to actually change?
There is only one thing that is keeping you from knowing your essential self, there is only one thing that is keeping you from fulfilling your destiny in this life, There is only one thing that can help you find quiet in our stormy world.
That one thing is YOU.
Who are you really? And are you brave enough to find out?
It is never too late to being an inward journey.
Dale