To Thine Own Self Be True

'To thine own self be true.'  Such a simple adage.  Not always easy to follow.

So often in life we find ourselves staying with what is familiar, long after it has grown cold.  Our habit mind dutifully helps us to hold fast while our awake self yearns to let go.  This can even happen with good things. 

I can remember a ceramics class that I was helping to teach.  It was a delight, but it kept on going long after the time when it was supposed to stop.  I felt conflicted and over burdened.  Though I enjoyed it, I was not truly staying in my joy.  I was beholden more to social duty than to my own true self.  These lessons can come hard.  And it's good to say "no," when it's time to let go.

In this particular scenario, Divine Arrangement intervened in the form of an automobile accident that put me where I needed to be, at home, tending within.  As rough as it began, it was there that I found my true joy again.  Nowadays, I like to think that I make these types of choices more frequently and on my own, when it is time to listen within, take stock and re-access.  It just seems so much more wise for me to do this before Divine Intervention sweeps in.

I am reminded of my mother's laundry soap, made from her fireplace wood ash and kitchen bacon grease, bubbling slowly on the stove.  With the flame of transformation beneath it, the two substances would begin to unite.  Over time, large bubbles would slowly rise up, thick and sticky.  Then with a sigh of release, they would pop and sink back down into the congealing, coalescing  mass.

Our creativity must rise, express itself and then return back down to the source in order to gather and rise again.  And just like the fat and ash, we become forever changed into something even more useful and new. 

It's okay for us to let go. When a part of our lives gets too high and tight and thin, be it an addiction, a commitment or an unresolved dream, it may be time for us to go back down.  Sometimes we just need to re-group in order to let ourselves take a little break, mix it up a bit and draw from what we know or have been before, in order to rise up and generate our own transformation once more.     



        Enjoy the lovely sunset photo by my friend Anno. 

© Josephine Laing, 2015