The child dancing in the light… the glimpse of her. My true self unbridled from the harshness, abuses and demands of the world.
She was lost to me because unknowingly I had tucked her away and traded my true essence for a version of myself that was much more cultured and adapted to what I thought others needed or wanted me to be. I did not feel inherently safe otherwise. But I will tell you my friends that her wild abandon and free spirit would continue to show up in slivers of resonance and sparks of energy when I would experience those moments in time when my whole being would come alive.
In his book, A Hidden Wholeness, Parker Palmer explores this essence which he calls our spiritual DNA and a hidden wholeness. When I read his work many years after seeing her, I knew that what he said was true.
Seeing her that day dancing in the light with beautiful abandon, freedom and joy has set in motion the journey of a lifetime to rediscover this essence and allow myself to set her free again in the original Divine love she was designed for. I call her my original essence in God.
We must become listeners of our souls in God, as our lives are wild and wondrous journeys into the caverns of all that it means to be human.
We may spend a lifetime forgetting and warring against our true essence in God; slaying dragons and recognizing dark Lords; becoming performing artists to create images we want to be seen by to call on impressions, applause and to feel safe. But this inner light, this hidden wholeness will not be denied. It will show up again and again in slivers of joy, dreams, visions, stories, chills, sorrows and in the deep waters of pain in its denial.
I have learned, the soul knows and nothing is hidden from the heart of God. We must be true to our souls in God.
In the year 1577, Saint Teresa of Avila writes in her work, The Interior Castle,
“I don’t find anything comparable to the magnificent beauty of a soul and its marvelous capacity. Indeed, our intellects, however keen, can hardly comprehend it, just as they cannot comprehend God; but He Himself says that He created us in His own image and likeness.
His Majesty in saying that the soul is made in His own image makes it almost impossible for us to understand the sublime dignity and beauty of the soul.”
Psalms 139 offers an ancient word from the Hebrew text for the souls of all time; one that has held me in many hours.
1 You have searched me, Lord,
and you know me.
2 You know when I sit and when I rise;
you perceive my thoughts from afar.
3 You discern my going out and my lying down;
you are familiar with all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue
you, Lord, know it completely.
5 You hem me in behind and before,
and you lay your hand upon me.
6 Such knowledge is too wonderful for me,
too lofty for me to attain.
7 Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
8 If I go up to the heavens, you are there;
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
9 If I rise on the wings of the dawn,
if I settle on the far side of the sea,
10 even there your hand will guide me,
your right hand will hold me fast.
11 If I say, “Surely the darkness will hide me
and the light become night around me,”
12 even the darkness will not be dark to you;
the night will shine like the day,
for darkness is as light to you.
13 For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother’s womb.
14 I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful,
I know that full well.
To be fully alive is to live into who God has created us to be with all the authenticity we can muster. We must realize how precious we are to fully live and receive the Divine Love we were created for.
I invite you to close your eyes. Go to the quiet and listen not with your ears but with your soul. Deep calls to deep. Listen to who God says you are. You are deeply and eternally loved.
How have you experienced a sense of inner wholeness, your original essence in God?