When it's time to let it go!
There are times when things you were certain about and relied upon fall apart and dissolve before your eyes. What was so clear only days or weeks before turns to dust. “This isn’t the way it was meant to be” you cry out. What can you do in those moments?
It seems natural to conclude that something has gone wrong; some great cosmic mistake has happened; other people have the wrong idea about you; you’ve been forsaken or failed through no fault of your own. Yet, this breaking down of your world is a natural process.
Think of the energy of the seed which must break down to become the seedling. So, the essence of who-you-are must break down to become the who-you-are-meant-to-be. No one promised this process would be easy. “Life is pain, highness”, said the eponymous character Dread Pirate Roberts from the 1987 movie, The Princess Bride. “Anyone who says differently is selling something”.
In those moments you look for some reassurance, something to hold on to. You cling to the life you were so sure about. “In those chilly hours and minutes, of uncertainty”, writes Scottish folk singer/song writer Donovan in his 1965 song, you grasp at the past. “Ah, but I may as well try and catch the wind”.
This reassembling of your world is a sacred process. The signs are there when you’re trying to hold it all together, and equally there when everything is falling apart. Energy is exchanged in flourishing and in destruction. They’re two sides of the same coin.
So, let it go and allow the pieces to dissipate. See the dreams and fantasies you had about your identity and the life you thought you were living dissolve. Realize that you have no idea about who and what you are, about the relationships you thought you had, and about the nature of healing.
If you allow yourself to sit with the pain and bewilderment and take the time to enquire more deeply into what happened, you will notice a kind of grace at the heart of it all. A fierce energy of reconciliation and reconstruction. A call for transformation.
This is the power of the human heart which demands a different kind of decision making than logic or experience. It is sensing something deeper than analysis or emotions. To find the right path through confusion and uncertainty you need to harness the dimensions of System 3 Thinking.