“How much of your life was performing, just fitting into a mold that just wasn’t you?  You know it’s a real awakening because you can’t go back to sleep, there’s a before and an after.  Keep asking every single question that comes to mind. You’re not going crazy, you’re becoming you,” Ross Lara.  This was probably my favorite quote from the entire reel Ross shared.  We are given a persona from the time we are born that we don’t even realize may not be who we are.  Some suspect there is something more or that the life they’re living isn’t quite a right fit—they just feel off.  And often that’s how this starts—with the subtle shift that something doesn’t feel right and that our actions aren’t matching what we feel.  When we see the alternatives and know that we are indeed meant for more, that mold cracks. Of course it feels like breaking and some of us fear that we will never be able to get it back together again—that’s entirely natural because we are trained that the mold is who we are and if that breaks then what else do we have?  What else defines us?  The reality is, when that mold breaks, it’s showing what is meant to be, what has always been inside, the pieces we’ve been trained to hide for one reason or another over the years.

We learn the difference is this process is more akin to shedding a skin than it is to breaking a vase.  This is the realization that we never fit in that vase and we were contorting ourselves to fit into an image someone else held for us based on their experience, and perhaps we don’t know ourselves as well as we thought we did.  Our lives aren’t meant to be spent twisting and flipping, becoming different people for different people.  When we experience the awakening and we actually wake up, we see that the mold we used as safety or as a definition of who we are, rather than it being a place of consistency and comfort, has become a coffin.  The things that used to feed us and make us tick no longer work or resonate.  In many ways it has become a parasite that feeds off us instead of giving us the sustenance we needed. That is awakening.  That is knowing who we are and knowing that we can’t go back.  If the mold is broken then there is nothing to go back to regardless.  What we were afraid of is the belief that we can’t survive outside of what we know even if we know there is something more—or perhaps even the idea that we CAN handle whatever comes next in spite of what anyone else thinks.

We’ve lived our lives asleep thinking we are awake because we are moving and conscious, but when we get that taste that there is something more and manage to get a peek underneath, it becomes that much harder to ignore.  As Ross says, there is the before and after.  The in between can get a little murky because that’s when it seems most bleak, but awakening is like shedding layers and if we keep going, eventually all the costumes we wore for the roles we’ve played come off.  The old no longer fits and we are no longer content to accept the role we had before—even if we willingly took it before.  Many people view this as some sort of crisis and say this is because we are changing and we don’t know ourselves anymore.  There may be some truth to that because we are indeed becoming a new person with a new perspective—but the crisis they speak of is the fact that they no longer know who they are to us and they don’t see us in our role anymore.  And that is ok.  We stay true, hold steady, and like Lara says, we keep questioning until there is nothing left to hide behind nor a desire to hide.  We welcome all we are with open arms and never look back.  So even if the show is over for one portion of our lives, the living begins.