Soul Series: The journey into the self

In the process of becoming

the path may not always be clear

but energies must collide,

alchemy must be created.

As versions of self are

created and discarded,

this process of becoming

never meets its end.

For the universe itself often

rips itself apart

to reveal the beauty

that powerful transformation has.

So next time

when your life goes supernova,

when your emotions turn into

a massive blackhole,

know that this is what

we are meant to do.

Find comfort in the knowledge

that the cosmos are

applauding your bravery

as one of their own.

-Toni Boling

There are few things throughout your life that will be more influential than cultivating a relationship with yourself. We tend to move through our lives and settle with a comfortable version of ourselves, or maybe we retain different roles depending on our company. You may play the role of “the achiever,” or “the selfless caretaker,” or “the one who has it all together,” but do you ever take a step back and see if these roles truly fit? Do you ever question if your identity is entangled with everyone else’s perceptions of you? As we move through life, we pick up social cues and try to find our place in the world, which often means adopting roles and fitting in. It’s human instinct to avoid getting set adrift by our community so out of pure survival, we will do anything to not be outcasted. But at what point does this conformity stop being about survival, and start to become a cage?

         Like many of us growing up in western culture, my authentic self was stifled and repressed for the sake of being seen as “acceptable” in society. As a young girl, I was loud and fearless, stubborn and passionate, sensitive and creative. Instead of nurturing those qualities in a young mind that was just learning herself, the people surrounding me perpetuated the slow and insidious task of “correcting” those behaviors. This is often not a conscious process for all parties involved, but rather an instilled expectation that we all must leave behind our raw and untamed selves as we grow older and instead put on the masks for the roles we are given. So, what I learned instead was to become shy and anxious, passive and indifferent, cold and calculating. Little by little, pieces of ourselves get chipped away at to make us easier to digest for the masses, until eventually we become a perfectly constructed outer shell that can expertly hide the starved and hollow soul within.

So how did we get here? This slow deconstruction of the wild authentic self has been growing and spreading since humans moved out of small tribes and settle into larger societies—willingly or not. As humans continued this move away from the often harsh, unpredictable, and untamed wilderness—and further away from our connection to our own wildness—we started to separate ourselves from our natural instincts. What was wild was now considered uncivilized, what was untamable was now dangerous; any evidence that our roots began in this wild unpredictability was diminished to elevate ourselves above it—we were not of this world, we controlled it. And as we began to dictate nature, we extended these rigid rules to ourselves most of all, and through religion and colonialization, we set off to convert the world.

         This flawed and antiquated ideology has somehow survived into the modern era. Somehow persisted through scientific discoveries about our undeniable connection to the entire web of life, as well as the fast progression of technology that has made this knowledge globally accessible. Cracks have been growing steadily, however, and we are currently witnessing a shedding of this old-world view and a birth of a new one, and most crucially, this process begins at the personal level. Evolution and big shifts in the collective don’t happen all at once; it is often a series of small changes at the individual level that accumulate and then branches out to influence bigger changes in behavior and actions.

How you choose to begin detaching yourself from the narratives the old world taught you is up to you—there are many ways up this mountain—but you will have to begin the task of deeply excavating the self, and detoxing from generations of conditioning that denied us our authentic selves. You’ll have to pull at every string in the fabric of your mind to see what strands connect to something true and real to you, and which ones were artificially bound to your identity and now need severing. This work may seem tedious, indulgent, overwhelming, earth-shattering, and uncomfortable—and it often is—but to start rebuilding yourself on a foundation of authenticity, you must confront the soul’s growing pains first. Once uncaged, your true self begins to expand, reaching up and out in all directions, and begins pushing out anything that tries to diminish its newfound freedom. Let it.

This transformational phase requires a prolonged commitment to radical self-love and a strengthening of your wildly resilient spirit. As you unearth trapped or repressed traumas, learn to set and hold boundaries, reevaluate old and new relationships, and find what truly fulfills your purpose and passions—many will try and pull you back to conformity and past narratives. They may even try to devalue this soulful journey as nothing more than a selfish act in service of some new-age psycho-babble trend. Let them. Part of this practice includes reframing the idea of what we consider meaningful “work,” and to expand it to encompass self-growth and personal projects that enable us to embody our full potential. In large and small ways, you begin to learn to choose yourself so you can better show up in the world with all of your divine uniqueness.

         The future doesn’t have to be grim; we don’t have to continue to carry these old systems of oppression, shallow materialism, and blind loyalty to what once was. We have to finally embrace that change, evolution, adapting—it’s inevitable, and necessary. Nature is always in a constant state of flux, throughout space and time, that has always remained true. We can’t fight this momentum that is pulling us in a new direction, neither can we rush through it to get to the other side faster. To try would be to fight the forces of life itself. This new world we are entering needs soulful bravery, insatiable curiosity, inspired imagination, and a deep return to nature. We tried to conquer the world by controlling it, and ourselves, and we are witnessing the devastating result of that method. Nature can’t be controlled, only experienced—lived. If you haven’t already begun your soul-journey, it’s never too late. Uncage yourself and set your wildness free.