RECONCILIATION, AGAIN

I keep coming back to how resonant the concept of "reconciliation" is for me. Bringing the many aspects of my being into balance. Understanding the past and bringing it into the present. Making the way I was and the way I am now harmonious, unified. When I think about how much has changed in me, what I used to be like, I don't think I've shed or left anything behind. My voyage hasn't been about dropping things by the wayside. It been about embracing all that used to be, and in that embrace making the past, all of it, an organic part of the present.  There's no disjunction. My old ideas, the ones that caused me suffering and gave rise to fear - their remnants are at the heart of who I am now. 
     Evolution is the model, an imperceptible transformation in which I can't point to a clear line between the many steps of change. I can see a moment when things are different but I can't say precisely when that difference occurred, like inhaling and exhaling and not being able to isolate the moment when one turns into the other.
    There have been many times in the past when insight has given me a new view of my past. Often, I felt ashamed of all I hadn't known, how wrong I had been about myself, embarrassed by things I said and did. Instinctively, I wanted to run from that vision of the past. But somehow I learned that the desire to run would only continue the cycle of denial and self-loating. Freedom would only come when I looked clearly with my new vision and completely embraced who I had been. Compassion was the bridge between the old and the new. Compassion was the way to reconciliation. 
     I can try to explain what I mean but words don't really get at the power "reconciliation" has for me. It sets off many images, the kind we all have, so deep and pervasive we hardly know how to describe them. Mine are grounded in time measured in slow transformations - the viscous liquid in a lava lamp moving in slow suspension, the subtle shifts of light on the color spectrum, the unfolding of a seedling in stop motion. And there's also the image of putting my arms around my younger self, taking her into me and in that taking feel myself expand. 
     Slow time. Continuous time. A more harmonious self, a wiser self, struggling to be born.