“When we enter a forest phase in our lives we enter a period of wandering and a time of potential soul growth. Here it is possible to find what we have cut off from, to "remember" a once vital aspect of ourselves. We may uncover a wellspring of creativity that has been hidden for decades.” ~ Jean Shinoda Bolen
To find ourselves, we must lose ourselves over and over again.
Time and again we lose ourselves. We’re out there somewhere, wandering around, in search once more for that feeling of being home in ourselves. Of knowing who and what we are, and that imperishable feeling of safety which can only be felt deep inside our belly and heart.
We have to come back home to ourselves many times; some more so than others if our core wounds have forged a splintered psyche and sense of self.
Then we have to work hard and remember who we really are. But the truth of ourselves; not the falsities, defences, or projected ideas of others, from long ago and our recent present.
This is especially so when we are very low, ill, stressed or suffering, as these are the times when we feel most lost at sea, untethered and without connection to what really matters most to us.
We have to keep remembering ourselves home.
One very important way to do this when we are really struggling to recall who we are; when life has been challenging and our spirit has shrunk out of fear and gone back into hiding, is to remember all the times in our past when we have overcome incredible adversity, trauma and suffering.
To tell ourselves our own story of just how we came through that, astonishing our present sorrowful-self in the process, with tales of our endurance, our inner strength, our courage, tenacity, kindness, compassion and many other innate qualities and gifts.
We must write a list of all the times we’ve overcome; times of such resilience that we shocked ourselves as well as others. And remind ourselves of just how much we have achieved over the years and decades. And how utterly astonishing it is, given our start in life and all we’ve been through, that we are still here and have survived it all.
It’s so easy to forget just how indomitable we truly are, especially if we had the shakiest of starts in life and were left unsupported and lacking in guidance and encouragement to become our true-selves.
Yet we did survive. We came through it all. And not only that, but we astounded the world with our true capabilities once we had rediscovered them. We have already shone our light into dark corners of both the self and lit the way for other lost, wandering souls along the path.
And how our 'over-coming' meant not only our own true becoming, but also enabled us to guide and support others with similar wounds and needs.
However, when we’ve been lost and seemingly lost all connection with the truth of ourselves, then let me tell you a secret: While we may indeed feel lost, actually we’ve just taken a detour.
For some unfathomable reason, as far as the mind and ego-personality is concerned, our soul need to take us the long way round and to lose sight ourselves once more, so that as we slowly return we gather up all the broken shards of our soul along the way.
And, like creating a beautiful mosaic of multi-coloured unique tiles, we start to reclaim our essence and lay them down in a new yet astonishingly beautiful display, with colours and patterns we never knew we possessed.
We had to go in search of new fragments of ourselves so that we can now build a bigger, more complex self, gleaned from all the hard-won treasure we found out in the deserts, forests and wilderness of our lives.
© Angela Dunning
Artwork: 'The Forest Within' by Duy Huynh.