It must be quite hard for people who have not had to revisit much of their psychology, to understand those like me, who have had to deconstruct almost all their thinking and rebuild it with intentionality.
Sure, to some extent everyone does this. Each time we make a new friend or begin a new endeavor, we change, we make way for growth and expansion to accommodate the new.
We’re deeply fortunate to know SO MUCH in our time, about fluid selves and identity, but for some of us, restructure is more primary work than it is for others, spending much of each day, every day, vigorously questioning, trying on other ways of knowing, being. I seriously can’t remember a single day in the last twenty years, where I didn’t listen to a spiritual teaching, read a spiritual book, or attend a spiritual event. Along with various, often devotional, disciplines and practices. I knew from a rather young age that I wasn’t seeing clearly.
“Spirituality is pursuing the seeing of life as it really is.” —Adyashanti
This probably sounds like a good thing to those working to get into consistent meditation practices, or to remember to write in their journals, or to read more spiritual materials. And it is, but…
More than once I’ve been told by a person I was in relationship with (romantic & non) that my intensity was a barrier. I wasn’t hurt. I completely get that continually questing can seem obsessive to someone not on that kind of path. Thank Goodness those loved ones were honest rather than resentful.
Or, maybe they were just a little resentful. 🙂
It is just that there was SO MUCH for me to revisit, SO MUCH SUFFERING throughout my family history that I’d then perpetuated thoughtlessly. When you begin to see you have a choice about all that – to effect your own experience and the proliferating of those patterns and cycles – well, how not to be obsessed?
Thankfully, I can see all this as a bit over the top. The feeling of being afraid to be too far from middlemen and lifelines has mostly dissipated; I get way farther away from shore more often now. But doing so is still part of what I’ve trusted in and worked so intensely to comprehend, live, and lean on: a natural course of continual transformation.
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