Art by Skyler Kenny from my book "The Four Elements, We Are Earth Mother"
As we grow up we create a sense of who we are. Often we lose our true sense of self, our innocence, by protecting ourselves from different forms of harsh or painful experiences.
You can almost envision it like this. Picture yourself as a kid, running in the green grass, in the sunlight, everything is warm and beautiful and you feel so happy to just be alive. The wind in your face, bare feet in the grass. And then something happens, someone says or does something that hurts. When this happens once it is quite easy to keep going in our joy, but as we experience more and more of the painful feelings we begin to wonder if there is something wrong with us or how we can protect ourselves.
This results in us figuring out how to fit in, how to live without drawing painful attention to ourselves. So we begin to create an outer self, a self that is less vulnerable and unprotected, as our innocence feels much of the pain in those situations. Then we start to identify with this new outer self, believing that this is who we are now.
Unfortunately this outer self, false sense of self, or as the Toltec tradition calls it, the parasite, is not aligned with your deeper sense of self. This misalignment creates confusion and dissonance within. And as we grow older we now feel a bit out of touch, like we don't truly know who we are. This is so very common in our modern world. And this is also how we could create a society so cut off from our origin, our true nature.
Much of the healing journey is spent coming back Home, back home to our innocence. We unravel the layers of fear and insecurities which undermine our sense of who we are. We do so by bringing our breath into our body, by connecting deeply within and listening to the wisdom contained within. So we dive deep. Deeply into our own lives, deeply into our story, so we can find our way through the maze of trauma, hurt, and dissonance that often run our show.
My encouragement for you is to sit with the unknown, bring yourself back home and breathe deeply into every crevasse of yourself. Come back Home and find Your resting place.
In peace and Love,
Aho, Marcus
