For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to know what lies beneath what we think we know. On what are we basing the paradigms within which we choose the course of our lives?

This process of questioning, searching, poking and kicking at the foundations of my beliefs has resulted in continual, cumulative shifts in my perspective. When I was younger, I used to pendulum, shifting from one extreme to its opposite, gradually settling somewhere in the middle. As I've gotten older, most of my shifts have become more incremental, and I'd thought I understood at least the basics.

And yet....

Over the past couple of years, I broke through something. I don't even think I can identify exactly what it was that broke, because it started a cascade of epiphanies, each a brilliant facet of enlightenment that startled me with its clarity.

In wonder, I watched as the assumptions and Shoulds that I had thought made of stone proved themselves mere shadows, and the walls of my fortress thinned and became ephemeral, warm sunlight starting to filter through their increasing translucence, ghosts of fears dissipating as the too long neglected garden within began to tentatively stir itself, shy shoots peeking out from the soil, stretching, growing, spreading leaves and branches and vines and flowers, so many flowers, all shapes and sizes and colors, their fragrance sometimes light, sometimes strong and heady, all this growth filling the spaces between the remaining stones, pushing them apart, dissolving them, until I could feel that the core of my very being had changed. Where once it had been hard and rigid, easily damaged, it was now strong, flexible, self-healing.

Alive.


As am I.