Embracing Impermanence

It’s the Jewish holiday of Sukkot right now, a time when families build a temporary home to dwell in for 8 days. It’s also Fall, and the horses have begun to grow thicker coats.

It feels deeply resonant that I’ve been reflecting on the idea of impermanence and attachment, given the energy of the time and the speed with which things have been shifting in my life.

In this season, I’ve been reflecting and looking back at the past decade and noticing the pattern of the way things have been moving for me.

Less than a year after my early divorce of a short lived arranged marriage of 100 days, Spirit was already pushing me out of my comfort, safety and certainty. So, November 1st 2018, I packed my life into bulging suitcases and boarded a one way flight to Israel.

Everything I had known my entire life until that point was gone. Language, home, friends, work, things. Everything.

And so I started anew.

The life I built there reached a crescendo when covid hit, and once again, September 17th 2020, I hauled my life into a suitcase yet again, and landed in the brisk early fall air of New York.

At that point, my attachment to things, people, work, my entire identity… it hardly mattered. It felt like I could start again, anyplace, anywhere.

It almost felt easy.

The familiar shedding, letting go, not being tied to Things. Relationships. Homes. Work. Nothing.

Maybe it was numbness to the enormity of it, or maybe simple survival.

Or maybe my soul breaking free of the confines of all the iterations of the lives I kept building and creating for myself.

Maybe like the horses shedding their winter coats, allowing space for receiving more sun. More light. Maybe like a snake, shedding, shedding, shedding.

I refuse to stay in containers, homes, relationships or identities that keep me tethered to what I was, and can no longer contain who I am.

I will not apologize for iterating. For growing. For becoming too big for tight spaces. For expanding. For knowing myself more deeply. For building home inside myself. Even if in the arc of it, it looks utterly chaotic on the outside.

My relationship of almost five years ended early this year after constant infidelity and betrayal. Yet again, the life I had built crumbled.

And yet again, came the questions, the exploration, the intimate learning of who am I? What is this life? What am I doing here?

The shedding that comes with a decision like that has once again radically changed my life in every way.

In sitting with this latest crumbling, the dissolving of my attachments to who I am, my identity, relationships, my external world; there is literally nothing to do but embrace the nature of what is present right now.

And in doing so, I have been noticing the sheer resiliency, capacity and HOME that exists inside of me.

When my world comes crashing down, who is holding my parts? Who is holding me? ME, of course.

My life up until this point has primed me for this. What once seemed like things breaking apart has revealed itself to be the cracking open, the building of the massive temple walls that now can hold who I truly am.

No longer the little box with cardboard walls.

This time has been about embracing the impermanence, the uncertainty and the dissolving of my own identity- whilst finding REAL, TRUE certainty and trust in the endless light of the Creator, in my own inner knowing, in the guidance that comes when I step out of my own way.

The Sukkah holds all the potential massive joy of the entire year. And these walls are temporary for a reason!

Because when that joy starts to actually manifest, the container needs to expand. The walls need to grow wider, get stronger, bigger.

So I revel now in the impermanence of where I am at, whilst knowing and trusting in the hugeness, vastness and potential of what I am truly building.

Not getting blindsided by the fear, caught in the smallness, the shame, the illusion of the crumbling, but embracing the full, living process of BEING in it all..

May the walls of the Sukkah, that hold the potentiality for the infinite flow of Joy directly from Source, remind you that you are the vessel. You build the structure to hold it all. You are worthy of receiving and holding it all. Always.

What a wild wild ride my friends.

Love, love, love