Reinvention can be almost as harrowing as a fresh crack at creation.

You’re faced with completely changing your perspective on very established, already-existing ground work. And even if this pre-set assemblage of guidelines doesn’t work—has never worked—the act of re-wiring your brain and re-writing your life poses an intense and awkward process of re-creating your foundation.

I am now at the end of my second full week of working in conjunction with others at a holistic healing practice. This is not just a new job, but a completely fresh way of life, an expanded step in line with my heart’s purpose.

Adjustments are taking place, both emotional and physical. New routines are being tried, tested, and not exactly put into place, but allowed to flow. I’m practicing intuitive training, listening to my body and mind for what I really need and re-implementing the parts of the existing framework that do work into the new blueprints.

One of those parts is writing. The page is where I find myself. The page is where everything becomes clear. The page is where I pull in the reins and see what’s been brewing, what needs releasing, what needs creating. The page is where I truly shine, where I can speak with the purest, truest words. The page is where the best of me comes to light, the place I reflect back on when my words that I speak outside of the page don’t always match my insides.

The page brings me back to myself and reminds me of who and what I am.

Settling into this new life has been invigorating, unsettling, exciting, challenging, promising, at times exhausting, but more enlivening—like I’m embracing a completely different vital force. I’m coming to terms with being human, with not being perfect, with not being an instant success. I’m throwing myself into training, into the learning curve, a place that I am not at all at-home in. But therein lies the lesson of truly being present, being one with the process, the cycle, the journey.

Opening my eyes, clearly, to what I’m learning and the people I’m working with and honoring both them and myself by being present, by truly listening before I speak, by approaching new tasks and techniques and methods without fear. That’s been the greatest change thus far—coming to a new task without the fear of failure. Things that were causing such anxiety and fear are fizzling away, and I’m seeing that this place matches my new vibration, and my greatest job is to keep my new vibration up, to keep it humming its new song, to radiate and operate within these new wave lengths and to be a radiant, luminous part of their team.

Of course there are going to be times where I fall out of step, and every time it’s happened, I’ve felt it. When I revert back to certain parts of myself, parts that no longer match the authentic me that is emerging, it’s glaringly obvious. But that’s beautiful, because I instantly reflect on the words or actions that don’t match my new vibration, and I can let them fall away as easily as they fell out of my mouth.

It’s all about holding the past up to the light, examining it, acknowledging its old use and function, realizing that that old paradigm no longer works, and releasing it without guilt or judgment.

Release without guilt or judgment. That’s one of the greatest challenges, teachers and liberators.

Releasing old scars, old veils, old thick gnarly blankets of suffocation, suffocation of the soul and mind—all which are hindering to progress, growth, reach, possibility, hope, horizons. We create these thick, musty, knotted up blankets of soot and stagnant energy and hide beneath them without even realizing it. Maybe it’s our spirit’s defense mechanism, trying always to protect and shield us. Maybe our spirits acts as an overprotective parent at times, not wanting us to hurt or be more vulnerable than we already are. Maybe our blackened hearts and beat-up minds work to overpower the spirit, sheltering it and keeping it hidden, sheltering our most precious spark so no one else can take a swing at it.

Like a tender cervix, poked and prodded and biopsied and lasered in the attempts to remove the deadly cancerous traces of life thriving on its most pure and exposed surface, we have built empires to protect the most tender, most exposed, most essential spark within our most sacred of sheltered spaces.

And we go on. For years sometimes, we operate as shells, allowing this protective force to thicken its defenses, forming a sort of film over our physical eyes, our third eye, our intuition, our inner and outer sight. We allow the darkness to descend and follow it, follow it to its deepest, murkiest, most terrifying depths…the depths of complete isolation, disconnection, stark desolate ground.

But we can’t stay in isolation forever.

And the only thing that brings us back is us: the desire, the spark, the absolute necessity of human connection and belonging, desperately craving the feeling of worthiness, of being capable, of being something in this world, of not just occupying space and time and wasting space and time. That inherent nudge we all feel at the end of a long, hard road, when we know we need to travel a different, more rugged, unexplored path, because only by switching gears and taking a risk can we hope to find what we’re looking for, be what we’re passionately burning to become and transform the lonely darkness into glowing, joyfully blinding light.

This is the journey, the cycle, the path of life.

This is all and nothing, everything we’re here to do. We’re not here to become part of the machine, but to emerge from the shackles of man and earthbound greed. We’re here to travel and live, over and over again, until we finally get the lessons, understand the gently humming underlying meaning simmering away below the surface. We’re here to learn to embrace happiness rather than run from it, embrace love and community and our own humanity without trying to destroy it. We’re here to accept ourselves as we are, love ourselves as we are, bask in the essential rays of the sun and cleanse ourselves in the purifying waters from the skies.

We’re here just to be, nothing more, nothing less.

Our one goal is to break from this man-made machine, this results-oriented trajectory, this assembly line of daily “zombification” and finally, truly see each other and see the world around us. To realize that we are no better or worse than the hand reaching out to us, and if we can, our one job is to help that hand, to strengthen the collective bond, to unify the energy source that thrives in the darkness within all of us. Our job is to reveal that light, reveal that path, and help as many people as we can begin their journey from the desolation of isolation into the dance of love, connection and abundance.

Like I’m not “Spiritual.” I just practice being a good person on Facebook.

Assistant Ed: Wendy Keslick
Ed: Brianna Bemel