It doesn’t matter whether you believe in reincarnation or not. The truth is we live many lives even if it’s only one time around. The life we are living at thirteen is not the life we are living at twenty-two, or forty-eight, or even at this particular moment in time. But in order to get to the next life we have to shed the one that’s been. When we’re younger it’s much easier, we literally grew out of a way of living and moved on. New friends, new town, new grade in school, new teachers, and so on. But once we’re adults these transitions becomes a bit fuzzier.

There may be a few clear outside markers such as graduating college, getting a job, getting married or divorced, but how our inner life navigates these turning points isn’t quite as clear. Partly because it takes the mind and soul time to catch up with the life events that can come at us fast. Sudden changes happen all the time in our exterior world but our interior world needs a little more space, time, and understanding to make the same transition. We can easily see this when someone close to us unexpectedly passes. We aren’t mentally or emotionally ready and our internal timeline for processing the event has nothing to do with what’s going on around us.

There may be foods, life-styles, and ideas we naturally shed, but how we think about our self, what we want to fill our life with, and the terms in which we evaluate what we’re doing as good or not good enough may have reached a certain point and then gotten stuck. It takes great effort to see what’s going on inside and change our course. Life is noisy and it’s easy to get distracted from the quiet tides pulling within.

Recognition of what no longer fits us is only half of it, we have to actively let go and honor what has been in order to move forward. These words flow out in a slick sentence but these are the gritty pieces of life that bring pain and grief. Having the courage to actively honor what’s been can drain all the life energy out of us at times, but in the end it gives back more than it takes. It generates strength and wisdom, and it’s an important part of the process of becoming whole, ultimately bringing with it a greater ease at being in our own skin.

Giving sincere and grateful thanks to what has been is a ceremony for the inner rites of passage that are more illusive but that have the ability to disintegrate all we’ve been and then reinvent us. We approach reverently, carefully, and often. We are close to the fire of the unknown when we come into this realm of honoring what’s been and it is a crucial part of how we will move fully into what is next. The ways to do this are as varied as we are, but if we listen closely to our soul and stand by what we know to be true for us in the face of misunderstanding and disapproval, we will be well on our way to constructing our authentic self that lives within and wants expression. If you haven’t guessed by now this is some of the hardest work any of us will ever do.

We are the only ones who can stand up for ourselves and give us what we need. Taking the time to honor the choices we’ve made and the lives we’ve lived helps move us fully into what will come next.

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