There’s this moment when an orchestra is tuning up when everything sounds… discordant. Like a cacophony of voices trying to find a common tongue, seeking that moment where all of the whisperings and wonderings coalesce into a moment of pure harmony. A true note, reaching out through the universe, finding its voice in the wilderness.
Trying to find out who it really is.
In like manner, we are the sum of all the parts of all the different voices inside of us. The good, that seeks to express itself in kindness and compassion. The darker sides, that mostly seek to protect us, but can sometimes choose expressions that are not in congruency with our better nature. The closer the two sides of our nature are, the more congruent we become.
And congruency is the secret to becoming whole.
I have found in my lifetime that times of struggle can be most educational regarding the real nature of the difference in the two sides of me. When things are going well, I find it easy to experience peace and compassion, and desire to share them as far and as wide as my abilities will allow. This can be something as simple as letting someone cut in front of me on the freeway, or finding it easier to have kind feelings for a patient who recently took money that was owed to me.
When I feel like things are going my way, it’s easy to be the person I try to always aspire to.
Yet when things are going ‘less well’, I find myself less disposed to be generous and kind. The parts of me that are not yet aligned with all that I wish to become are able to find their way through, and I find myself more focused on me, and less on others. Kindness is harder to manifest, and the subtle whisperings of the darker parts of my soul seek an audience with my awareness, trying to convince me that I might find peace through an employment of my abilities in less enlightened ways.
It has been many years since I have listened to those voices, and yet their presence still bothers me.
Because I would honestly like to be the person who hears nothing but kindness and compassion from within me, no matter the situation or the circumstance. There are times I wish that I could sit down in person with the parts of me that fear, and teach them the truths that I so desire them to listen to.
So that I might reconcile that which I feel to that who I would like to be. I think many of us who are on this path of self awareness struggle with living up to our aspirations.
One of my favorite characters in all of literature is a witch by the name of Granny Weatherwax. An old woman, toughened by a hard life lived trying to balance who she was with who she was trying to be. In one of her wonderful monologues, she states the following “The trouble is, you see, that if you do know Right from Wrong, you just can’t choose Wrong. You just can’t do it and live”.
Sometimes, knowing right can be a blessing but also a curse.
Yet in doing the right things, we are slowly, glacially, giving comfort and healing to those parts of us deep down that desire to forget all that we know, and just act only for ourselves. Oh we may deceive ourselves for a little while, saying it’s the right thing to do, or it’s what somebody really deserved, but in the end, we know the difference between that which we do because it’s right, and that which we do because it makes us feel good.
Sometimes the two are combined, but if we allow what feels good to be more important than that which is right, we start our feet on a path that will eventually lead us to another of Granny Weatherwax’s quotes, about how sin is really when we start to treat people like objects.
In my experience, all real evil begins that way.
So day after day, I try to be the very best person that I can imagine, and every day, I fail in some way or another. Thankfully these are very rarely bad, but every moment when I could have been better is just a way of seeing the parts of my soul that still require some healing.
Because once we are truly healed on the inside, there is very little outside that can do us much harm.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings