So what do I even mean by wholeness? Am I not a whole person right now and if I’m not, how the heck do I become whole?
That was my reaction when I would hear people talking about becoming whole or returning to wholeness. It was a language that really had no meaning to me.
So yes, you are a whole person. You are whole and complete. But that doesn’t mean you are living from that place of wholeness.
In other words, there are parts of us that we haven’t fully embraced and accepted yet. They are the parts that we disowned or suppressed when we were kids.
For me, some of my disowned parts are the incompetent part that never has her shit together; the failure part that always makes mistakes, the centre stage part that loves getting all the attention.
These are just a few of them. The reason they are disowned parts is because when I was a child, I took on the belief that being any of those parts would result in dire consequences – being abandoned, not accepted, not loved and not safe. I became very competent and smart and independent so I didn’t need attention. So I packed them up and hid them away, not to be seen or acknowledged for fear that if anyone saw them, I would be hurt in some way.
So I have spent the majority of my life not living from wholeness. I have embraced the shiny parts that I like but not the ones I don’t like. The fear is that if I embraced them that I would become them and I sure as hell didn’t want that!
But that fear is an illusion of our ego’s making and it is one that keeps us from expressing all of ourselves out into the world. And they are secretly pulling the strings from behind the curtain.
How are they doing that you may ask? Well, because they are a part of our internal world, and even though we aren’t acknowledging them, they are crying out to us to get our attention by creating what shows up in our outer world.
As an example, the incompetent part of me that I disowned has created people in my life appearing to be incompetent. It doesn’t mean they are incompetent, I just perceive them that way. And then I get triggered by the perceived incompetence and get pissed off that I have to do it all because apparently no one else is competent enough to get it done right. Sound familiar?
In fact, not embracing my incompetent part is the best way to have it show up. It has shown up in my life by me not having my shit together like I used to and making lots of mistakes.
So the incompetent part of me is trying to get my attention by me seeing it in myself or others and getting triggered by it. And when I feel triggered, it shows up as a sensation in my body. In me, it is a tightness on the right side of my neck that gives me a headache. The moment I feel incompetent in myself or I see it in another, the neck pain and headache show up. That incompetent part of me is literally speaking to me through my body. My neck goes into a gripping/splinting pattern to protect myself and pain ensues.
The way to stop this perceived incompetence showing up in my life is for me to go inward and see it in myself. It is to acknowledge and be with it. It is to give it my attention and then when I am able to, to embrace it with love and compassion and welcome it back home. This is how we bring the splintered pieces of us back home to ourselves. As long as we are pushing them away and denying their existence, they will try to get our attention by showing up in ourselves, in other people and in our experiences.
It is time to embrace all the parts of ourselves, the good, the bad and the ugly. It is time to give them love and compassion and encompass them into our whole being. The time of disliking and beating ourselves up is over. We are human and the human experience includes loving all of ourselves and not excluding any part. Embracing the parts you don’t like does not mean that you become them. In fact, embracing them means that they stop trying to get your attention by showing up in your body and in your outer world.
It is how we heal ourselves. It is whole person healing from the inside out. It is part of thriving in life and I for one, am down with that.