This keeps coming into focus:
As a kid, I had memories of how it was before this incarnation – all as a presence with infinite love and wisdom, an infinite sense of being home, timelessness. What’s closest in the physical world is perhaps an ocean – in this case of awakeness, love, presence, wisdom, beyond and including the impersonal and personal – and of myself and any other more personal presences as part of this ocean. Before this incarnation, there was a council of sorts and a knowing of all of us that it was time for me to incarnate again. It was good for me (especially the first half of my life?) and good for others and humanity (especially the last half of my life?). There was a match between what I – as a soul – could learn and contribute, and what humanity as a whole would be learning and shifting into in this phase of our history. At some point, resistance set it, pretending I didn’t want it and didn’t chose it, pretending I was a victim, had lost something of infinite value, that God had chosen it for me, that it was a terrible tragedy to incarnate (not so much because this life isn’t enjoyable and interesting, but because of what was lost).
So there was a knowing that it was all right, and a wanting of this incarnation. A pretending it was a terrible tragedy. And quite a split between the two.
Later on in my life, I see some of these themes play themselves out, especially not fully wanting to be here (with my whole being) and repeated stories of loss of what’s most valuable to me, especially people, places and opportunities.
I also see how I tend to make idealized images of the past, as I did very early in life with my images of how it was before incarnation. Compare them with the present. And get caught up in the suffering created that way.
And I see how I – for a while – imagined that what was then isn’t here now. By holding onto an idealized image of the past, comparing it with an image of the present, and telling myself I lost something of infinite value, mind distracted itself from noticing it here, noticing it didn’t go anywhere.
Right now, I am most drawn to letting the (soft, gentle, loving, infinitely wise) light of Christ shine on this, the wound, the part of me pretending I didn’t want this incarnation, pretending I lost something of infinite value. And in this, there is a very quiet, soft, wordless loving inquiry, or sometimes just a whisper.
Is it true? What’s more true? How is it to take it in? Feel it? Stay with it?
Note 1: As I get to know the dynamics around not wanting to be here – the wounds, beliefs, fears, and as I see it comes from love, and find love for it, there is a shift. There is a natural alignment with the wish and desire to fully be here, with all of my being. Realizing the nature of this illusion – how it’s put together, how it functions, it’s innocence, it’s love – invites in a natural shift.
Note 2: I had a deep and rich soul connection with two or three female friends in my early twenties, and always considered our friendship and soul connection clearly more important than how our relationship looked in the world (friends, intimate relationship etc.). That wasn’t the case for two of them, it seems. One broke all connection after she got a boyfriend, and the other broke connection recently after I came back to Norway because it was “too difficult”. One of the painful things for me here is the discrepancy between my idealized image of my friends, and their actions which didn’t fit this image. Being open to the possibility that they lived more from their personality (fears, hope, pain) than their soul in these situations brings in a healthy disillusionment for me, and it helps release my pain around this situation. I saw them as souls and how it would look if that soul was fully lived in this human life, and overlooked – or didn’t take in – that there is also a personality there, and sometimes we all live and act from that personality that this human self has wounds and operates from beliefs and fears, and sometimes we all live and act from – and give precedence to – those wounds, fears and beliefs.