On embracing the mystery 🌀

When you're feeling stuck in your life or your healing journey, when you have no idea what to do next, when everything feels like it's turning upside-down – you may simply need to let go and embrace the mystery.

I say simply, but of course it isn't so simple, is it? 

It is easy to speak of being every-evolving, of trusting the timing of your life, when that is taking you down a predictable path. When you're on an up-curve. In a good phase. When transformation comes slowly, bit by bit. 

But when that wave of ever-changing sweeps you up and spits you out unrecognizable? That tests your faith. When you’re raw and naked and shivering, belly down, encased in the fertile goo of the cocoon? You might be temped to call out to goddess, god, spirit, chaos, moon — anyone. 

When you look in the mirror and simultaneously don’t recognize yourself, and see your spirit in your eyes even more clearly than ever before? That is when you learn what it truly means to be ever-evolving. To be a cyclical being. It is an act of trust – and on the other side of that trust, new life. 

As Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes, "Sometimes a woman is afraid to be without security or without certainty, for even a short time. She has more excuses than dogs have hairs. She must just simply dive in and stand not knowing what will happen next. It is the only thing which will retrieve her intuitive nature."

Sometimes when things feel so out-of-control that all we want to do is hang on for dear life – that is precisely when we most need to let go. To take a deep breath and let what is ready to be released, release – whether that is a relationship, a life path, an identity, a job, a pattern, a goal, a dream that no longer fits like a glove, whatever it may be.

To grow new skin you must burn all remnants of your old self and bury the ashes, no trace of being able to go back to exactly how it was before. To be ever-evolving, you must be willing to embrace the unknown. You simply must.

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This is an excerpt from Notes from the Underworld, my bi-weekly letters on cyclical wellness for your body, spirit, heart & shadow.

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