Symbols

I have a good friend who, for the last ten days, has been moving out of a house in which she has lived for about five years. It is a herculean task which she is accomplishing a little at a time with almost no help, and the process is stripping her bare. She is physically and psychologically exhausted and emotionally raw, and the end of this move is nowhere in sight. Because she'll be traveling to Bolivia soon as a part of her continuing education, she's making a temporary move into a small cabin on a friend's property, but the space is currently full of someone else's belongings and they will have to be moved before her stuff can come in. I stopped in on my friend today, to pick up an old mirror she needed to get rid of, and we had a chance to catch up. She cleans houses for a living and told me that she has realized in the course of this move how much of her time and energy go into simply moving stuff around but never really accomplishing anything. She feels defeated by this, like she's simply wasting her energy. "I don't want to do it anymore," she explained.

I told her, "That's quite a symbol you've unearthed. Seems to me that it might be a good thing for you to ponder that symbol until you're ready to change your situation. It's going to change no matter what, but maybe this symbol will help you guide the change with your intention." The image of my friend picking up and moving myriad objects, cleaning around or under them and then replacing them as precisely as possible seemed to me like such a strong theme. I wondered in what other ways she is repeating this pattern, perhaps with her thought process or in her relationships. Often it is when we are at our most vulnerable that powerful symbols appear to awaken us to our habits and patterns, as well as our true abilities, needs, and strengths, and perhaps give us the inspiration to get right with ourselves starting from the moment we realize what we are seeing. The signs have likely been there all along, but it's when we're cracked open and desperate that they begin to mean something to us. Right then, we see not only the problem but the solution to that problem as well. The unconscious mind is very fertile and powerful, and a truth unearthed from the darkness of fear will immediately begin to work in service of our well-being, whether or not our conscious mind fully understands the work being done. I'm excited for my friend for I think that with her simple realization, she has helped herself more than she might actually know.