Who Are You Becoming?

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Who are you becoming in this time of confusion, uncertainty, and upheaval?

Most of us have never lived through anything like what we’re living through now. We are all experiencing grief in some form.

Maybe our grief is for the loss of a loved one, the loss of a job, or loss of income. Maybe we’re grieving a loss of overall freedom and a sense of ease. Perhaps we’re grieving the loss of who we were and how we lived in this world. Perhaps we’re feeling grief in the face of racial inequity and injustice. Many of us are feeling grief for all of these things at the same time.

Some people have decided the pandemic is over. Tired of worrying and feeling isolated, they’ve gone back to socializing and dining out. They’re disregarding orders to wear masks even though research says that wearing masks helps prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

For many others, travel, shopping, dinner gatherings, parties, and physical contact are not options. If we or our loved ones have a higher risk of becoming ill and a decreased chance of recovering from illness, it can feel as though we’re living on a little island for the indefinite future.

And, there are many, many people engulfed in fear, who are living out of fear and unable to tap into inner strength.

An intuitive friend of mine, Cyndi, says that all of us are like caterpillars in a cocoon, slowly transforming, until we’re ready to emerge as butterflies. But we don’t know what our new butterfly forms will be like.

Who are you becoming?

We are being given a time to focus on our inner selves. We can choose to keep focusing on our losses, the what ifs, and the lack of certainty. Or we can choose to surrender to what is and embrace the opportunity to ask ourselves some big questions.

Who am I in this big world? What truly sustains me?

What am I choosing: to live out of my ego mind or to live in the mystery?

What does faith mean to me? Does it mean a belief in something greater? Does it mean a belief in the qualities of courage, trust, or patience? Whatever faith means to me, do I embody a faith that gives me life?

Where am I placing my heart and focus? Where am I finding grounding right now?

We are being given time to explore these deep existential questions. We are being invited to think about what gives us strength and meaning.

Here is what I know: we are a spirit in a body for a short time and then we go on. The many spirits of hospice patients who came back to see me and thank me, after their bodies had died proved to me that life is eternal. Death is not an end. Life is change. And we do live in impermance.

I also know that peace is found in the present moment. Awakening happens when we live in the present. In this moment, everything drops away. Our busy, chaotic minds, which like to focus on the past or the future, stop thinking about what ifs. We are alive as we feel our breath expand and recede in our body and as we feel our heart beat.

Just maybe, when we come into this moment, we get a glimpse of something more. That flicker of light and shadow on the sunlit wall in the family room, or the sound of trees swaying in the backyard, pulls us out of the ordinary into a feeling of otherness, a sense of mystery, an inkling that there is so much more beyond what we can see.

And, just maybe, in this moment, we find rest. An ease surfaces, and it is enough. An inner peace arises, we open, and the world expands.

In this moment, wisdom and inner guidance are available to us. Now, here, in the present moment, it is time to hold the question:

Who are you becoming?