How Deep Does It Go?

THE REALITY OF INTERDEPENDENCE 

Q: HOW DEEP DOES IT GO?

A: I pull myself up from the internal mud of my mind where I’ve been wrestling with myself for days. It was bound to happen. I could feel the gravitational slippage toward an unruly arena of self that has needed some attention. How long did I actually think I would be able to skip through life carrying this deadened weight around in my psyche as if it didn’t exist? Too long I suppose. So here I am, back to some intense heavy lifting that has me pining for the lighter days of life.

Even now I feel I am on the edge, attempting to stay within the internal middle earth without having to succumb to being completely swallowed by the darkness of the unknown within me. Is it a futile attempt to grasp into the sludge of unconscious ways of being when the truth awaits me? Yes. I know this, as this is not my first rodeo in having to sort through an old mind to arrive at a new one. I should be excited by now, with the understanding that it only gets better…eventually. However, at this stage of the inner battle, I also know it can get darker before the dawn.

Life is utterly mysterious. So beautiful, terrifying, and graceful simultaneously. When I open my eyes and take it in on a personal, then…intimate, familial, communal, national, global, and cosmic scale; the journey is vast, never-ending, and is all-inclusive to the feels, thoughts, and reverberations of each layer of mind within and without. Interdependence. Contemplating this. Not independent and not dependent. There is a rightness of relationship that flows through the reality that is interdependent. How is it that as humans we tend toward the periphery of this axis? Why do I lean into fierce independence for fear of losing myself? Where does the magic of interdependence live in the scope of life, relationship, and simply being?

PRACTICING INTERDEPENDENCE

Perhaps if I accept that I am interdependent with all of life, then I have to participate in a different way than I always have. Maybe I have to consider the whole rather than lose sight through the tunnel vision of my own individuality. If I have to practice moderation over excess, then I have to take further responsibility for myself. Are these the “costs” of interdependence?

Yet what is the cost if I don’t accept myself as an interdependent player in this game? Do I continue to be self-absorbed and create a life with myself in the center? Do I live as if my actions have no consequence? Do I retract from society out of fear of “how it’s going” and pretend I can hide from the headlines and live in “peace”? Or if I throw myself into the oblivion of the masses, group think, a job or a relationship that I think will “save me”, can I also avoid something I fear? Because it does seem to come back to this word for me, avoidance.

ATTACHMENT STYLES

For those who have not studied attachment styles that are formed in the earliest years of our lives, there are four types; avoidant, anxious, disorganized, and secure. I bring this up as there is a correlation for me personally as I grapple with the unconscious resistance to finding the Goldielocks version of “right-relationship” in this moment of life. I’ve been one to gravitate toward the extremes without realizing what this means in the bigger picture of life. For example, If I tend to the familiarity with the avoidant arena in relationships, how does this filter into my everyday life?

Thankfully, I have been working on this for the last 20 years. I have dutifully been working to change my attachment style to a healthier more secure foundation. Not easy, and feels like a life-long journey. However, as I sit here today, exploring my tendencies and fears on a new precipice of psychological death, I am asking myself, “How deep does it go?”

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We cannot change the world until we accept we are the world. This is the new conversation.