The armor that protects you... kills you

Born into flesh we are spirit witnessing existence.  Our young minds absorb the three dimensions of information flooding in from our environment and we systematically put the pieces together in order to construct a picture of “reality.’  This reality is the beginning of our instruction manual of how to survive as a human and it is the basis for the armor we adorn to keep our spirit “safe.”  We are taught to “ought” and to “naught”, to “should” and to “shouldn’t” and all the rules of how to be.  We are taught that our family “is” and our community “believes” and slowly the light of the soul learns that IT is not consulted for how it ‘is’ or what it ‘believes’ and that the light that shines is not right and must be hidden… and piece by piece we continue building the armor. 

As we move to adolescence and shift away from looking to parents and begin looking to peers for belonging, the armor is battle tested for any gaps that might be letting the light from within shine through.  The honed weapons of our classmates are strategically aimed at finding what may make us different, unique and glorified.  Shame and belittlement are pressed against the gaps to ensure conformity and normality and ensure that the tribal norms are adhered to and no Icarus may escape to soar to great heights. 

Finally, we enter the marketplace and the soul-numbing environment of bureaucracy.  With policy, procedure and corporate culture, as well as the carrot of promotion of title and pay, the final death toll of our soul bell is rung and the process of armoring and sheltering the light of spirit is complete.  We have learned to hide our uniqueness, our weirdness and all the gifts that we were made to share.  We know the safe conversations of weather and current events that keep things moving without allowing the sacred things that want to emerge to be seen on the surface.  We find some enjoyment of the masked armor we portray to the world around us as people compliment and speak well of the constructed person we have built over the years.  This admiration for the false self only serves to highlight the depth of agony that is the soul yearning to be seen, known, accepted and loved for the light it was created to share.  As a result, the armor we have built is the armor that slowly kills us as the light we were built to share dims to a flicker and begs for a breath of oxygen before it is finally extinguished.