Evolution

Sitting in stillness this morning. Then noticing. The play of light and shadow. How both are essential. How one part will either recede or move forward, wholly dependent on where I place my attention.  Yet each part of this lightness/darkness image requiring the other.

At a workshop this weekend I  experienced what I can only call a fundamental shift in the arrangement of pieces of self–the experience of coming together of disparate parts. A melding. Into one.  And I’m calling this evolution because it was an organic experience–  an adjustment, adaptation–natural selection.

For ever, my m.o. has revolved around “getting rid of.” Banning, removing, resisting,  purging the disparate pieces of self that seemed problematic.  This “getting rid of” model was a futile Promethean endeavor–exhausting and depleting.  So this weekend’s epiphany –that the getting rid of paradigm simply DOES NOT work for me–was both profound and a huge relief.    And the experience itself –well really words diminish it.  But put simply,  all that was required was a “welcoming” attitude. An embracing. A shifting–a making room for– a scooting over to offer ALL these pieces of SELF a place at the table.

And as a post script: One of the guests at the table is voicing doubt with this post. Wanting to be sure I clarify something–that being this: the welcoming is on-going. Never finished. Sometimes guests leave and return. This shift is only that–an opening, an awareness–and it will need be applied to almost each moment, each day, from here — to here on.

And as it happens so often,  again  the metaphor of whole cloth.  The integration of disparate parts and scraps that eventually merge into a unified, strong fabric.  Here is the continued evolution of Primordial Soup.  More kantha stitches completed on the tree curtain.  More on the way.  The addition of a few more thread bumps in the soup itself.  More on the way.