Cracking the Shell
We get caught up in the summer nights of our minds. We start playing tag with ego, and it seems to be fun. Eventually, we get tired and want to go home, and ego won’t let us. It wants to keep playing, and it will do anything to keep us there. It will tell us anything we want to hear to make us feel happy, safe, loved, protected, secure, confident and on and on. We listen, we calm down, we play again. After a long night, we are too exhausted to contend, and ego is at ease…so we get to go home just in time to pass out.
This process repeats the next day, and the next day, and the next day. At some point, an event happens that really makes us question ego and its motives. We may really want something else, or someone else. We may want to learn more, grow more, experience more. We come to the desire to expand beyond the game of tag, and ego pushes back on that once again. We then feel stuck. We keep looking for answers outside of us. There is something wrong with me. I don’t know what this is, and I don’t know where to go from here. Is it my friends? My family? My job? I don’t have enough money. If I had more money, I’d be happier. What would I do to get more money? I can’t get a second job…I don’t have time for that. Who’s hiring during this pandemic anyways? Things are so tough. I’m not good enough for this, not pretty enough for that person, not rich enough to do those things….not enough. Why can’t I be enough? Ego smirks and says, “Just keep playing tag with me, you are certainly enough! Actually, you’re the best in the world! I wouldn’t have it any other way!”
Giving credit where it is due, ego does have part of it right…you ARE enough. Ego, bless its heart, doesn’t have your complete best interests in mind, only that which serves ego. That which serves ego is based only on a fragment of you, and often times that fragment is what kept you safe as a child. It helped you get out of predicaments, it helped you feel better, it helped you survive. However, as you progress through this life, and become more aware, more awakened, more conscious…ego’s methods no longer serve your highest and greatest good. You outgrow those protection and coping mechanisms. You don’t NEED to live that way anymore.
It is difficult to get past that when it has been your way of life, your modus operandi. It got you THIS far, after all, right? Well, to an extent, it did. But, there is something even greater inside of you, and will take you everywhere else in life. There is a light in you. That light represents your inner being, and it is with you every step of the way. In fact, it is the one who has been guiding you, against all odds. What keeps you from following it, is…also you.
Take a second and catch your breath, pull your jaw back up, refrain from the “how dare you’s”, and give this a slice of your open mind for consideration. Every trauma, large or small, in our lives created a split within us. That split, or fragmentation, was a necessity to survive when there was no immediate resolution to the trauma. Ego operates under this platform, much like any other fragmentation. If there was no reintegration of a fragment through some form of resolution to the trauma, that fragment still exists, and still attempts to use it’s methods to protect that part of you. This fragmentation, therefore, rears its head when triggered, and creates resistance in some cases where there doesn’t need to be any.
Still with me? To bring it back down to eye level: when you are feeling stuck, it is because a part of you is resisting the flow of life that your inner being is taking you towards. Whether it is conscious or subconscious, resistance is resistance. It is completely understandable when life is taking us in a direction that we did not plan to go, that we want to slam on the brakes and attempt to throw it in reverse. We don’t know better in that moment. We don’t know that the universe is taking us to a place that our inner being called us to. What we know is that it is not what we think we want, and so we fight. We don’t see our light, and we question the universe on why we aren’t going where we want to go.
It is in this moment, that a crack in your shell needs to happen. Just a crack. As the light finds the crack, it will pour out. Even if it is the smallest crack, to SEE that light, to FEEL that light, is enough. You will know that you are connected, that you are enough, that you are all that you want to be, because you already are. Often it is only in hindsight that we see that we went where we REALLY wanted to go. To borrow from “The Hanged Man” of the Rider-Waite Tarot deck, give yourself a shift in perspective. You are not stuck, you just have some love to give to some parts of yourself, and allow yourself to go where life takes you. YOU ARE NOT STUCK. You are being given the opportunity to integrate a part of you offering resistance, because it wants to be heard…to be seen…to be acknowledged…to be validated…to be loved. That is not stuck. That is progress.
I recently had the opportunity to talk with a soul that, of all souls on Earth and of all times available, chose me, for guidance. I hope that I was able to make the crack just large enough, that you could see the light that I saw within you.