becoming

I used to think the spiritual path - the path of self-help and wisdom teachings and mystical fairs, the path of sitting across the table from a tarot reader or praying with a priest - was the path of self-discovery.

I used to think the quest that burned in the center of my heart was the quest of finding myself.

If I could discover who I was, if someone could see me and tell my purpose to me, then I could thrive.

If I knew the dimensions of my light, then I could shine it.

If I could unearth the words, then I could speak them.

Now I see that I have never been separate from my truth.

I have always been me.

My life and this winding path I walk is not about discovery so much as it is about fully becoming the person I always have been, the person I was born to be.

Sometimes I look back at a scene from my life a year ago or three months ago and I think, who’s life is this? Who is that person?

I’m in a different place now.

I am different.

But what’s different is not something about my fundamental essence that has changed, it is acceptance of who I am and movement on the path.

Sometimes I see the energy field of my body like a series of camera apertures opening and closing.

When I am wide open in the flow, I see and feel things one way, when I am closed down and sheltered, I see and feel things another way.

Neither is right or wrong.

It’s a dance.

But I can also see with brutal clarity, the times in my life when I have swallowed back what I know, when I have nodded along with things with which I did not actually agree.

I can see where I made myself small, moved with the crowd (I did this with an almost desperate, must-chew- off-my-paw-to-get-out-of-this-trap sort of fervor,) said yes when I wanted to say no, agreed to repaint myself in colors more acceptable…to whom? To what?

I can see where I chose the hermit’s path, walking alone in the forest with my lantern, because it was less painful than allowing myself to be myself in public.

Sometimes people say to me that I’ve changed.

I haven’t really.

I have simple taken off some of the veils, opened the aperture.

Sometimes people say to me that I have multiple identities.

But I am one identity with many faces and many facets, like a crystal.

This life I’m living (I envision my birth like coming onto earth in a little private spaceship, crash-landing, and struggling to find my bearings in this new world) is a process of becoming.

These two recent, autobiographical, larger paintings represent a shift for me.

In painting them, I walked through a gateway.

I felt myself walk through, I felt the rearranging and I welcomed it.

It’s private and deep and I can’t explain it, but I’m grateful for it.

This is the process of healing, of wholeness.

I will for the rest of my life, be engaged in this process of becoming who I already am.