We all exist within structure. Its part of what makes us who we are.
We have physical structure to begin with so we are not actually just floating atoms talking to each other telepathically; but there is form and structure in the world that we exist in.
We see similar structure in less tangible terms too — such as our individual persona which structures our reality; extending out to familial, cultural, religious, corporate, governmental structure.
Structure is a common set of rules that we apply to our lives. Sort of a one size fits all, set of controls, that overlays all that we do, think and feel.
It is rigid and heavy and dense like most of what we see around us. It stands proud and strong and unbending to any off road possibilities that might come its way. Our homes, our bodies our world and everything that we connect with, expresses this denseness at its core. At times the structure might be totally inappropriate to us or the situation but we apply it anyway because structure comes first. Structure has become a system that we are all expected to fit into whether it be how we parent, educate, work, live, love, express, pray.
Structure was the first thing I remember realising I had lost when I started my journey. Circumstances had dissolved it and I felt like I had no structure left – whether it be mental structure (right or wrong); emotional structure (which was erratic) or my physical reality which was in upheaval.
So though a part of me was terrified of feeling radar less and de-structured — it was also strangely and wonderfully liberating. I felt free! Completely free of any fixed form of thinking or being.
For a long time post, I resisted all structure.
I believe in freedom. I believe in thinking free, feeling freely, expressing my truth, experiencing a life free of any filters that might limit my perceptions of it.
I saw structure as the roadblock to freedom. Freedom for me was doing whatever I wanted to – allowing my full potential to emerge and express itself. I chose a new mantra ‘go with the flow’. Move away from knowing and controlling to just flowing through life and wherever the currents would take me. I would put no framework of any kind and just wait to be taken along for the ride. Some days, I found myself going nowhere.
For how can you go anywhere if you disengage and detach from your expression of life? Where will the flow take you without direction and focus? It might never even reach you and so that waiting for the flow could turn out to be like waiting for Godot.
Realising the balance of structure and freedom was a big learning; it is not to choose one or the other but to provide your free heart the right structure to act, feel, think and express through.
Yet what then is right structure? That is what the Spider taught me.
Continue reading