You are a bright and shining star. And like all stars, you are constellated in perfect celestial alignment with many others who share in your luminous ways. You are not alone. You were never meant to hold all that fire inside yourself without any help. We all travel in Soul Families – spheres of cosmic kinship which transcend this lifetime. Many of us are here at this time to bring forth the same ancient memory and to create in the outer world, the fertile future which we hold inside ourselves. Perhaps you can call to mind a few of these folks in your own life.
We know these people when we see them and often before we’ve ever even met, we experience a kind of instantaneous recognition that defies the rational mind. Our connections feel familiar, though they are not always easy.
These are the people we came here to work with and to walk alongside. They challenge us and they lift us up. They see us deeply and rest in a shared understanding of what it is that must be done. We may not speak regularly, or even connect more than a few times throughout our lives – but just knowing that these folks are out there gives us strength, and their way of walking in the world reflects back to us our own purpose and reason for being.
And yet despite the grandness of these connections and the immensity of the gifts that they hold, there are moments when the small self, the individual self, protests for fear of not being enough, for fear of being left behind, not standing out, not being special. But that is not the point. Because we each hold within us an equally essential piece of the puzzle and spark of the sacred. And in these moments of smallness, we must ask ourselves: How can we weave a world where we offer one another genuine support, with the knowledge that by offering that very support, we are furthering our own work in the world as well as the work we are doing collectively?
You see, recently I’ve been struggling mightily with feelings of jealousy, unworthiness, shame, and not belonging. And it has felt so painful. Maybe you know what this is like. These feelings cut me off at my roots and crippled my ability to feel close to myself, my medicine, and my mother – the Earth. These are new feelings. Scary feelings. Unfamiliar feelings. But as I have worked with them, I’ve come to wonder — as I watched the friends and colleagues I love and admire express with eloquence and ease so many things that I feel but have been unable to put words to — what if instead of turning to envy, or seeing myself as less than, I instead took their expression of these shared truths as an invitation to simply rest, trusting that the work was being done, without my having to do it? What a radical act it would be, in this capitalist society, to let go of the need to be the one to do it all. I believe our separateness is an illusion; one which is reinforced by capitalism, colonialism, patriarchy, and the isolating effects of technology.
What would it look like if we could all take turns, doing our part when we were needed and trusting the cycles of fertility and fallowness that move through each of our lives? Because we cannot be prolific and creative all of the time. That is simply not the way of the world. We each have seasons which cycle through us, of blooming and decay. Sometimes we all need to fall apart for a little bit, and that is alright. That is a part of the process. Our lives ebb and they flow. We lift each other up by making space for one another’s voices; by making space for one another’s truths.
There are days when I see beauty nowhere and others when it seeps from the very seams of this world. Days when I can scarcely piece together a sentence to save my life and still others when poetry flows from the flowers and the trees as though they’d spoken it to me aloud. There are days when it feels as though anything is possible, and not just that but that I myself am capable of anything. But there are also days when I struggle simply to stay alive, to bathe and to eat, to put one foot in front of the other. Is this also true for you at times? So how to reconcile these two disparate parts? How to make sense of a self which ebbs and flows so wildly and with such unpredictable disregard for plans made and commitments which must be honored?
There are moments when things feel so hard, I’m not sure how I’ll make it through. And then there are moments when I am simply in awe of the life that I am living, the life that I am creating, the life that I am serving. This time last year I was literally living in my truck. And now I am watching one of my greatest dreams beginning to come to fruition. And while things have become significantly more complex since that time for me, both personally and professionally, it is precisely this newly cultivated interdependence that has allowed me to thrive.
It can feel so scary to take on new responsibilities, to say yes to the big work that we all came here to do. But really, I don’t think we have much of a choice in the matter. Each of us is here to be of service to the greater good of the world. And while it can feel deeply personal at times to undertake new projects and give birth to the ideas that find their way into the world through us, most of the time it is just about making space and letting go of any sense of self-importance, then following the guidance of Spirit.
The more in touch we can become with just how little our work really has to do with us, the better it can actually become. For to hold power in the truest way, requires ultimate humility. And we are merely channels through which the timeless spark of the divine flows. Nearly everyday I struggle with feeling unequal to the task at hand. But I just keep showing up. Because at the end of the day, my work has nothing to do with me, and everything to do with serving that which is Sacred. And none of us can do it alone.
