what if it is okay?

(photo: Laura took in Switzerland, June 2022)

What if it is okay to feel disconnected and disapproval?  What if it is okay to be uncertain and to live with unpredictability?  What if it is okay to experience disempowerment and a loss of belonging?  

I was gathered in an Enneagram group Zoom yesterday, when the facilitator asked us to settle into our bodies and see what came up for us as we listened to her read those questions.  

As I sat in the questions and noticed what was happening in my body, in my mind, in my emotions, I had a little aha moment.

I would say that most of my life in my teens, 20’s, 30’s, and 40’s I was in “active resistance” mode, living full on in my personality suit, working to resist any sense of disconnection, disapproval, uncertainty, disempowerment.  

In my 50’s, I stopped, and I became very familiar with a sense of disconnection, disapproval, uncertainty, unpredictability, disempowerment, and loss of belonging.  

Yesterday, as I was listening to Renee speak these questions, my initial thought was “I have arrived!” because I had become aware of and could name these felt experiences as reality rather than evading them altogether in hyper-active living.  

But, Renee had not asked, “Have you felt….” but rather, “What if it is OKAY to feel…..”.  Identifying those sensations was not the question.  Being OKAY with the sensations was the question.  As I sat in the questions, I could sense that I was still in resistance…just a little more “passive resistance” to the experience of disconnection, disapproval, uncertainty, disempowerment, loss of belonging. Who, after all, wants to feel these things and be okay with them? 

But, what if?  What if learning to be okay with these feelings IS okay?  What if it helps to connect us with a universal human experience AND what if it is a reminder, a pointer to a greater truth?  That ultimately, we are not actually disconnected, disapproved of, or ever out of the circle of belonging?  What if there is always the certainty of power, love, and connection beyond our personality suits of ego?  What if I can be OKAY with the sensations of lack and loss because I know that ultimately I am held in a fully different space of provision and belonging that my mind, body, and heart had not been allowing?  

This.  This is the spiritual growth work of the Enneagram, Friends.  This is the wholehearted journey.  Right foot, Left foot.