Homecoming

There’s something inexplicably profound about understanding that all you’ve ever dreamed of is not just the whimsical musings of a lifelong daydreamer.  That your so-called fantasies are more real than you ever could have fathomed before, and things that you once thought far out of your reach are well within your grasp.  A path you always yearned to follow, a future you saw spread out before you just waiting to take shape, a love you carried silently within your heart believing it could never be.

There’s also something very scary about that understanding because it is not a solitary revelation.  We never really realize how much pain and hurt we bury away, how many insecurities we shove into a dark corner and tell to be quiet while we go about life on a daily basis.  Well, we try to bury them away anyway.  But the truth is, they always manage to come out somehow.  We feel bad about ourselves.  We have been taught to feel bad about ourselves from the time we are very small.  If you don’t do things the way we do, you are bad.  Don’t think the way we do, you are bad.  Don’t look like we do, you are bad.  And that’s just the abuse society puts us through.  Nevermind the traumatic events that often happen in our family and personal lives that mold us like a lump of clay into neurotic beings functioning as only a shell of our real selves as an unconscious means of feeling loved and accepted.

When it comes down to it, that’s all we ever really want.  All we ever really NEED.  To feel loved and accepted for who we are.  But the funny thing is – that’s not what we do.  We judge harshly, ourselves and others, often more so ourselves than others.  We let other people determine our worth for us.  We let them tell us if we are a success or a failure, we let them tell us if we are attractive and desirable or not, we let them tell us if we are worth being loved or not.  And we’ll put up with a lot to feel that we are loved and accepted too.  We’ll endure situations where we feel stifled and even hurt, we’ll give of ourselves until there is nothing left, and we’ll sacrifice our hopes and dreams to make another happy.  We believe that in making them happy, we are making ourselves happy, and they often feel the same way.  In the long run, this never works.

You can live this way and maintain a facade of happiness that fools even yourself if you really try to, but there will always be something missing.  A voice that catches up to you in moments of stillness, pulling at your soul and telling you to “Wake up!” in no uncertain terms.  Listening to that voice is a very good thing.  It is what propels us toward change, what convinces us that there is well and truly something more, something bigger, something better out there for us.  It is the voice we have stifled our entire lives to entertain the thoughts and ideas of the masses.  The one we have ignored so we could fit in and “feel loved and accepted.”  It is the voice of our inner child, our higher self.  And it is time we start listening.  Now.  It is not until we listen and comprehend that we will genuinely feel loved and accepted.

Why is that?  The answer is simple.  True, authentic love and acceptance comes from within, not without.  If we continue to rely on others to make us feel these things, we will always be let down.  We will always be seeking something that we will never find.  We will always find reasons to look upon ourselves with disfavor, disgust, and even hate.  It is by learning that and learning how to love ourselves that the doors to our dreams that we one thought to be firmly closed are opened.  Sounds beautiful, doesn’t it?  Oh, it is.  But you can’t get from point A to point B without walking through your own internal fires of hell, and that is where the scary part comes in.

Remember that buried pain and hurt that I mentioned before, those insecurities shoved away in a dark corner?  Those things don’t just miraculously go away.  No matter how much you KNOW, how much you FEEL, and how much you WANT them to just dissipate, they have to be individually faced and purged, one by one, and often multiple times, until they are banished.  This is not an easy thing to do.  We bury these things away for a reason.  We don’t WANT to think about them, we don’t want to feel them.  But the faulty logic there is that until we do this, no matter how hard we try to hide them and pretend they don’t exist, they are always going to be there!

And they are going to come out whether we want them to or not.  We might not even realize it when it’s happening, but they do come out.  What we feel and what we hold inside determines how we treat ourselves and others and how we react to situations in life.  When we feel fear, guilt, self-loathing, riddled by insecurity, and any number of other nasty emotions, they manifest in the things we say and do.  The way we judge or accept, condemn or forgive, show disdain or compassion.  The way we manipulate another and bend them to our will or allow them the freedom to be themselves and love them for their uniqueness.  Everything that we say and do really has nothing to do with others but is a reflection of how we feel about ourselves and our own internal conflicts.

Now do you see why it is so important to face these things and not just keep them buried away?  It is not just a selfish endeavor.  Mahatma Gandhi once said, “Be the change you want to see in the world.”  He was right.  Change comes from within, not from without.  Only by changing ourselves, one by one, will we change the world.  It’s a simple concept but not an easy one, and not one that everyone will embrace because it a difficult road to walk.

You have to walk through fire, and you have to walk through it willingly, and endure the pain and hurt and insecurities all over again as they exit your body and soul the same way they came in.  You have to face your fears and test your limits, learn that you are beyond limits and are capable of much more than you have let yourself believe.  You have to embrace yourself fully in the heat of the flame to make your dreams come to life.  You have to have faith, and you have to trust in yourself implicitly.

Those fantasies you ignored?  Make them reality.  Those things you thought out of your grasp?  Reach out and touch them.  That path you always yearned to follow?  Take the first step in faith and trust that the rest will fall into place.  That love you carried silently within your heart?  Doubt it not, and carry it silently no more.  Let it spark the flame of your internal fire and dance in the flames so you may be reborn into the being of light and love that you truly are.  This is the only way to be free, the truth of your existence, your reason for being.  Become the Phoenix and transform yourself with love.

I have been dancing in the flames for some time now.  It hurts, but it is liberating.  I still carry fears and insecurities within myself but they are lessening every day and I will conquer them all in the end.  They are stubbornly hanging on, they do not want to let me go.  They want me to believe that I am less than I am, that I cannot do this or that, that I need them to survive, that I am wrong and what I feel is wishful thinking.  They are very persistent, and just when I think I have faced them down, they resurface and the purging begins once again.  I will not give up.  I will burn every last one of them to dust.

The majority of this year has been spent in a state of peaceful confliction, but I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that when I emerge from this fire, the seemingly impossible will not just be possible…it will be.  No struggle, no fight, no control, and no planning.  It will just BE.   I will end this with a line from someone very dear to me that I have loved since I first heard it, one that makes so much more sense to me now than it ever did before.  “Goodbye faith, goodbye sanity, it has been so long since I caressed you.  No more calm, just calamity, can you wait as long as I need to get back home?”

I’m coming home, one pile of ash at a time.  Leave a light on for me, would ya?

©  Lady Jennith 7/29/11