I somehow believe that wandering in the darkness is the right thing in my life at this particular point in time. I am learning that life has to break its people so that they might have a new kind of strength. The kind that isn’t easy, but rather the strength in spirit that is born only through brokenness. I am thankful that I’m finding the grace to the humble. But also, for something else.
I’m thankful for the chance to become the Phoenix. In the stories, when it saw the end coming, the Phoenix would destroy itself in a fire created from its nest, only to be reborn from the ashes of its destruction. I have the ability to totally destroy myself, the one that I know, and rise reborn from the ashes. The only question is, “what is it I wish to create?” A life that’s as filled with life as I can possibly comprehend.
Simone de Beauvoir said: “I tore myself away from the safe comfort of certainties through my love for the truth; and the truth rewarded me.”I know that we learn to respond to life in a way that allows us to be acceptable to, and survive in, the world in which we find ourselves at the expense of our own truth. I may have gone an entire lifetime of denying my truth if not for the kind of pain that galvanized me to live from another place.
We need to journey into the underworld and the unknown to find our true identity. The question is for all of us, "How deep are we willing to we go?" It means total or partial emptying of oneself, a simultaneous spiraling "down" while paradoxically spiraling "up", to explore the depth and breadth of our pain, taking ourselves apart piece by piece.
Because I know that the higher calling, duty even, for everyone is to give. And you can only give to the level you have gone.
I am learning to become a light unto myself.
