Yeah...wow. I'm so shaken by my massive losses...over the last 5 or so years.
First, all of the things I had to leave behind when I sold my house and moved away from the city. All of my Christmas decorations -- ornaments made from my little son sitting on Santa's lap and other sentimental ornaments and angels I had collected. My collection of cement yard items -- molded planters, my birdbath, conch shells. An antique corner chair -- all kinds of things. My neighbor later told me that people were dumpster diving for my things.
I lost my father, my relationship with my mother and other family members and my dog who had been with me for 12 1/2 years...then my health and my job.
Then I lost most of the rest of my belongings as I couldn't afford the payments on the storage unit any longer. The most painful is the portrait I had commissioned of my son. Such a beautiful rendering -- I thought it would be a family heirloom.
I feel the losses, yet at the same time I keep getting the message that they are only "things." Things come and go, and the world is filled with things. The message is "you don't need those things -- they are only illusions that had become burdens. Let them go, and you will get well."
For the most part, I have let them go. But I am still working on the ego attachment to them, just as Eckhart Tolle wrote about in A New Earth. How our egos become so attached to our "stuff" that it believes we are our stuff, and our stuff is us. In this belief, we lose who we really are. I am working out making the biggest hurdle of my life, as I break the cords between myself and my material possessions...in order to discover my true "self." I think that I am frightened to know that "I am real. I have significance!" But it's true that I need only the things that I was left with. Our apartment is furnished, and supplied with everything else that we need.
My husband has also lost everything, and tries to settle with it.
Your analogy of the ocean to the lake to the river then the stream is perfect. Here we are, standing in the same stream, holding hands and smiling, yet still not fully connected with where and who we are. This will take time.
And on a brighter note, it was just before I got sick that I wrote my novel. In it, I shed many painful things that were lurking in my psyche. My mother was portrayed in it, and I thought that if she ever read it, our relationship would be damaged for good. But the opposite happened. It opened her heart to me and we have begun to blossom as mother and daughter for the first time. My relationships with my siblings are also healing.
My hubby and I have the same illness, and it was our illness that brought us together. And now we have the chance to heal together.
I am also grateful that I met you here, Ellise and that we are connected in many lovely ways. You are a part of my journey and have given me more than you know. I shall be here to hopefully witness you finding your bliss, your *self.*
