Becoming Aware of Our Layers

 “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
― C.G. Jung

As we grow through life we gain more and more layers. There is a richness in this and a beautiful complexity, but we can become blind to older layers that still play a role in our lives.

An old layer of mine is fear of abandonment. My parents left me with my aunt for a week when I was just six weeks old. My mother’s mother passed and she needed to take care of things far away. I always had this fear of being left and so was a bit clingy as a child. I thought I’d grown out of it, but I found, through deep spiritual work that it was still there and it was affecting my life in a myriad of ways.  I found that my people pleasing stemmed from this fear as well as my inability to get truly close to most people. Becoming aware of this layer and its subsequent layers has allowed me to find self-acceptance, a stronger core and to become more open.

Peeling back our layers to discover more about ourselves helps us to understand where any particular layer may be getting in the way of our best life. Through meditation, contemplation and other spiritual practices we can see the richness and complexity of who we are. And once we see it, we can then realize we are more than those aspects. We can realize that for all the beauty that is found in the combination of our many selves, even more beauty is contained in our ability to consciously choose who we become.

What We Do Matters

May I do good work with my hands worth remembering.

~ Normandi Ellis, Awakening Osiris

What will you leave behind after you’ve transitioned from this world? We all want to do worthy work that will live beyond us, work that matters. I wish to leave words that inspire and make people think in my wake. I want my work to matter to people.

This morning I was wondering, what does it mean when we say something matters? Perhaps it means it has been condensed into something solid, tangible, present in form. That’s what matter is right? The scientific definition is that which has mass and takes up space. We also speak of the matter at hand, the idea or situation that is to be or has been discussed.

I think it means all that and more. What is something that matters? When we use matter this way we mean something that is important to us. Why it matters is subjective. That something we create matters to someone beyond us makes us feel as though we have contributed. We feel that our existence has meaning.

The thing is, everything we do matters. We exist and therefore new ideas, things, ways of seeing, etc. exist. We turn much of what we are into form, whether it’s an idea made manifest or a thought turned into a gift or a feeling given expression. We make that which is invisible, visible. To me, matter is condensed light. We are condensed light. We are Spirit made flesh. We are matter and we do matter. Everything matters.

There is no need to worry about whether or not you will leave something behind that matters. It all does. If you approach life as if everything you do is important, which is to say that you infuse all that you do with presence and love, it will be remembered by those who experience it.

Go then and make of the world something beautiful, set up a light in the darkness.

~ Normandi Ellis, Awakening Osiris