Lifeletter #191: Shaken & Stirred

Only what shakes me to the core leads me onward. The rigidity breaks, growth follows.
–Bert Hellinger

We human beings are strange creatures. We protect ourselves a lot, and try to remain in a comfortable, familiar place. And we long for adventure, for the healing movement of unfolding and awakening. The impulse to defend and protect ourselves is very natural, and needs to be respected. And it can carry us into a place of real rigidity and isolation, where frozen pockets of energy can no longer flow in us. As the years pass, we learn to live with these frozen places. We can become quite good at working around them, finding ways to compensate for the parts of ourselves that we have left behind. Sometimes we don’t even know that they exist. We just notice a lack of vitality, an underlying sadness, or a loneliness.

And then something changes. We try, but we cannot carry on in the same way. The burden of what we are carrying becomes unsustainable. The weight is heavy, because we have been carrying it alone. We didn’t even know that we had another option. Sharing this with someone else, reaching out and asking for help, seemed impossible, forbidden, even shameful. The moment when we cannot go any further on our own is a moment of grace. When we find a way to bring these hidden parts of ourselves into the space of connection and intimacy, we begin to melt, just like a river in spring.

To allow this depth of connection is not a small thing. It penetrates me, it “shakes me to the core,” as Bert Hellinger says. Any moment of real intimacy transforms me, stirs me up inside. If I really feel you, see you, hear you, I am not the same afterward, neither are you. And the more deeply we connect, the more we become aware of the greater field of presence that holds us both, holds us all.

The key to our transformation lies in our connection. We cannot discover a new way of living unless we are shaken to our depths. The power of our old structures, our old wiring, is too strong. All of the chaos and turbulence around us is showing us this. Alone, we are powerless. We will simply struggle on heroically in the same way we have done for thousands of years. Do we have the heart to face this now? To feel how long it’s been, how deeply we have been conditioned to do it alone, to be strong, to hold our head high, to hide our vulnerability, our sorrow, our anger, our shame, our deep longing.

How can we find our way into something so radically different? A shared space of love, clarity, caring, and communion that welcomes every part of who we are. How can we lay down the heavy burden of our solitary path and allow ourselves to be held by each other, by love, by grace, by presence?

I believe it’s time now. The signs are everywhere. This is good news. Let’s share it far and wide. And let’s share it near.

We have gone as far as we can in the vehicle of our hard won individuality. The loneliness many of us are feeling now is real, and it comes of being so focused on ourselves and our goals. We know we are ready for so much more and we know it’s time to evolve, finally, together…” —Patricia Albere

with love,
Shayla

photo credit: www.erikjohanssonphoto.com