By Annmarie Early 

Let your life begin to fray—like the edges of a rug neatly tied in a knot that holds it all together—let it begin to loosen.  The knot is the ego- the you that wants to hold it all together- and it is time to let it undo itself and begin to let go.

 My undoing began over 10 years ago, but if I am honest it has always been a  mark on my life that has whispered me home to my truth.  There hasn’t been a year that has gone by where I was settled in what was— the dream that was living me through each turning year—always felt more dream than reality.  It came through circumstance and dis-ease, whisperings and wanderings— they have always pointed me home to something more central than the person I call Annmarie. It goes as far back as I have autobiographical memory.  It has always been part of me.

 It’s only been recently though that I’ve truly begun to fray at the edges. I thought my edges were so neatly knotted—even as I experienced constraint and dissatisfaction that I could rarely name directly.  Even as the undoing was happening the knot drew tighter around the strings of my life until it was clear that I had to allow them to undo in order to breathe.

 And so my rug is fraying.  Everything I have built around me as success is either disappearing or I’m prompted to leave or give away—titles, job descriptions, letters and professional names by which to call myself, income, stuff in my house, the familiar routines of what “work” and “success” are called and what I do with my time.  Nothing in my life looks the same as it did 10 years ago, last year, or even—if I’m honest—last month.  I am not undoing my life. Life is undoing me.

 And, even as I cajole and wonder, I know that this has been what I was waiting for all along.  I don’t have any clear answers, only questions really, but the curiosity of the larger that is leading me keeps me invested. The life I thought I was to have— to build— is the very life I am now giving away or is being swept out from under me as the one tight knot that held it all together is undone. 

 Finally, the questions have begun to lead—not the mind. I am listening and allowing more, caught up in the quest of spirit to live this life soulfully—one step at a time.  There are no promises and even fewer clear outlines for what life has ahead.  What is there instead is the wonder at it all and the sense of rightness that comes when living more fully from the voice of soul. 

If you feel even one string undoing itself, simply allow.  This is not to be feared, but welcomed even through the discomfort and dis-ease.  When we allow the old life to unwind and begin to fray at the edges, a crack is made for the real life we are meant to live to begin to come forward and that is how we know.  To give up all the trappings—father, mother, job, wealth—truly is the eye of the needle that allows us to enter the true kingdom of heaven, Now.