Separation hurts. I don’t like it. I think it would be SO cool to be whole and to live in wholeness, oneness. You might say I aspire to that great and lofty goal. Besides, it sounds pretty amazing to say, “I AM WHOLE.” Especially coming from a background in which one is expected to earn their way in the world – honoring the struggle. It’s what I’ve come to believe in. And yet, now I question, “Is it true?” Hmmm… I wonder…
What I believe in, I defend. When my belief in being separate is challenged, I defend it by imagining “me” separate from “not me.”
I don’t see my behavior as defensive. Rather, I view what I do as being proactive towards self-preservation and my only means of saving myself from disappearing completely. To me, the sacrifice of “me” was in the becoming “not me.” I felt compelled to separate self from oblivion.
It has taken a huge chunk of my lifeforce to defend my need to be separate AND one. I’ve had to constantly reinforce my will to define and project “me” as separate from all I perceived as “not me.” I’ve waged a personal war against sacrifice and for wholeness – all the while protecting myself against becoming separate. It’s absurd, of course, because fighting validates separation! Think about it…
Sacrifice = Giving of Self to Separation
The stress of trying to resolve my inner conflict concerning achieving wholeness through separateness was overwhelming. I had to resolve my conflicts around opposites existing together simultaneously. I felt compelled to prove wholeness through rightness (vs wrongness), which is, itself a conflict. Think about it…
Long ago, I adopted the concept that I could be whole through association – me in the context of something greater than me – more “whole”. That strategy gave me many instances of a temporary sense of wholeness. Temporary is still… well, temporary. To overcome the temporariness of my situation, I figured if I could engage my strategy often enough and with enough intensity, I could make myself worthy of wholeness – and thereby earn wholeness as my full-time condition. Within my strategy to achieve wholeness through association, I tend to look at needs as my associations. These needs reveal themselves in my associations as:
- my need to be one among others with whom I can compare my wholeness.
- my use my imagination and behaviors to prove I am special and whole.
- special-ness that requires sacrifice of wholeness to a reality
- my reality in which I act out as me vs not me.
- I need to be
- special AND acceptable, to fit in and yet be separate, alone and together… sometimes…
Wholeness then, became something achievable through association. The absurdity is that I am ALREADY WHOLE – an impossible goal I cannot achieve because the “goal” is already achieved!
<laughing at this point>
Egad! I believe I need wholeness!
Referring to my previous paragraph, what I believe in, I defend. Oh, damn! There I go again!
Let’s be clear about needs – they do not make me incomplete or less than whole. Needing air does not make me less than who I am. Needs are simply aspects of wholeness just like any other aspects. In wholeness, I am not separate – I am merely an aspect of the whole AND the whole that includes me.
Needs do not run the show of my life – they merely represent my desire for experience in specific ways. Although needs appear to lock me in to a certain way of experiencing, they do not. I can change the limiting connotation associated with needs – in an instant of questioning and choice.
Perhaps forgiveness is awareness and acceptance of one or more aspects as aspects within wholeness. Perhaps I can forgive myself…
Love = Giving of Self to Wholeness
Perhaps the last sacrifice I make is to embrace all that I thought I needed to sacrifice to be me.
