For the last three years, I have been wanting to shine more.
The paradox is that the more I am stepping up to shine and be competent and share my unique gifts, the more I am also being called to be more humble, more human, and more real. The more I am willing to own my uniqueness and let the light of the spark shine through me, the more humility and authenticity is emerging.
I have been learning how to hold both of these – the shininess and the humility.
A couple of years ago, when my local Loving Being a Mother group had been running for about nine months, there was an emerging sense that the group had evolved to the point that I would now come in as a participant as well as facilitator and let something be co-created between us.
I really enjoyed playing with being both a part of the group – having my own learning edges, being transparent, willing to have support and to be seen – as well as also standing in competence and being willing to let knowledge and skills flow through me to help others. I also enjoyed the shifting balance that gave space for the other women to step into offering their skills and knowledge and letting information flow through them too.
This is really relevant to being a parent.
Playing with knowing what we know, whilst also being willing to be authentic, real, and open to learning and receiving from our children. Standing in our competence and unique gifts, as well as our not-knowing and equality.
In a developmental sense, how we start as parents of a newborn, and as our child becomes a toddler, a child, a tween, a teen, and a young adult, we gradually change our role and our input to take account of their developing abilities and capacities.
We holding the paradox that our aim is to give them the secure attachment, love, support and encouragement so that they can eventually go out into the world and give their own unique gifts and live their own unique lives. The context is that all that we give them, we give them so that they no longer need them from us, because they have internalized what they need.
It seems to me that this is also what it is to be a facilitator of others. If we do what we are designed to do, there comes a time where the other no longer needs us any more, and either the relationship changes or there is simply a moving on.
I’m remembering the ‘Egg Diagram’ in Psychosynthesis. As we open to the higher unconscious, which includes creative inspiration and our higher potentialities, so we also open to our lower unconscious, including repressed feelings and painful experiences. And vice versa; when we are willing to feel a long-hidden painful feeling from the lower unconscious, so are we more available to insight, inspiration and joy from the higher unconscious.
As we continue to develop through life, we become more and more connected to all aspects of ourselves – the light and the darkness – joys and pains, and thus we become more rounded, more real, more available for true connection and intimacy with ourselves, with others, and with Life.
So, I am celebrating the lightness and the dark; competence and not-knowing; standing up and being seen in our gifts and our humility. Co-creating with others in new ways whilst including all of these.
How about you?