Lift
Off
“It is
perhaps the oldest of inner laws, as inescapable as gravity. There is
no chance of lifting into any space larger than yourself without
revealing the parts you hold closest to your chest.”
Mark Nepo
(The Book of Awakening)
Most of us, when we meet
people, like to put our best foot forward. We smile, shake hands and
make eye contact. In professional schools, we are taught how to shake
hands by laying our second hand on top of the other person's hand to
communicate friendliness, warmth. We are funny, ritualistic people
who try to cover our short-comings behind a veil of civility. In
social situations, that's a good thing. Civility comes from the same
root-word as civilization. We would not have achieved civilization
without some rules of civility.
However, as Mark Nepo
points out, we cannot spread our wings and lift off without revealing
much more of ourselves than we're normally comfortable doing. To
forge relationships beyond the superficial rituals, we must allow
others to know who we are deeper down. There is a time and place for
this. There are boundary areas in which self-revelation is not
appropriate; in the business arena for one, and in public spaces with
relative strangers is another. But in our private moments, with
people we call friends, or want to call friends, we must show more
than just our sunny side, our camera-ready smile.
To be self-revealing, we
must first know ourselves very well—and quite honestly, that is
harder than it seems it should be. Many of us recognize our
strengths, acknowledge our weaknesses, but there's an entire spectrum
of characteristics that we refuse to see—our dark side, our shadow,
the parts of us that we reject automatically as being “not me.”
When we say, “I would never do that!” we are revealing a blind
spot. When we apply labels to others—liar, creep, slut—we are
showing the soft underbelly of our own shadow. The tags we hang on
others come straight out of our own psyches.
Likewise, when we idolize
others, when we put them on a pedestal as being greater than anyone
else, one of a kind, a shining example of humanity, we are showing
what lies unknown within us. Some of us have just as hard a time
seeing our light as we do our darkness. In fact, we're shocked when
someone else points it out.
We all want real,
authentic, soul-connected relationships. We can have those, but they
have to begin with ourselves. Getting acquainted with all of who
lives within us is key to opening our wings and lifting off.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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