I have a soul that does not tolerate the limitations of my fears. Even when I cling to their comforts with a white-knuckled death grip.
That intolerance is a gift. And on the occasions that I decline it, I separate myself from my power and live as a victim to be saved.
This morning my partner said to me, “I have never known anyone who has worked so much on their evolution as you do.”
Before I began my work as a coach, he once commented on how he thought I clung to fear.
Screw you, I thought.
The truth hurts.
My desire to live in alignment with myself requires that I explore the ways that I do not.
And that means going into the dark.
What is in the dark are the things I dread the most: Fear of separation from others, from myself. From love. And parts of myself that are painful for me to see.
Like monsters that I stuffed in the closet but who won’t stop banging on the door, my darkness wants me to know it is there.
One can get used to the banging, try to ignore it, try to live with it, and make a home out of the anxiety of trying to keep the darkness away.
When I locked my door against my darkness, I built a life out of the anxiety it took to keep that door closed: people-pleasing, pain, hiding, self-limiting beliefs, rejected emotions, old resentments, blame..
So much wasted energy.
When we only want to live in light and lock our door to the dark, the dark finds us anyway by virtue of us trying to ignore it.
It shows itself in the ways our lives don’t work, in the decaying of our relationships, in our disconnect from our work. It even showed itself in my art practice.
I don’t tolerate dissatisfaction well in my life, in my relationships with others or with myself, or my art practice. I chafe, like a lobster that has outgrown its shell.
I ended a marriage that had reached its shelf life, quit a job that I no longer loved to start a business built on love, and began the teardown and remodel of me.
My darkness is not a monster banging on the door trying to hurt me.
My darkness is the parts of me that have been starved of my acceptance and love. It wants to join with the rest of me, because I am not whole without it.
The dark is intelligent that way.
What you want will be found in your darkness-
the bright light of who you really are.
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