A Radical Act of Reclamation; Giving yourself to the Unknown as an Expression of Love and Faith.
Good Morning Friends,
The Unknown is an incredibly potent place of radical transformation and revelation of true soul purpose. To speak directly to the point, it is the only place that absolute alchemy can happen.
When a person holds onto an old known situation out of fear, the new, juicy, soul-delicious life cannot arise, because there is waaaaay too much old conditioned crud in the way.
This truth is demonstrated repeatedly in nature. All life eventually grows old and dies. Nature does not shy away from this principle. Trees die. Crows die. Fish die. This year’s vegetables die. Bodies die.
This death is necessary for new growth. And, not only is death necessary; there must be a period of decomposition. All the old chemical bonds and intertwined relationships of the old must mellow into a fecund depth of dissolution.
The old must completely break down so as to become unrecognizable. The dark rich plowed soil of late autumn looks nothing like a vibrant green crop in full bloom in the hot haze of summer. The dense cake-thick organic matter of the forest floor bears no resemblance to a shagbark hickory leaning tall and sinewed into the night.
Why would this not be so for us? We are of this world. These laws apply to us.
Yes, there is death at the end of a lifetime, but there is mirrored a cyclic pattern of death and growth within a life. There are times of tremendous outer growth, and subsequent times of death and decomposition.
There are times to go to school, build a family, build a business, and grow a garden. There are times for great energy and health.
There are equally times to leave a graduate program that is not right for you, break apart a family with divorce, leave a job; a time to plow everything back into the earth.
There is equally a time to have no idea what you are to do next, a time to decompose the old. A time to lean back into the earth and allow an ancient wisdom to work its alchemy in the fecund detritus of your life.
This is a sacred process, one often vilified by our culture. But hear me; it is sacred to spend time Not Knowing how to navigate raising children alone, or what passion you will put yourself toward in your work, it is sacred work to allow yourself to Not Know who you will be or how you will operate in the world after this enormous transformation is complete.
Culturally we are immature. We revere the stage of outer growth and visible acquisition of material. We laud it, we worship it. We call people who are in the midst of this phase ‘successful’, and ‘doing well’. And it is right and good that people go through this phase at times.
Heaven forbid it comes time for something to die in life; a career, a stage of adulthood, a relationship, a persona. And then, even worse, the decomposition stage arrives. We are terrified of these places. Our patriarchal culture so worships the youth and growth phase that we turn our backs completely on senescence, death, and decomposition.
This is purely a lack of wisdom, and as a cultural phenomena it is no one person’s fault. We fall into it innocently, having been brought up in a world where the focus is on gaining this title, and buying this property, and building this business, and growing these children.
Where do you hear the sacred call to Not-Know?
