Parts

I’ve been feeling chaotic lately.

Driven. Distracted. Fired up. Depressed. Purposeful. Lost. (sometimes all together, although mostly one at a time)

Various versions of up and down.

Watching the wheels go round and round.

Today I pulled out my mandala. My “map” of my psyche, with all the parts, good, bad and ugly represented.

It’s no wonder I’m feeling all over the place. There’s a real division between many of my most powerful parts.

On the one hand, I have one group (I’ll call “North”) that is screaming to express and organize around giving, providing, and leading. This includes the parts I call Entrepreneur / Leader, Father, Farmer, and Organizer. Every day I hear something from them:

“We need to be mentoring groups, young people, communities! Where are our people?”

“We need a family. It’s time to have a family!”

“We want land! Now! To grow, slowly, in beautiful reciprocity with the natural world. Like we’ve always talked about and dreamed about! And prices aren’t getting any cheaper, by the way…”

Then I have another group, which I’ll call “South,” that is all about spiritual realization, deep somatic inquiry, deep appreciation of beauty, and crafting a soul-infused container for transformation. These guys are a diverse bunch, even though there’s only 3 of them (Creative Artist, Hermit / Monk, and Seeker). They can be so self-absorbed in the most delicious way – I love them! This is what I hear from them:

“Go down. Into the body. Down down down.”

“We want to disappear into a journal and never come out. Let’s write all day today!”

“Transformation is right around the corner! Let’s meditate.”

“Let’s perform a dance piece. We can integrate it with some of the other parts!”

Then there’s a whole other group that’s kind of scattered. I don’t really have a name for them. First, there’s my Little Boy and Sensitive. (I have them being looked after by Wild Man, Compulsive Driver, my addictive part, and Protector, my Anger part). I keep the Critic (Mr. Negative) and the Trickster off to the side, so they can’t hurt Sensitive or the Little Boy. If Mr. Negative tries to tell stories (“Nobody likes me, everybody hates me…”) I have the Wild Man and Protector ring up the Soul and reassign the critic to Critical Analyzer (which he hates, but then he hates everything). This is the crux of my healing work around the difficult parts of my mandala.

So here’s where it stands. Even in the midst of so much churning, so much chaos, it feels like a “fruitful” time. The questions are burning through my skin it seems, longing for organization into a cohesive something. Resisting calls from outside, bullying from inside, and the parts in between that shrug their shoulders and say “Huh?”

What do I love? Where do I want to be? What’s my vision? Where are my people?

The Lover and Knower and Soul seem to be the key to it. Where will they go? Whose side will they take? North? South? Wild? Something else? Who knows!

Every day is an exploration, following this complex, beautiful, maddening, wild group called Me.

Further to travel. Miles to go. This is where it stands.