"Hello, remember me?"
Truth hit me, and hit me hard. I thought I knew who I was. I thought I knew what I wanted. I had felt desperate, sad, hurt, but I thought I was whole.
I was wrong.
My Self blazed within me, burning through the lies I had carefully crafted into compelling stories, tearing down the walls I had constructed to keep me safe. In the fire's wake was left calm. My voice within spoke of deep connection, boundless joy, compelling peace and utter contentment.
I knew I would never be the same again. I should have felt shock, but instead I felt complete. Whole. A deep sense of who I actually was. I knew without a shred of doubt that I was no longer who I had been, but that I had finally and irrevocably found my Self.
My Self.
Until the blaze, I was blind to how much I had denied my Self, over and over. How I'd taken tiny slices out of myself, piece by piece by month by year, until I was left huddled on the ground, something wholly unreal, worthless, diminished. A fickle thing, small, insubstantial, blown easily by the wind. A directionless thing, putting myself into my stuff, my opinions, my alignments, my ability to give and serve and bleed in an attempt to feel I had worth. Being so unaware of my own strong but buried centre that I instead revolved my remaining universe around another human entirely.
Here I was though. Whole. Free. Strong. Complete. Much, much larger than what I'd previously called life. Utterly and completely solid, as only reality can be. The walls I had built over many years tumbled in an instant, revealing themselves to be nothing but shaky hacked together ideas, hastily thrown together with little true substance.
I know with unshakeable certainty Who I AM, and yet I have no idea at all. I spend my days comparing this new real Self and life with the old imaginary constructed one, sifting through the ashes of lies to find the gems of truth that had made the stories so compelling and believable.
And while I do this work, this sifting of ash, this discovery of who this Self is, I also know this: this complete sense of Self, as solid as it is, hears the whisper of a promise in the wind. "Build your foundation strong," it whispers, "for you do not yet see the castle that will be above." There will be another, revealed when the foundations are strong; another Self, burning with the intensity of the sun. As my stories could not withstand the blaze of my Self, so too will this solid reality burn and transform, revealing something vastly more real yet again.
The promise in the wind caresses me, and I am filled with an infusion of fire and ice, bliss and terror. Everything is going to be fine.