These are the words that found me this morning:
Let yourself be broken
and you will be whole.
Let yourself be crooked
and you will be straight.
Let yourself be empty
and you will be full.
Let yourself grow old
and you will be renewed.
Give up everything
and you will be given everything.
~Tao Te Ching 22~
After reading them, I thought about people who seek sessions with me. People so often come seeking guidance because they believe they are broken or empty. There is pervasive belief in the world that suffering is bad or should be shunned. We cannot hide from life or suffering. Sooner or later, pain finds all of us. No one I know enjoys suffering but, it too offers beauty. Maybe part of my purpose is to remind you of what happens after suffering – if we so choose.
I remember once reading about kintsugi. Kintsugi is a Japanese art form created around the 15th century. It utilizes a gold resin to bond broken pieces of pottery together. When a precious item breaks, it does not become less valuable but, indeed more valuable. The process of filling in the cracks with this golden material can take months. The more “repaired” an object is the more reverence is held for it. The greater it’s value.
Honestly, this has been my experience with people. The people I love and respect most in the world are the ones who have been broken. Rumi wrote “The wound is the place where the light enters you.” The photo on the first page of my web site (www.soulcords.com) is a photo taken in India (2016). It has not been altered except I added Rumi’s words. I remember looking at the photo in awe of how the light consumed me. I believe for a brief moment in time, Creator was showing me the perfection in being.
Every moment is perfect. We have all been cracked open; experienced moments where we felt completely broken, bruised, defeated, hollowed by grief or loss. Those are the times we get to decide how we fill in the gaps – how are we going to put ourselves back together. Are we going to make ourselves heavier and fill in the cracks with fear or anger? Or are we going to make ourselves brighter and fill ourselves in with light, love, faith or compassion? Are we going to glitter or gloom? Are we going to be bitter or better?
Our resilience – the beauty of our beings is truly in the moments we get to show the world both our brokenness and our wholeness. It is in those moments of authentic candor that we are truly free. It is the self recognizing there is no separation in experience and each other. It is vulnerability, the most sacred act of surrender. The letting go of preconceived ideas, cultural norms, dictated dogma or decreed decorum is our gift of wings; scarred, delicate, strong, eternal, gold filled wings.
Isn’t that what kintsugi is? A lesson in finding beauty in the broken? A living example in wholeness and brokenness being one? We find beauty where we choose to see it and where we allow others to see it in us.
Read the words, I found this morning again. Read them out loud, speak them into yourselves and each other and let them sit in the center of your perfect souls.
Let yourself be broken
and you will be whole.
Let yourself be crooked
and you will be straight.
Let yourself be empty
and you will be full.
Let yourself grow old
and you will be renewed.
Give up everything
and you will be given everything.
~Tao Te Ching 22~
Love and blessings,
Elizabeth