Reinvention: Lessons from Snake
Reinvention calls us in unconventional ways. Are you feeling uncomfortable, blocked, or fed up with things as they are?
The good news is that discomfort is an important signal to ourselves that change is not only needed, but that you are ready.
I always say, "We are constantly outgrowing our old skin." So, congratulations if you are feeling uncomfortable in your own skin!
Snake teaches us about reinvention.
When a snake begins to outgrow it's skin it goes through an incredibly vulnerable and uncomfortable process. Things start to feel tight. Then Sister Snake heads down into the earth to hide. While her body prepares her eyes cloud over rendering her blind.
She doesn’t eat, she simply rests and waits, knowing her body will do the rest.
A few days before shedding her body releases a hormone that loosens the
bond between the inner and outer layer of skin!
She then bravely cuts a hole in her old skin on her head by scratching on a rough surface. Can you imagine?
Passing through tight spaces she carefully peels her old skin off, basically turning herself inside out, to reveal her new incarnation. The new skin is incredibly sensitive, leaving her feeling the world around her to the extreme.
Healthy reinvention
When I am ready to upgrade myself, there are signs. The fist thing that happens is that I get uncomfitable.
Things in life that once worked or felt good to me no longer “fit” or satisfy.
If I am paying attention to the signals of my body and life then I can make a conscious choice to partner with the shedding of my skin; reinvention. I retreat, go within to listen, and prepare a new mindset. It is then that I find a way to tear a hole in my old thinking and wriggle out of attitudes, emerging sensitive and freer.
When you have been stuck so long…
Now here me here, please: some of you have been so uncomfortable for so long that you don’t even know that reinvention is possible or how!
If I am not in touch because I am too busy, caught up in life’s shoulds, or feeling pushed by the momentum of old patterns, something sinister begins; life tries to get my attention.
I start to feel dead and confused. Circumstance starts to whip me around or even knock me hard upside my head. What could be a choice to retreat and go inward becomes hermiting, or worse, depression. I can even fall into disempowering victim stories. Frantic for relief I begin pointing the finger at everything outside myself as the reason for my suffering.
We have all been here.
So you want to reinvent yourself?
It is never too late to reinvent. My mother raised me on the axion, “My thoughts create the world around me.”
Escape is not an option. No matter where you go, there you are. (Sidenote: I am not referring to abusive situations here.)
How to break Free
Acknowledge: Start by acknowledging where you are and your soul’s cry for change. Honesty opens doors. Turn towards the pain you are feeling and hold that part of yourself with arms of love. No judgement please!
Ditch victim thinking: You made the decisions that got you where you sit now. You will call your power back when you reclaim the might of choice. Doing this will ignite possibility. You need to feel that there is more possible than the reality of what you have currently created. If you created this life, you can create another!
Get still: Eliminate everything possible that is keeping you on the busy train. Make hard choices to cut out activities in order to be alone with yourself.
Go blind: Guard your consciousness by decreasing your outside inputs. The answers are within you. Often, searching is a distraction from listening to ourselves. Channel Snake’s energy and cut off all those outside ideas for a period of time to discern what thoughts are truly yours, and what your soul is craving.
Gather your identity: Too often we believe change will come by implementing external activities and actions. Try not to get caught up in doing before you land in your being. Allow yourself to feel your way into a new way of BEing, not doing. This means growing a fresh vision of self through deep personal reflection. Aligning yourself with the feeling of self that wants to be embodied (generating a new skin from within), is different than creating a list of actions to pile on top of the old you. It may feel new for a while, but eventually it will feel heavy an inauthentic.
Wait for the internal click: Remember that hormone signal Snake receives? There will be a point where the new being you are are generating feels ready to emerge. You don’t need to know exactly what that looks like. Remember you’re blind? You just need to feeeel it.
Scratch that itch: Allow your feeling to emerge into the world through your new mindsets. Snake scratches a hole in her head. Living from the avatar of your new feeling being will create new ways of thinking. Revisit your new BEing self frequently. Ask yourself as you get ready to approach daily life, “Is this choice coming from my fresh being?” Over time you will shed that old consciousness.
Embrace your senses: When we first emerge with a new mindset we can be a little sensitive. Embrace the freshness of life. Allow yourself to feel the differences in how you perceive life, people, and your power. Avoid judging others, as this gives your power away to the “other” (people, circumstances, etc). Keep coming back to the power of choice and choose your being over blame.
Expect clumsiness: When we change the way we are, we change the steps to the dance of life. Toes get stepped on, we miss a step here and there, and and there is a learning curve. You aren’t going to get it right all at once and people around you may be a bit confused. Be gentle with yourself and others. Keep practicing your new BEing.
Trust: As you approach the world as your new self the YOUniverse will be sending you new opportunities and blessings. The divine feminine way is through receiving. Your new BEing will naturally attract to you what’s next!
A word of warning
Unlike Snake, we don’t just throw off old mindsets like a skin, discarding them forever. New mindsets are like weightlifting. When we begin, we aren’t that strong in them and repetition is what makes us strong.
Old patterns show up over and over again, giving us an opportunity to choose our fresh BEing. Every choice for the new you makes you stronger. But sometimes I am fooled into engaging with life that seems new, but is really the old, cleverly disguised.
OOPS! I did it again!
Don’t beat yourself up. Just realign with the new you and move on with the dance.
Your BEing avatar
It wouldn’t be a post from me without a tool to use. to help in this process you may wish to create a power avatar. You can do this through meditation, revisiting your new BEing and feeling it to your core. You can create a visual representation like a BEing vision board that you keep in site. Create an altar in your home to this new embodiment. Or maybe you want to do this divination (Print from the Free Learning Library) to find your energetic helpers for your new incarnation adventure.
Have you or do you you want to reinvent yourself?
