First the quote.
From The Reluctant Fundamentalist. I read it in less than 24 hours. Couldn't put it down. Friends who read and recommend good books are a gift from on high. (Truthfully, friends are a gift. That they read is a bonus!)
"Such journeys have convinced me
that it is not always possible
to restore one's boundaries
after they have been
blurred and made permeable by a relationship;
try as we might,
we cannot reconstitute ourselves
as the autonomous beings
we previously imagined ourselves to be."
Then the question.
From the cover of a book simply titled, The Dance.
Written by someone simply named Oriah Mountain Dreamer.
(I love her name!)
"What if the question is not
'Why am i so infrequently the person i really want to be?'
but
'why do i so infrequently want to be the person i really am?'"
Here's to blurred and permeable boundaries,
reading friends - and friends who read me,
releasing the autonomous beings we imagined ourselves to be,
and embracing the beings that we are!
4 comments:
excellent nuggets for consideration, for sure.
i've been listening to wayne dyer's The Power of Intention these past few days - and am *really* trying to turn around my automatic thinking. from a perspective of lack or want to a *constant* countenance of gratefulness and abundance. from wanting to be something/somewhere else to acting "as if" i'm already there.
what a challenge!
i agree with lisa...what a challenge indeed. i read The Dance many years ago my freshman year of college. the quote brought a smile to my face.
i believe that the trouble with self-acceptance is that many of us don't know who we are instead. i believe that we are only our true selves in the identity that God has extended us which is problematic since this world is hell bent on finding it outside of him.
Thanks, Lisa and JMGB, for your comments. Learning contentment with who I am and what I have is the biggest and perhaps most important challenge of my life. For if I can learn to be content with what I have and who I am right now, then coming to a clear understand of who God wants me to be will be easier.
I will recognize that I don't have to clean myself up or fix things within me first or wonder and worry about what anyone else thinks of me or wants me to be. I am who I am. Messy and lonely and scared and strong and beautiful and so much more. AND I am being transformed into my truest self. At the same time.
What a challenge, indeed. But what else do I have to do but work through the stuff of my life?
what i think is beautiful about acceptance of the mess of ourselves is that as we do become transformed into our true selves, it encourages and liberates those around us to find self-acceptance as well! which is what your journey is doing for me...
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