The courage to unravel.

I’ve been talking with a friend lately about the challenges of unraveling our childhood and cultural conditioning. We both have a perfectionist/people pleaser part of our personality that we have moved out of the driver’s seat over the past year. We laugh that some days it feels like we have landed in “Loserville.” When your worthiness is hooked into validation by others or achievement or anything outside of yourself, it feels pretty awful (and terrifying) when it isn’t there anymore. We keep moving outside of the familiar territories of the maps we were given. And in this open space, the old patterns of the ego (even those deep unconscious ones) eventually show up to be seen and felt.

Not easy.

We posited that this process is happening so that we can see and bring compassion, forgiveness and understanding to these parts of ourselves. To literally bring them into the light of our own consciousness. To practice offering ourselves the unconditional regard we so easily offer to others. If we don’t follow the old impulse to try to control our worthiness, if we can stay with the uncomfortable feelings and not try to get rid of them, we can discover a deeper sense of love simply waiting in the breath, in the body, in the heart. We are practicing allowing love in to these parts that haven’t known it before.

Kinda cool.