I believe it was Richard Rohr, one of my favorite priests, who spoke about our persona as being a resounding. Meaning the word originally came from a mask used in ancient theatre that allowed the voice of the actor to project. To resound.
We are born into this world with a very unique soul sound. It wants to be heard. You can feel it straining inside of you. And when it’s not we are not at ease. We run around searching, trying to ease this unease. But we don’t realize that it is due to not being ourselves.
We grow as children and then teens, into adulthood believing all of the things we see and hear around us. The voices on TV, in the classroom, in the church, our homes and we make a meaning in our head about them and how we need to be.
I know that it is all done in good faith. These teachings, explicit and implicit, trying to help us make our way in the world. But they throw us off track. We get lost and can’t see to find our way back.
Not back to being children, but being the essential quality we were born with into this world.
Creation is a larger entity than just our one life. It is great and magnificent and all works together. We can be in harmony with that when we are just ourselves. Or we can be in disharmony when we feel we must be something else. And we’re always trying to be that something else. We read books about it. We fight others. We model others and compare ourselves. We see therapists and doctors. As if anyone else could tell us who we are.
It is a sounding print of our soul as unique as the fingerprints on our fingers. Only we can know. And we make it so hard.
It’s easy. If we just breathe. And relax. If we look at the natural world. If we remember our earliest interactions with the world. Our earliest “I AM.” What we liked to do, what our personalities were like, what we were curious about. How were spent our time. Our first, “I’m going to…”.
And let that be ok. No matter what anyone else thinks. Then we will be contributing to this world our unique contributions that no one else can do quite like us. And we will be in harmony with this greater whole of all existence for our brief little blip of life on this earth.