Pearls

I found it today. It was hiding under practicality which, sitting, as it does, on the sturdy wooden chair pouring over paperwork on the desk in the corner, was more than happy to be of help in any way it could. While I’m not sure if harbouring a personality aspect that simply doesn’t want to be found is, in all actuality, very practical, I can see where the intention was coming from.

Regardless, I found it.

For one thing, it seems kind of odd that it feels the need to have been hidden. I mean really, what are we but an interconnected web of all of our past experiences combined with the influences that currently exert forces upon us making us behave in particular ways at the expense of other ways. It’s simply there. Within me. Acting upon me like any other impulse that I have that beckons me to act. Except now I’ve found it.

Oh it’s not like it’s some big thing that influences absolutely every single one of my decisions and thoughts and actions. No, I don’t think it’s anything like that. Of course, the more I think about it, the more I think well, maybe it is. Perhaps it holds some sort of ideal or goal in a very tangible way that I’ve been unable to express in any other way in my life, yet is very real and important. Perhaps this is the only way this ideal has managed to manifest itself forth; out of the ether and into the atmosphere. More particularly my atmosphere with its own other influences acting upon it that make it (seemingly) impossible to be expressed in any other way. This makes me even more happy about the fact that I’ve found it.

I found it because I was doing that thing I usually do where I notice my travel backpack and look to see how full it was. I was cataloguing in my head the amount of possessions currently held in the backpack, and how many possessions I knew were strewn around the house I currently am staying at. In this way I, quite abruptly, found the part of myself that doesn’t want to own a lot of things.

Now, there are a lot of obvious positives to this, especially where I’m at in my life right now. Moving every month to ten days makes it a little impractical to be carrying a lot of ballast around with me. Also, I need to keep in mind the fact that I arrived in the place where I currently am via an airplane and an airplane is not the kind of transportation mode that enables one to carry large house-hold items around.

It makes sense that I don’t have a lot of possessions with me right now.

I was talking with a friend recently about the concept of possessions. Oftentimes I am acutely aware of the fact that I do have a (relatively) lot of possessions. It’s just that these items happen to be on the other side of the continent from me, nestled in their various storage places, held at the kindness and obligation of friends and family. What about all those things?

Somehow it feels different, like kitchen utensils and small pieces of furniture are serving a different purpose. They offer me this semblance of security as I flounce around, staying here and staying there, attempting to impose some will and order onto my life. In their existence, they offer this structure and organization that I can’t see.

Yet in the possessions I do have with me, their existence is somehow the very opposite. I want to not have a lot of things, I want them to be small and fit easily in the space of half a load of a car. The fact that there are few of them gives me security: I can flit and fly easily, unburdened in the present and able to lift up and move in an instant. Maybe that’s why my backpack serves as a bureau as much or even more than the chest of drawers it is currently leaning up against.

Not having a lot of things translates nicely symbolically into not having a lot of extraneous matter floating around my consciousness. I’m able to deal with what’s in front of me with little energy seepage to parts that are far away and only effect me peripherally. Everything I have has a purpose. As I work to embed meaning and continuity into my life I can gather it all in my awareness and lay it all out: summer clothes and scarves in a bag or hanging from a hook on the door, altar items displayed prominently throughout the house, extra toiletries and other sundries in the top flap of my bag. It all makes so much sense. If there were more it would flood my brain. There would be too much for me to handle, I wouldn’t be able to keep track of it all. Sure, I know there’s more waiting for me in darkened storage rooms to the west, but for now I’ve got it organized in a way that makes sense.

I see this desire to not own a lot of things as part of my greater desire to scrub off the parts of myself that get in the way for the Light to shine through. I don’t want to feed this fear of being open and vulnerable, I want to open the smudges that force me to hide. I don’t want to yearn onward for an endless version of what “okay” is, I want to accept everything as it is with compassion.

In that vein I take these possessions I own and wrap up the corresponding personality aspects in a warm embrace. I know I’m okay, just the way I am. I know that the things I have around me are my tools, and I know that the Light sustains and holds all things.

I’ve found another part of myself and let her into the open. I gather up these parts of me like strewn pearls, thrown throughout the universe and destined to be reclaimed. Slowly but surely I’m finding them all and stringing together a strand of connectivity—connected to self and connected to the Divine—not knowing where I’ll find one next but knowing that they’re right within my line of sight.