You were born naked and in time, you made your clothes, your skin.
PS: To read this article I recommend first reading my legend about the Experiment Changing Clothes that I recently did and that was the raw material for writing this article
You were born naked and in time, you made your clothes, your skin.
When you came out of your mother's belly you had no clothes. What you had was only a thin skin that delimited your body. Think that your box (personality, ego) is this clothing that your being put on in order to be here in the world.
Over time you put on clothes of the most diverse kinds, colored, warm, cold, big, small. Layers of fabric, one on top of the other. At one point in your life, you began internally to sew your own clothes according to the weather.
For a newcomer on earth, here everything is very cold, very haunting, very noisy, we need protection.
Your being is inevitably forced to build thick layers of fabric to protect your thin, newly made skin.
There comes a point in your life when your physical, intellectual, energetic, emotional system has theoretically reached a degree of maturity (around the age of 18) that possibility your being to deliver its purest value to Gaia and the beings of this Earth. However, after wearing those clothes that were so useful in your childhood to protect you, you have come to believe that those clothes are your skin and that there is no way you can change them.
The clothes that once protected you now start to squeeze you, to limit you. The same layers of fabric that once protected you now isolate you from the world, from people, and prevent you from feeling the wind and the sea.
Imagine the following situation: you were born in Antarctica, a very cold, lifeless place, and you had to build strategies to survive in that almost inhospitable environment. One of them was to wear these thick coat layers in order not to freeze.
Time passed, you survived, and today, in the present, you have the opportunity to live in front of the beach, something you always dreamed of. However, you kill your present for your past. Even though the sun is shining, your body is sweating, your heart is beating to go running to the sea, you believe that changing those jackets for shorts and a tank top will kill you with cold, so you give up. You put your dreams in the drawer, you put them off, because you believe that your clothes are your skin, because you believe that you will freeze.
Looking at this story from the outside, you may be wondering: How is it possible for a person to be on the beach in thick coats? How is it possible for a person to miss out on a great dream just because he doesn't want to change his clothes?
Well then, you do exactly that with your life.
How many times do you put yourself to sleep with thick layers of cloth to keep yourself away from the intensity of life and connection with people? How many times have you chosen to maintain "stability" rather than risk making a big or small change? How many times have you given up on a project, a dream, a relationship, an adventure because you didn't know, because you didn't "get it", because you didn't have money, because you couldn't change your clothes?
You do this because you believe that this clothing are your skin, because you believe that you are your ego, because you believe that you are your box.
The clothes you wore in Antarctica are not wrong, they fit you very well, but to live at the beach they do not fit you. If you don't learn to disidentify yourself from the clothes you wear and change them, you will limit your being from creating everything it came here to create.
A person starts talking to you in English on a plane and you immediately say "I don't have good English, I can't speak it. You are invited to give a workshop to 50 people and you refuse because your "box/ego" is bombarding you with phrases like "I'm not good enough to do this, I can't". You have an amazing idea for a course, a journey, in mind and you put it in a drawer and postpone it because "I have to do this and that first. Your heart is calling you to go on an adventure and travel to that place you've been dreaming about, and you put it off because "I don't have time or money".
When you believe these phrases that your box says, you are believing that the clothes that you sewed for yourself and that you have worn since you were a child are your skin and that you can't change them. It is you believing the story that your box, that these stories are bigger than your being. And what is the problem with that? The problem is that you stop doing the things of your essence want to do and the things that really matter, you limit the expression of your being. Does knowing this make things easier? No. But it does bring more possibilities to your life.
Imagine if one day the universe hands you a job to give a speech to 300 people and you wear the "I don't know how to speak in public" outfit. Will you stay in that outfit and prevent your soul from delivering its value to the world? Or will you allow yourself to deal with the emotions about it and try on a super-speaker outfit that communicates from the present and from the depths?
Learning to change your box, your clothes, is a way to expand it, to free yourself, and it is a superpower.
The suit I sewed for myself would never be able to allow my soul to overflow by doing an experiment like this in the Changing Clothes Experiment, or creating various other things that I have been creating today. However, the Powerfull Woman's Box, for example, yes!
I was able to deliver a value of my being by borrowing another box. This expanded my repertoire, opened space. It expanded my box, my limits, my possibilities. The box experiment brought me experientially, and not mentally, the realization that my being can wear any clothes.
There are things that will indeed be impossible to do wearing the clothes I have sewn for myself, like public speaking, like creating a school, but I am not these clothes. My being comes to overflow and create things in the world much bigger than the clothes I chose to wear to protect myself and survive, just like you.
If you believe that you are just this clothing that you show people, this clothing that protected you, then you limit your being from delivering what it came here to deliver. That is your choice. You can choose to wear various identities to deliver and be your value in the world.
However, we don't learn about this in school or university or family. We don't learn how to use the qualities of various indentities to deliver what our soul comes here to overflow. But today you have the choice to change this, you have a door in front of you. You can open more space for your soul to act in the world. You can start practicing this distinction experientially in all your bodies, (just reading these words will not cause the transformation you need).
So I leave here some possibilities of experiments for you to develop this superpower in your life:
POSSIBILITIES FOR YOU TO START DEVELOPING THIS ABILITY:
Choose something that you have been avoiding doing because of your box, the clothes you wear. It can be that live you have been wanting to do for a long time, or that workshop you have been wanting to create, or a dangerous and extraordinary proposal to your partner, or a call in English. After you choose that specific action you will choose a costume, a character, a box that can help you with that. It is useful to ask people around you for possibilities "which character/box" can help you the most to do this. For example, if you have chosen to do a live broadcast about, for example, the environment, you could choose Greta Thunberg's box. After choosing the box you will physically arrange yourself according to that person. You snap your fingers, twirl around and say: "I am Greta. Then do what you have committed to do, and notice what happens, what changes. Feeling all your feelings, see what happens.
For 3 days, walk around with a notepad by your side. Keep 10% of your attention watching your thoughts and behaviors. Write down every time you stop doing something because of your box: "I stopped speaking in the meeting because my box says that what I say is useless", "I didn't say no to that person because there is a rule written in my box: if I say no people won't like me". Many of these things will probably be associated with emotions. I recommend doing a process called....
Pick two days and two characters. On the first day, you will dress a character you admire all day long. You talk like he would, have the skills he has, the tastes (it might help if you watch the movie Everything Everywhere All At Once). On the second day, you dress a character you have contempt for, the same way as the first you talk how he would talk, have the skills he has, the likes, same. Make notes about how you feel, what changes, what you learn.
I am glad you have read this far. Comment here below on what reflections emerged in you from this article. And if you do one of these experiments, share it with me too, I'd love to hear about it!
The blog Navegando na Complexidade is about Self-Awareness, Nature, Spirituality, Adventure, Universe and Life. A space where I share a bit of my discoveries, adventures and pyres. To be notified of new articles that are released just sign up for the newsletter, at the bottom of the page!
Love and Adventure,
Complexity Navigator Gabriela