Breaking the Habit of Who I am

Ever so carefully I attempt to glide my feet between the plants covering the forest floor. I fail every time. There is life everywhere and I keep stepping on it. The canopy is almost fully formed now and the ground is covered in woodland plants, many blooming - ferns, orchids, May Apples, Wood Betony, violets, wild ginger, dwarf irises - on and on a showcase of possibilities.

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My attempts to not irrevocably crush anyone under my clumsy feet force me to focus on the space between the plant beings but these tiny places too are teeming with life. Insects going about their business, and beyond sight worms, roots, mycorrhizae and microorganisms. Eventually the effort is too much and I lower my body down onto a mossy stump.
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My attention now is given permission to expand into a fullness of this place. Above me the sunlight filters through the lime green of this year's new leaves, below me this bustle of life bursting towards the canopy. Me in between.

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I see life expressing itself in so many ways, a countless number of forms in this physical realm. Over there life pushing out the ground as a conical array of fern leaves, each frond a fractal of it's friends. Over there life bursting into the lilac folds of a native, dwarf iris flower held in smooth, slender leaves. This moss under me a completely different expression of form, texture and color. The fern is hosting a spider who has spun her web across its stems. The dwarf iris entertains a flying one in her petals. This moss sinks under my weight into the rotting stump that feeds it. Each of us experiencing something different yet each here together sharing this space.

A diverse community rooted in collaboration and reciprocal exchange. Here it is. Isn't this what we keep talking about? Why do us modern humans struggle so much to be together in this way?

As I gaze across this green sea of woodland life I wonder if, in part, this might be because we don't allow ourselves to experience such a diverse range of ways of being. We judge the inner rotting stump as too old, the orchid as too showy, the violet leaves as too normal, the spider as too creepy or the earthworms to slithery. We hide away parts of ourselves we think don't belong or are "not enough" so they don't get to express the fullness of their potential.

​ We get ourselves stuck in ruts of being, into a cemented habit of who we think we are.

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I am reminded of Michael Meade saying that initiations bring us into contact with the extreme ends of the emotional spectrum - intense fear or grief and great joy and love. I know how needed this is in a world where numbing is always an available option. But what happens once we've been cracked open by life's initiations?

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We can't live our daily lives on those polar regions of the emotional experience spectrum. We have to explore the range in between, the nuances of the human experience.

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Can I let myself be the luscious iris flower, open to whomever flies by to the same degree I can be a snail inside my own, private, shell? Can I be a fern reaching outwards in every direction and be the spider's web that tries to bind the fronds together? Can I balance as sister spider does on the tension between the two that holds the entire thing together?

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These are the questions this bursting, Spring, forest whispers to me, challenging me to dig deeper into the possibilities of the experience of being alive. I know I did this much more as a child, through play, through imagination but somewhere along the way my range narrowed. Life's initiations cracked me open, reminded me there is so much more and inevitably I contracted back down again to some degree. It seems like part of the ripening that comes post-initiation is the ability to play on this forest floor, to experiment with many ways of being, expanding our repertoire of humanity little by little.
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What way of being alive are you willing to play with today?