Just like we cannot pry a seed open to gather the bloom, just like we cannot break into a cocoon and demand a butterfly…we cannot rush the soul’s growth.
No matter how hard we try, we cannot will transformation or healing. We cannot be done with the old ways or jump into the new life or force our potential to be born, until what is within us is good and ready.
Whether we like it or not, and at times we don't like it at all, our soul follows its own timeline and path. A path often slower, more difficult, more unconventional and uncertain than the ego or culture would prefer. It is human, after all, to want to rush to the end, bypass the pain, solve the problem and get on with things.
But habitually doing so leads us to shallow solutions, ones that only lead to more problems or cover over deeper issues. Habitually doing so leaves us exiled from our deepest selves and the well of potential within. It deprives the world of our gifts. Of the world's gifts, born through each one of us. Soul is, after all, not a problem to be solved or fixed, but lived step by step, wherever it might take us.
So if instead we could be patient with all that is unsolved, all that is unborn, all that is uncomfortable and conflictual in us, if we could follow the soul's lead and move awhile at her pace - the pace of our hearts and our bare feet on bare ground - we might truly bloom.
There was a time for myself, after two long and difficult years of a forced withdrawal from the world due to illness, that I began to grow impatient. I longed to return to the world and some sense of normalcy. I wanted the suffering and hardship to end. And I began to fear I was wasting my life and headed towards a bleak future.
So one night before I fell asleep, I asked for a dream. I asked if I was ready to rejoin the outside world, if this difficult period of my life might soon be over. And that night, the answer came:
I dreamt I was incubating two eggs, when suddenly a woman rushed in, snatched one and stole off. Impatient to hatch it more quickly, she broke the egg and the new life within died. Knowing I would have to better protect the remaining egg, I hid it in a thicket and covered it with leaves. But even that didn’t feel safe enough. So I took the egg delicately in my hand, closed my eyes, and with a breath of surrender, held it up to the sky. Then in a moment of grace, a majestic goose flew overhead, gently wrapped her webbed foot around the egg, and flew off.
It would be several more years until I was able to return to the world. Until the invisible workings of soul, under the cover of darkness, invisible to others and sometimes even myself, had done what needed to be done.
Yet although the soul's birth cannot be willed, it absolutely needs our help. It needs our warmth and protection, our care and attention. It needs us to listen closely to the whispers within, so we can put our hearts and hands gently on what wants to be born and help it along. We do our part, and we must. The rest, however, is out of our hands.
Because if we try to break out of the egg before our wings have fully formed, the new life, our truest selves, will never get the chance to soar. But if we can support and honor the soul’s unfolding, in whatever way it moves and however long it takes, the egg will eventually hatch, and we will take to the sky in ways never imagined.
~Leyla Aylin With Midwives of the Soul
Originally published here
Art by Autumn Skye Art
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