Yes, you are. You are already that which you seek. Maybe you can’t see them yet, but you are there, under all the layers of expectation, trauma, guilt and, well, life, that you have lived to date.
I’ve been sitting with a spiritual friend, Becki, who has recently completed training in something called “Belief Coding”
As an open-minded sceptic of such things, she used me to get her “hours in”, to complete her qualification. It was a cathartic and enlightening experience.
It also got me thinking about something incidental she said. Actually she didn’t say it, she was paraphrasing Paulo Coelho’s, The Alhemist she said,
“In the journey of searching for oneself, you journey straight back into the heart of yourself hidden under all the layers that life has covered you with and made you believe that that is who you really are”
It is, at its, heart a journey towards embracing you true, full and authentic self. Something I talk about A LOT! Something I have been striving for and, to be fair, making great headway in, in recent years.
Finding Ourselves
Maybe we need the life experiences, and the years before we can come back to ourselves? Or maybe that’s just how it is with me. But I do believe that accepting and acknowledging our full authentic selves takes work in identifying which bits of us are authentic and which are as a result of nurture, outside influences, and conformity through our education system and societal expectations.
Paulo Coelho also says this,
“Accept what life offers you and try to drink from every cup. All wines should be tasted; some should only be sipped, but with others, drink the whole bottle.”
I have always advised my children to keep an open mind and an open heart, take all the lessons life offers you (even if you may never need to use them), try everything (sometimes cautiously, often to confirm its not for you!), try your best, walk through every door, meander down ever path, and (who’d have thought I’d ever be quoting the bible) don’t judge lest you shall be misjudged.
We’re not Black & White
We are all multifaceted beings. We morph, change, grow and evolve and that’s a good thing. The hard bit is listening to our inner voice, responding from our heart and mind and not being led in directions by expectation and conformity.
It may be a luxury to do this, as a cis-white woman from a middle class background, I am not exhausted by the constant strive to make ends meet or overly hampered by prejudice. Although I have noticed very different societal expectations and treatment of me as an ‘aging’ size 16-18 female. This gives me both retrospective appreciation about how life was an attractive, intelligent, young woman and the observations of how they changed as I reached menopause and rapidly approach 60. However, this is me and this is where I am, having been searching for myself for over half a century, finally realising that I am already that which I was always seeking, Its just been a matter of peeling off the covers to find myself.
