Because Mackenzie (my laptop) is undergoing minor surgery at a local in-patient facility, I missed posting yesterday. Didn’t want you to think that blogging had already lost its lustre after Week One. Hardly! Fact is, I’ve pondered whether I might be arrested for enjoying something so much.
Mackenzie’s expanding, like many of us. Her computer brain is being cleaned out and rewired so she can remember more and process more efficiently. A lot of us are doing the same thing. Our bodies, minds, and spirits are evolving — as long as we consciously do our part to get out of the way. Much of our inner work is “defragging” and “optimization.” We’re releasing old memories and freeing up space to create new experiences that offer more satisfaction and less struggle, more joy and less pain.
Face it! We’re getting too large for our old, tired stories and conversations. (For more on this, read the previous “flux” post if you haven’t already.) We’re being encouraged – nay, compelled – to do that transformative, snaky thing and shed our old skins. What’s yours? Is it dumbing down so people aren’t absolutely blown away with your brilliance? Is it agreeing to play the doormat time after time after time? Is it keeping your mouth shut, holding your deepest truths at bay – all for fear that people will find you too liberal, too conservative, too devoted to God, too devoted to your country, or otherwise just plain weird? Is it cloaking yourself in a no-longer-useful garment emblazoned with the words, “I don’t deserve to be here“?
Snakes shed their skins when they’re not working for them anymore. Moths create a cocoon, devolve into goo, and then rebuild themselves into a butterfly. And every egg cracks eventually. From the inside out, the shell is stressed to capacity. The hatchling emerges from its twisted yoga position in its dark, sticky, cramped container, and into an expanded environment that supports a new level of functioning. Once again, timing is everything. Push too hard, before the interior work is complete, and things are likely to become, well, scrambled. Wait too long, and you lose the opportunity to fly.
If you wait for someone else to hatch you, you’re likely to end up sloshing around a bowl or (with a nod to the season), having your brains blown out and becoming merely a shell of your authentic self. Turn to goo if you must. Experience the sensation of feeling so cramped and restrained and uncomfortable with your own existence that you can’t stand it a minute longer…
…and then peck your way out into the waiting arms of a new day. Or, you can always lie around and wait for someone to accidentally step on you or pick you up and turn you into a “basket case.” As always, the choice is yours…
words divinely wrought 