I am on a trip where I’m being treated like cattle. No one cares how I like my eggs, my how much personal space I require, or whether 3am wake-up calls work for me.
It often feels like I'm just waiting around, only to be mobilised at a moment’s notice.
Words like prison, or army, or even boarding school bounce around in my head. I think they’re trying to break me or, more specifically, my ego.
“They” are the people that want me to realise that I am a mere speck on this Earth and anything that I do do, is simply a tiny cog in a grand machine. I don’t have a choice in which way I turn and should I choose to exercise free will, there’s a gentle pressure from the bigger, wiser cogs. If that doesn’t work, the big guns will be called in.
I remember attending a workshop by Caroline Myss once. She said the worst thing someone could call you was ordinary. Nobody wants to be ordinary. Everyone tells their kids how extra-ordinary they are. Our root chakras don’t like ordinary.
If I am a speck, a worker bee, a Divine servant no less, how can I be special? I need to be special. I need to know that I matter, that I count, that’s someone cares about me.
But when we have a true sense of self-worth, pride gives way to humility. “I don’t need to be seen anymore. I don’t need to prove anything to anyone. I can just be.”
This is a very liberating place to be.
As Confucius once said, care about what others think and you become their slave.
When you are in this place of being, you don’t even care what you think of you. It’s a place of authenticity that stands apart.
Extra-ordinary? Hardly.
But maybe it is extraordinary because so few people are actually there. Our conditioning is so strong and getting out of our own way is hard work. It’s easier to be broken, as painful as that can be.
But the breaking is only painful if you are unwilling. Willing lambs to the slaughter use devotion to become devoid of themselves. Then it seems to hurt a little less. But it does hurt - so long as you identify as human.
To operate from the soul requires patience, awareness and willingness.
And so this was my lesson.
Now it’s just a matter of practicing it every day…
