What, again?
In
personal development, people often get frustrated when facing the same old
issue again and again. Fear of failure, running away from confrontation,
succumbing to temptations – whatever the issue, it tends to be present in our
lives and in our healing work repeatedly.
Peeling the onion
Often
we are told by therapists or others who support us that healing and personal
growth is a process. The image of peeling the onion is used as a metaphor. When
a layer of an onion is peeled away, there is another layer underneath. When we
are working on healing an issue, while we can make progress, it is like peeling
away a layer. Another layer of the same stuff is underneath. We have to face it
again. Perhaps it looks a bit different or has a lesser intensity but
nevertheless, it’s essentially the same stuff. I think that the image of
peeling the onion is supposed to help us be compassionate with ourselves by
helping us understand that it is inevitable to have to face our issues
repeatedly. After all, our issues are our issues. In some ways, they don’t
really change. In peeling the onion, perhaps we uncover and discover something
about an issue and understand it more. Or there is less of the issue/onion as
we go deeper. Or we no longer need to cry when peeling it.
The endless task
However,
for many people, the onion image really doesn’t seem to be soothing. After all,
the layers seem endless, perhaps even infinite. We keep peeling and the
frigging onion is still there! Instead of being a way to compassionately
explain the process of healing, the onion image can emphasize the futility of
personal development. Or at least that was the way it sometimes looked to me.
Until I started to have experiences that changed my perspective.
A new world
Yes,
the onion/issue was always there. Yes, I would continue to find ways to process
and heal the issue. Yes, it would appear less often and less intensely in my
life. And then, all of a sudden, one day, it was gone! I don’t even remember
what triggered the shift or what specific issue I was dealing with, but
suddenly, it was like I was in a different world. There was this universe in
which I and my onion, uh, issue, existed. And I was forever peeling the damn
thing. And then suddenly, it was gone, totally gone, as if in a different
parallel universe in which I could look across, like Alice through the looking
glass, see that other world where the onion existed and yet be free of it. Here
and now, where I presently was, it didn’t exist. I was at peace. Liberated.
What joy! It was blissful. Later, a shift happened and I was back in the world
where the issue existed. Yet, that world would never be the same because I had
inhabited, for even a moment, that other world in which the issue didn’t exist.
Living in two worlds
Since
then, I continue to peel the onion while I simultaneously cultivate my ability
to travel to and live in that alternative dimension, the one without the onion. I have since learned that the issues disappear,
not by repressing them or detaching from the world and others, but by healing,
and by opening my heart, mind and being more fully. As
time goes on and I do more of my inner work, I seem to be getting better at
disappearing the onion.
©
2012 Bibi Caspari
