Life from the Inside Out

I have spent much of my life trying to fill a void I felt I had inside of me. I was like the person who cannot stop eating at the buffet because they are afraid that as soon as they walk away from the serving dishes, they will feel hungry again. The commodities I felt most severely lacking in my soul were love and esteem.

We hear the Golden Rule tell us: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. So I spent my life giving others the love and encouragement that I wanted, expecting that I would feel it return to me in equal measure. I was once told that I had a deep well of love to give, and I gave it generously under the false notion that the well was replenished from external sources. I think my subconscious believed that I had to send out goodness to earn the right to be filled up with goodness.

There also seemed to be a theme running through my thoughts that I had to purge myself of the garbage that got in the way of the life force I so desperately wanted to fill me. It was my job to constantly clean out the muck, and to vigilantly guard against additional trash from dropping into my well. I had to keep a clean passageway so that the love I was craving could get in and fill me up. I had to empty myself of all the ugly thoughts and feelings to create space for goodness to come in.

The success of this plan was measured by how happy those around me were with me. Their approval was the goodness that came in and filled me up. If they thanked me, then I had performed well and the goodness circle was complete. If they did not thank me, then I felt an empty hole where I had given love, without receiving replenishment.

As I write this with hindsight, the pitfalls of this perspective are obvious to me now. No wonder I felt empty most of the time. Can anyone else breathe for me? Yes, the air around us is what flows into our nostrils, but the capacity to use that air, the expanding and contracting of our lungs, the extracting life from the hydrogen and oxygen that make up the air…this comes from within. As I breathe, I feel a mysterious union with the natural and the supernatural. When I inhale, I sense the life of God fill my being, and as I exhale, goodness is being dispersed into my atmosphere.

I heard so many things going to Sunday school that now have a richer meaning to me. I heard that God made us in His image and breathed life into us. Wow! I am like Him and the breath of His life is the breath of my life. I heard that God is good and God is love, and nothing can separate us from His love. So I am entwined and enmeshed in His goodness and His love, since His essence is my essence. I heard that He has given me everything I needed to live in goodness, so I am not an empty well needing to be filled because all I need is already present.

I have become aware of clutter that has accumulated in my soul, hindering the free movement of the breath of life through me. Some of that clutter was my perception that what I needed came from the outside. I now see that the love and esteem, along with wisdom and truth and strength to live emanate from the core of my being where God and I breathe together. Jesus was my example of perfect communion with the life force of God. Of course, He had no garbage obstructing His connection to God. So I have embarked on a journey to access a greater measure of the goodness within me. I am observing the obstructions along the pathways of life that flow from within me, holding on to what is real and dismantling what is imagined. This is what I call living life from the inside out.

The Cave

Last year, my writing disappeared into the deep cave that is the dark night of the soul. But today I was inspired to write as I was picturing a scene I’ve seen in numerous movies in which the characters fall into an underground cave. They suffer several gashes and bruises along their fall down some mysterious crevice, but once they get their feet planted and their eyes adjusted to the virtual darkness, they begin to look around. Their first thought is to look for a way out, but as their torch illuminates the cave, they discover expansive hieroglyphics on the walls.

In my story, the torches were a few close friends who helped me read the drawings on the walls. I looked at the pictures of my life and recounted the story I had told myself of the poignant events I had endured. But with the light shining on the drawings, I found that the experiences of my life depicted in the hieroglyphics could be interpreted in different ways.

I had always told the story of the my character’s life as the one who wanted everyone to be happy with her by meeting their every need. When her family and friends were content, then she was a good person for doing the job she was assigned to do. But while she was attempting to accomplish this assignment, she felt that oftentimes the ones whom she served were overlooking her efforts and rather throwing darts at her instead.

The place where these darts went into her seemed to become little leak holes where she felt her very soul was seeping out. Periodically, she would feel literally empty and desperately reach out for help to fill up her soul again. She found various avenues that would temporarily replenish her soul, but the punctures from the darts were growing larger and becoming infected. When it seemed that her empty soul could be replenished no more, she went down into this cracked and murky cavern with some lights to see what could be done to repair this vessel and stop this cycle of injury leading to emptiness.

As one of the lights shined onto the drawings of this story, it highlighted pictures where the character seemed to put the darts into the hands of her alleged opponents, then threw herself into the line of fire. In other story lines, she missed opportunities to step out of the line of fire or to throw up a shield. She had contained the power to be the protectoress of her own soul, but she didn’t have the confidence to wield that power. So, as I saw the story with this illumination, I realized that the lead character had not been the injured victim that I’d always imagined her to be.

Another of the luminaries I took down into the cave enlightened me to the fact that the lead character had the freedom to exit the battle if she were too wounded or exhausted to continue fighting. There were no shackles on her ankles holding her in position. But this light shined on yet another angle from which to view the story: the lead character could dismantle the darts. As the character saw a dart coming, she could deconstruct it and blow it to pieces before it pierced her. I noticed that as this light depicted the darts blowing up, the angle changed and I saw that they were not darts at all, but merely tangled balls of yarn made up of confusion. It seemed that everyone had confusion over one thing or another, and their tangles could not cause hurt when they were recognized for the fuzzy mess that they were.

The time I spent in the cave was excruciating, because I was looking at my wounds and the painful story I had always told myself about how I got them. But it was also enlightening as my friends shed light upon alternate ways to view my story. This light has brought freedom to me. My broadened understanding and the accompanying confidence in seeing myself for who I truly am has broken the cycle of injury and emptiness.

I know these words are rather cryptic, but it is not advisable to speak plainly about the dark night of the soul. So I will trust that he/she who has ears, let him/her hear. If there is anything useful here, take it. If this is befuddling, just let it go.

May we live each day fully aware of the miracle and wonder of all that is in each moment.