Synchronicity

Synchronicity connects what I am thinking about on my inside with something that on its own happened on my outside. Yesterday, after I wrote about the body language of high and low status players, I opened an emailed blog post from Lissa Rankin, "Why Playing Small Is Just Your Ego": If your ego deems you “less than,” you’ll criticize yourself, diminish yourself, and convince yourself that you’re not worthy of life’s blessings or the company of those “better than” people. 

Yesterday afternoon I felt into my imagination and interpretation about my size. I believe that my body has internalized an early intention to be as small as necessary to fit into my ever-growing family. I am the oldest of 5 kids. Early in 2012, I wrote an essay in this blog about my experience growing up in a collectivist Irish Catholic family. It was normal to feel crowded. In fact, feeling crowded felt like love. Once, for example, mom was driving us home from a swimming lesson that had been let out early because a storm was blowing in. One gust was particularly strong, so mom pulled over the car and ordered all 5 of us kids to lie in a ditch at the side of the road and she lay on top of us. Being all smashed together was scary and uncomfortable and supremely loving.

So I have felt safe and loved as part of playing small. However, after detailing the status behaviors and their role in ego maintenance--ways to feel safe because I forgot the world is already always Divine--I realized that I have linked being crowded with the need to minimize the space I take up. This sounded a lot like Lissa's "Playing Small," so I spent the rest of the evening feeling into my edges and inviting the tightness deep inside of me to spread out, to take up more space. For now, I have designated 8 inches as a reasonable first goal for my cells to radiate love and health and wholeness and sunshine. 

I was particularly interested in where high status people let their energy flow into the space around them, including space others are occupying. And I am interested in how empty space can be made free from meaning, then I can just be, like a tree.