#9 - life line

This year particularly has been one of astronomical personal growth that I couldn't possibly have seen coming and that there was no way to prepare for even if someone had given me a little heads up about what was to happen this year.

Astrologers call it your Saturn Return which occurs sometime between 27 and 29 years old.
Your Saturn Return is known to strip away any habits, people and ways of being from your life that are no longer serving your higher purpose.  Well strip away it did, this last year.  At times I felt myself being pulled along by the reigns of life, searching for some even ground to stand on just for a moment only to realize that the next moment of personal actualization was already catapulting towards me whether I wanted it to or not.  Questions I had been searching for answers for for years smacked me right in the face and said, "See, I'm here, this is the answer you've been looking for, are you ready?" and at times I was so shocked at the synchronicities that followed that I got used to expecting the next big reveal to appear.  And it did, time and time again.

But one I wasn't quite anticipating, has opened up a new level of self acceptance in my life.
We'll call this lesson expansion.

I hadn't realized until this past year that I'd been living life with a "hurry up and get on with it" attitude.  I'd have a new realization or break through or achieve something major in my career that I had been working towards for a long time and as soon as it was done or I had gotten "it", I would move on automatically to the next thing, very often without pausing to reflect or let the expansion settle in. For those of you who are perfectionists or over-achievers, you may be nodding your head going, "ya, so what?"

Well this is what.  Something hit me that made me realize I was in a hurry to get to the end.  I could see my tombstone in the future and the encryption on it said "She got here first."  And I thought to myself, "wow, wow, wow, is that really what I want? I just want to get through all of this stuff in life just to get there first?"  In truth, no it wasn't what I wanted at all, but I certainly was headed in that direction.  But I realized then that the perpetual forward motion was driving me to arrive and move on and arrive and move on, over and over again.  The catch was, I wasn't really living and accepting myself as I grew in each moment.  It was always hurry onto the next, if I get this one, then this'll be it for sure, I won't have any more things to "work on." I was on a personal rampage to have it all figured out and had been living as if once I got all of the realizations and breakthroughs, then that would be it, there just wouldn't be anymore work to do and I'd be able to sit back and relax.

After that moment looking at my tombstone in the future, life stopped.

Someone very wise phrased it perfectly, to me this last December.  She said, "As long as you are alive in life, your are expanding and you will always have new levels of things to discover and work out in  your life.  If you had it all figured out and knew everything you needed to know, your life line would stop, it would cease to exist because there would be nothing left to expand into."

Funny how the things that seem so obvious and simple, sometimes aren't?  That conversation right then altered the meaning of being alive for me.  It turned a discomfort and dissatisfaction in wanting things in my life to be different into the understanding that there would always be new things to expand into as long as your life is expanding.  And that this was a good thing!

I had been living as if one day I'd get really "good" at mastering life and all my "problems" would cease to exist.

When in actuality, all there is to master is your willingness to expand and to accept that there will always be new things to tackle in different shapes and forms.

And our ability to willingly tackle or accept these things is the meaning of aliveness.  It is our life line.