We are born again and again within even one single lifetime but the difference between ourselves and the rest of creation might be that, since our eyes are opened to the struggle within, we have been granted a choice.
Lately I have been experiencing a call to embody a new version of myself and have therefore actively sought support to make that leap. Again and again the heart sutra (from Buddhism) has emerged in my path. The words speak of a shift of heart so dramatic that it is experienced as a transportation to another shore (with a beckon for all to join).
To truly leap, severing ties which would hold me back has been revealed as a necessary ritual - not cutting off people themselves, just ties to them that kept us both stuck and stagnant. Even if I don't see someone in the flesh I can sever the old egoic relationship in spirit and love them more wholeheartedly with the new version of myself, whatever form that takes in materiality. Severing isn't harsh to another as often as it is deeply self aware.
Who are these people? Well, anyone who has activated a wound or a need to change. People who invited a deepening growth or may have lashed out at us or us at them. Those who agreed on some level to participate in this unfolding with us. People about whom we carry false beliefs or who prompt us to notice false beliefs about ourselves. Those who we blame for our lack of progression by cursing them under our breath. Those we stay in victim or victimizing relationship to. It's a choice, suddenly, when before it did not seem so.
While it is important to recognize what went wrong and where it went wrong, we cannot assume that anyone will stay the same or that our assessments are remotely accurate about another when ego is prominent in the mix . What we can do is interrogate our ego lovingly and ask its illusions to be devoured. We can actively turn from those patterns which entangle us and excitedly level up. Love is not lost because it is within us.
Leaping to the other shore requires we go alone. Yet we hope to see others there with us, having done the work themselves. The process is internal. It is co-created with the Spirit of Wisdom.
As I've done my internal pruning, I'm aware that the choice and freedom to change is a gift and a burden. We don't blossom and die as effortlessly as a rose or a lilly of the valley and perhaps this is because we have, as a species, “opted in” to the inner transmutation process. As we grow through the levels of ego and progress, we draw closer to the garden again. Our innocence returns because we expand in love and radical acceptance but we must die a little every day. Sometimes we pole-vault to another shore on the wings of our hearts.
We aren't roses. We are gardeners of our own internal rose gardens - constantly trying to remember that we do not garden with our hands alone.
When we forget and feel isolation and shame instead, it is because we are stuck outside our values with our eyes open. Deep down we know love is bigger than we allow it to be - far more unconditional - and responsive to the healthy boundaries of co-creative abundance, transmutation and the severing of the habits of ego, with gratitude for their role in leading us through our own beautiful and temporary darkness.
We are entangled with others, ourselves and the world at large because we chose this path. But we are free and have the power of Creation always at work within us to experience blossoming new realities, fulfillment of desires, abundance beyond our wildest dreams and a connection that can evolve with our growing capacity to love as an unfolding rose does.
Image: a pink rosebud just opening amid green leaves. By Frances