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.
     

RECONCILIATION

The concept of reconciliation is part of my inner life. The dictionary has a few different definitions for reconcile, but the ones are I respond to are: to reestablish a close relationship, to resolve, to make harmonious.  
    I hear "reconciliation" as, first, an acknowledgment that there are many aspects to my being. Some of them are known to me and some are hidden from my conscious mind. Some of them are good, they fuel me, but some contain unresolved things in the past, feelings I don't want to uncover because they feel huge, able to annihilate me. There are many others; each of us carries a universe within.
     There have been times on my path that in retrospect were events of transformation, some big, others small, of coming to see things in a whole new light. These didn't necessarily happen in a blinding flash - most of them only rose to the surface after a long time of invisible wheels turning inside and after a long time of my despairing they would ever come. Some brought a new understanding of the past, some a new sense of my strengths and weakness, some an acceptance of long ago hurts and resentments, some giving me courage to face my rage and fear.
     Each of those transforming moments has felt to me like a reconciliation. I take something in, accept and digest it; I feel a new harmony inside, a resolution of what was hidden, fragmented, into a whole. I feel I'm embracing I feared or couldn't see. No longer afraid, no longer blind or in illusion, I take it in, absorb it. My whole being isn't changed but it's altered as I embrace the new and feel myself expanded. 
     Once, an image came to me, seemingly out of nowhere. I was standing on a tall cliff, looking out at the wide, wide vista in front of me. There was someone standing next to me - it was myself, younger, smaller, trying to hide her fear. I reached out and put my arm around her. It will be all right, I heard myself saying, and I drew her close, took her in. Then we stood together, my arm around her, and looked out at the beauty spread out below.
     Reconciliation...