Independence

Leaning into My Theme

Photo by Darius Bashar on Unsplash

Deeper. Ever deeper into my own heart. Ever deeper into trusting myself–which is the same thing as to trust God, for God speaks through messages of desire–messages of inspiration and delight.

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love,” Rumi writes. “It will not lead you astray.”

In order to do that, I must be attentive, and I must  surrender  in a new way. It is a way I’m still learning, at least it has felt that way. Not surrendered to the easiest way, “the path of least resistance” as it were. Not surrendered to smallness or fear, nor to  “not rocking the boat” or to being well behaved, but instead to the strange pull of what I really love. Now I must surrender to something that speaks from within.

I was noticing in mediation this morning that perhaps this has been a theme for my entire life. 

I am told by my mother that when she asked my father, before I was born, about the most important thing to teach their awaited child, my father said, “independence”. 

Yet my childhood seemed to go an entirely different direction. I was taught I had no authority, especially over my own body. No rights in that regard and no consideration. Adults could spank or slap or touch me as they chose. In that way, I was taught obedience. I was taught deference and submission. I was taught not to argue. The net result being that I learned that, in order to stay safe, I needed to understand that “other people” were more important than I was and to try to stay within accepted boundaries.

This is, of course, the opposite of independence. 

But I have been learning to open up to a wider world–a more kind and benevolent world. I have been learning to love and to honor myself–to treat myself with respect. I am learning to address and express my feelings rather than to try to escape from them or push them back into the darkness. I am learning to open my heart to accept and even create meaning from my past–things others have done and things I have done, too. And I am learning that forgiveness grows in that fertile ground.

This is the true journey to self-trust and self-reliance, “independence” if you will. At times it feels like there is still a long way to go. Still, I am not trapped where I once was.

“What do I really want?” can be a confronting question to ask, because it can involve change, hard decisions, tough consequences. That requires a powerful lot of self-love. And I am learning to lean into my theme.

What is your theme? What seems to come up for you to wrestle with over and over again?