Have you ever become aware of a dynamic in yourself, your life and/or your body that is so core to your life experience that is related to everything about you and that at the same time, it is not you, not the real, essential, core YOU?
This is my relationship and experience to the split that I have experienced on every level of my being, from the body to the soul level.
Physically, I have a split in the "recti abdominus" muscle of my abdomen, as the result of being pregnant with 4 babies, who became increasingly larger with each pregnancy, from 6 pounds 2 ounces up to 10 pounds 9 ounces.
Emotionally, I have split from my Inner Child, that part of me that expresses my instincts as well as my fears, and is intimately connected to my body. I continually try to move forward without her, and of course, ultimately, get nowhere.
Mentally, I have split between my heart and my mind, my feelings and my intellect. I can feel what I love and desire only to talk myself out of it because it doesn't fit the parameters of what is right, or how it should be.
On a soul level, I have felt split from my Source, the deep spiritual place within each of us. I can intellectually know it is there, but I haven't been intrinsically connected to this inner place.
Some of this almost sounds cliche-ish, and superficial. Yet my experience of the split affects me on every level of my being in every moment of my life.
Where do I even begin?
With where I am right now, writing this blog. My intention is to write my story and share my experience of Healing the Split - Walking Home to Wholeness. Truthfully, it is more for me than anyone else, but at the same time, if this benefits anyone else, or serves as a catalyst for your own healing into wholeness, then it will have more than served its purpose.
Somehow, I feel as though "healing the split" is my soul's mission in this life, and I am just getting that right now at 51 years old. I guess you could say, I am "owning" my specific purpose for being here on Earth in this body. I have been circling around it, hovering you might say, in one way or another, for 20 years.
Back in early 1990, I experienced "the split" in my body on the physical level when I was about 6 months pregnant with my tiny first baby. It didn't take much for the split to occur. I can still remember the night that I turned over in bed and felt this searing pain down the middle of my belly, like I was being ripped open from the inside out. I knew immediately that the baby was okay, and that it was my body experiencing something unexpected and very painful. I learned to wrap my arms around my belly, like a sling, whenever I turned over to hold the muscles together. I learned very quickly to compensate by using other muscles to do what I had used these recti muscles for. If I didn't, I would experience the searing pain of the tear again.
So for all of these years, of being a mother, raising my 4 children - the youngest is 8 years old and the oldest is of course, 20 years old, I have "dealt with" the split by compensating and using more external muscles of my hips and legs, not doing certain kinds of exercise like yoga and Pilates, because when I did, I would feel weak and incompetent. Instead of practicing them to become stronger and cohere the muscles, it was as though there was such an essential weakness in my core muscles that I have chosen to just avoid. Much simpler and less messy (which of course translates to less emotional.)
As I write this, I am remembering a little ritual I did midway through the summer of 1989 with 2 of my dearest friends, Thia and Jasmine. I did not know that I was physically pregnant at the time, but I felt "pregnant" with the possibilities for myself. I even wore a dress for the ritual that was flow-y and loose like a maternity dress. Mostly what I remember is that in this ritual, with my friends as my witness, I committed on a very deep level to my Self and to healing the shame that separated me from her - to "heal the split." This ritual felt at the time like a convergence of lifetimes and healings and separations, and very important and necessary for me to engage in. I was making a soul commitment. I knew that something important had transpired with the promises and commitments that I had made and ritualized. I had stepped into something profound for myself.
And then I found out that I was pregnant. And all of my focus and energies went into this divine yet unexpected process and curve in my life's journey.
And I forgot about the ritual and the commitments I made. Becoming a mother became my sole focus.
Here I am 20 years later, and what I now realize that I have been living out of the commitments I made that day to "heal the split" even when I have forgotten. No matter. It is my mission and my purpose, both when I remember and when I forget. I committed to something bigger and greater than myself during that ritual - it almost feels like when we make marriage vows - and those commitments and promises create the container from which we live and create our life and ourselves.
The container is bigger than the split. The container holds the split. The split is actually an illusion. It doesn't really exist. And yet it does. But it doesn't. Such is the nature of duality...and unity. I am actually the container, but I have lived my day-to-day life from the belief that "I am the split." That is the split right there in action. This is getting very esoteric, and I feel like I am so close to the pulse of a deep spiritual truth that is Truth for all of humanity, all of the Universe. I can almost touch it. I can feel the paradox of that there truly is no split, and yet the split is all there is. It is here manifested in my belly and in my life. Carolyn Myss says that you know that Spirit is present when paradox is present. Thank you for this paradox.
I take a deep breath back into my humanness and invite you to join me on this journey of coming home to our wholeness. It will be intensely and vulnerably personal. It will be unpolished. It will be real and authentic. It will be healing, although there is nothing to heal. It will be a journey, a sacred pilgrimage, although we are all already home and there is no journey. Such is the mystery of the paradox. I welcome the opportunity to walk beside you and for each of us, all of us, to come home to our wholeness.
Suseya!
Sahara
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