to let die what must die, so you can let who you are shine through

While writing and thinking about Hinenuitepō (atua of darkness/death/rebirth) lately, and especially how we wrapped up the last blog post about ‘letting die what must die…’ I observed my thoughts and how I almost didn’t put that line in because how it can be perceived, for example…

‘So Hana’s encouraging death/dying now’ was probably the main one nagging away at me, and my headspace at the time was that I didn’t want ‘to be seen doing that.’ I really hope you’re following and this makes sense lol otherwise the rest is gonna be tricky to keep up with haha but anyway, I became aware of this thought and tried to shy away from it.. tried a million different ways to reword it or detract it from the whole post, til I realised,

that’s exactly what I’m saying.

IN A METAPHORICAL SENSE.

This whole experience reminded me of a lesson ingrained in my brain from Vipassana at the beginning of the year. There’s who you are at your core, there’s how you see yourself, there’s how others see you and then, there’s how you want them to see you (or think of you).

It’s rare that all four of these will align and be the same thing, just check your instagram feed (or mine, or anybody’s) and ask yourself, is this a true representation of my/their life? Is this how I want to be portrayed, how I want others to see me? Even my feed, as hard as I try to make sure it’s as accurate of a telling of my story as possible, there are things I don’t share on there.. either because I don’t know how to process it yet, or ‘coz my energy is off and I don’t want to broadcast it.

But back to our kaupapa, when we think of these different versions of ourselves and how we go through various developmental stages growing up and how we mould ourselves to fit in, survive or thrive in our environment….. our perceptions of ourselves die all the time. Then they’re reborn, they evolve — we evolve.

Eventually, we (hopefully) start to care less about how we want others to see us because we’re focusing our energy on aligning our actions, habits and behaviours to who we really are, which informs how we see ourselves and continues to radiate outwards like that.

We bring it back in to who we really are. We let the superficial layers die, we clear them away and we create room for expansion. So that who we are radiates outwards and flows into everything we do, everything we are…

There is no rebirth without death, we must let die what must die, so we can let who we are shine through.

Tēnā tātou,

Hana.