"Being true to who we are means carrying our spirit like a candle in the center of our darkness."
"If we are to live without silencing or numbing essential parts of who we are, a vow must be invoked and upheld within oneself. The same commitments we pronounce when embarking on a marriage can be understood internally as a devotion to the care of one's soul: to have and to hold … for better or for worse … in sickness and in health … to love and to cherish, till death do us part."
"This means staying committed to your inner path. This means not separating from yourself when things get tough or confusing. This means accepting and embracing your faults and limitations. It means loving yourself no matter how others see you. It means cherishing the unchangeable radiance that lives within you, no matter the cuts and bruises along the way. It means binding your life with a solemn pledge to the truth of your soul."
"It is interesting that the nautical definition of marry is “to join two ropes end to end by interweaving their strands.” To marry one's soul suggests that we interweave the life of our spirit with the life of our psychology; the life of our heart with the life of our mind; the life of our faith and truth with the life of our doubt and anxiety. And just as two ropes that are married create a tie that is twice as strong, when we marry our humanness to our spirit, we create a life that is doubly strong in the world." Mark Nepo
I totally get this, how we have to weave our soul's passion and truth into our human experiences. I don't even believe that I knew my soul, until my life fell completely apart.
When the truth shattered my world, it didn't shatter my soul...and it was hanging on to what I called my little girl or my innocence...that I began weaving the essence of me into each situation. If it wasn't good for my little girl (my soul), I did not do it.
I love this line "If we are to live without silencing or numbing essential parts of who we are, a vow must be invoked and upheld within oneself."
It was hard to start living at 46 without silencing or numbing the essential parts of who I was...and I vowed to myself, to always do what was right for me and my soul, no matter what. In doing this, it has made me strong beyond belief.
I also, like how he suggests to "interweave the life of our spirit with the life of our psychology; the life of our heart with the life of our mind; the life of our faith and truth with the life of our doubt and anxiety."
I believed that prior, I lived in shattered fragmented pieces, never letting myself be joined together; for often my mind and my heart were at odds; that I would do what I felt I had to do, but not what would bring me peace.
There is complete freedom and strength when you can weave all parts of you together so there is no inner turmoil. I wonder, if what creates so many mental illnesses is due to the inner discontent between our mind and spirit...or heart and psychology etc?
When I began the task that has taken 8 years and counting to weave my self back together, I had to exit relationships that would cause a war inside of me...and being okay with it being disruptive outside of me. Meaning family being upset with my line in the cement etc. I had to have my inner peace at all costs...for, in the past, I had allowed my insides to be a total mess while trying to clean up the outside world and IT DIDN'T WORK.
You can't change someone on the outside to bring you peace inside.
The only real change that will give you last peace, love and joy, is to weave together all parts of you....your mind, body and soul.
That is what they say Yoga does, it brings the mind back to the body. And I see it as bringing the mind into reality, to see what is, so that the body can move inkind.
It is so easy when you can clearly see reality and when you have given your body/mind and soul permission to live with the truth and not run from it or cover it up or work to change it etc. But, to be a seeker of the truth in all things and knowing you will be able to handle what it will ask of you.
Truth will ask to respond to what it sees.
Somehow there is great peace for me to be with the truth no matter its ugliness or how painful it can be...it allows me to be in the flow of life weaved together with strength inside of me.
I literally have watched and marveled at the way I have grown up inside by knowing it was important to have no strands of disagreement inside. I would work up a solution that we could all agree on. If one part of me wasn't happy...it wasn't done.
In the beginning, before I understood the total affects of abuse, I had to envision inside of me this little girl and if this little girl wouldn't be happy, I did not do what others wanted. For, I could see clearly now, a part of me that I had dumped years worth of duty upon, neglecting her needs, her desires, her passions and her fears.
I no longer could care to care about what others needed or thought about me. My only concern was the little girl inside.
And, as I mothered myself, I was weaving together all parts of me bringing us all forward in peace, love and joy.
I can see how we can have parts of us who are left at the age of our abuse, how we parts of us get left behind. These wounded parts need to be brought forward....to be expressed and then honored.
What I feel deeply, is that my little girl was abused by my father, and it would be dishonoring to her, to then 'forgive' and forget and move on and continue in a relationship with him. I instead forgave by accepting that the past could not have been any different, and in doing so moved away from this hurtful man.
I also could see my mother's hand in helping to keep abuse in our home, by her lack of being able to do any different. I too, forgave this by accepting her limitations that she could be any different....and in honoring my little girl, kept her away from my mother.
It was a struggle at times, for the little girl and her needs were not what I had driven my life by before. And most often they were in a direct opposition of what I had lived by before. But, now I honored her and only her.
I gave up the fourth commandment. I gave up "unconditional" love and had conditions for my little girl inside.
The line I drew was around my little girl.
