Desire or Fear?

I feel a lot of compassion for humans because we are all so short-sighted, especially myself.  In fact, I feel my main life task is to learn to love and trust myself unconditionally.  Through my reading life, I have discovered the eternal life of the soul, reincarnation, the human experience described as a school to grow and learn – to increase in wisdom.  When I was a little girl, I often felt as if I did not belong on Earth.  I have wandered through life in search of “home”, and only recently I realized that home is inside of me – my connection to my True Self, which you could call the divine or the immortal.   For whatever reason, as a child, I felt driven to make sense of the world.  Art and reading became my sources for understanding the worlds inside of me and outside.

In my readings, I have learned that before we are born we choose our parents, the places and circumstances of our birth and life, as well as the other people with whom we will interact and live out our days.  As I look back on my childhood, this information makes me reflect on how my childhood affected me.  My mother became increasingly controlling and angry over the years; my father was very passive.  They both were very much wrapped up in themselves and each other.  I grew up feeling worthless, unloved, and unlovable.  I wasn’t given opportunities to interact with other children outside of school. Basically, I became very shy, and my main impression of life was that it wasn’t fun, and that I should be very careful not to hurt anyone else…ever, because I was very sensitive and did not like to be hurt myself.  This childish moral decision has since impacted my life in many ways.  I made many regrettable decisions believing that others deserved more love and more compassion than myself.  It took several abusive relationships and placing my trust in compulsive liars and manipulators before I was struck with the realization that my being, my self deserved as much love and appreciation as anyone else…and that I had to be the source of that love.  I recently read that no one will ever give us love or cherish us unless we love ourselves, and the key point being that all of the love we will ever receive is currently and always present within ourselves.  Looking outward for approval and love will always meet with failure.  And so I pursue my road, working to cherish myself… My family cut me off, and when I was about 12, I realized that if I wanted to live my own life and follow my inner desires, I would have to accept that I would be banished from the home and family I grew up in. This did come to pass; my mother, father, and siblings could not love me for myself – they only wanted to suppress and control me.  It is sad, and I feel sad for them too.  They are still not able to see what they have missed out on by not being in relationship with me or my son.

My title for this post: Desire or fear? comes from the question I started asking myself as a little girl.  Do I stay with my family and remain protected and part of a community, or do I strike out on my own, follow my inner star, and be alone?

It should not be this way – one should not have to lose love and support in order to be one’s true self, but these are the circumstances of my life – apparently circumstances my soul chose for myself before I was born into this life and body that I currently inhabit.  This is connected to my post about creativity and transgression.  Every time I am drawn to create something and connect to my inner self, I feel a secret kind of guilt and pain – something that draws me away from myself. That wall is made of fear, and I have to cross over it and transgress every time.  I just recently became aware that although I have been adult and on my own for many years…since the age of 19 (I am now 45), that my fear of success and fear of wholeness is my own responsibility…and part of my journey to self love.

We all have an array of different kinds of desires, some deep, some superficial…some come from the heart, some from the ego.  I think nature builds into us the opposing forces for each important energetic tendency in ourselves so that we have to make choices.  When life gets to inert, too boring, we are moved to change. Or else change forces itself upon ourselves, changing our circumstances and moving pieces of our inner life.

From innocence through experience, we gain wisdom – which is knowledge tempered by experience.  Today, I feel compassion for my family even though they will most likely never recognize or embrace me.  And little by little, I am learning to feel compassion for myself, loving and accepting myself in spite of my solitude.