Emerging into wholeness

The early summer is a great time to look around and notice emergence in nature…from buds on the roses, to vegetable plants flowering with the promise of fruit. The warmth of the early summer invites an emergence not just in nature, but in us too. Perhaps we feel we want to be outside more, maybe we’re tantalisingly close to a holiday and feel the sense of spreading out, of taking up space that time off, or time in the outdoors, invites.

Perhaps this sense of emergence is a slow gentle one, one that’s attuned to the pace of the season and our own innate pace and rhythm for life. If our lives are in balance, then the gradual warming of the early summer is a welcome evolution, a feeling of emerging strength and a fruitfulness that we know is just around the corner.

The subtlety of emergence is within us too. Thoughts, ideas, plans and projects. They all require cultivating, nurturing, and tending in order to emerge, manifest and give fruit. Our gardens and the outdoors are great teachers, and their rules and requirements are just as appropriate when it comes to tending our own inner worlds.

More subtle still is the sense of our own self emerging. When we listen closely to ourselves there is a voice; as Rumi says, “there is a voice that doesn’t use words, listen”. Approaching our innermost self, learning to listen deeply in order that we can fulfil our own needs and desires and ultimately become more of ourselves is a skill. It’s something that requires the same degree of nurture and tending as any of our plans, projects or gardens.

Our deep inner experience guides us with feeling. Whether it’s ‘gut instinct’ or ‘heartfelt desire’, these are the depths within us which, when nurtured, become our greatest sources of strength and nourishment. It follows, then, that if we ignore our gut instinct and heartfelt desires, if we deny them or diminish them, then who or what is it we are in service to? Perhaps the status quo? Maybe we’ve put other people’s needs, or the idea of other people’s needs ahead of our own? It’s possible we’ve subscribed to a way of being that seems socially appropriate or acceptable, and all the while our inner worlds have become neglected. It’s when we’re living with our neglected selves that we feel the greatest desire to escape. It’s then that we so desperately need holidays, time off and time away; it’s the cultivation of a life in service to something outside of us, but is fundamentally disconnected from what it is we so dearly need and desire. The energy it takes to conform, and deny our needs, gut instincts and heartfelt desires will eventually lead us to burnout and to our bodies firmly saying ‘no’.