“I’m too good for this!”
By Lian Brook-Tyler
A new, previously unconscious, shadow part of me has been speaking recently.
It tells me “I’m too good for this!” when I’m choosing into doing certain things I have resistance to.
It showed up clearly and unexpectedly, for the first time a few weeks ago in the woods, when I was helping to build a sweat lodge from the land up.
It required the cutting of hazel branches (with reverence and offerings), prayers and more offerings with the placement of each part of the structure, the massaging of wood and the tying of string.
It was fully divine and fully human, as shamanic work so often is - it’s one of the things I love most about it.
And yet, at some point, during being part of a team of hearts and hearts co-creating the ancient technology of the sacred sauna, I heard “I’m too good for this!”
It meant: “I’m too good to be a nameless, mindless, faceless, generic part of a team carrying out tasks I’m ill suited for and will deaf-ly not hear (this isn’t a metaphor, I am more deaf than hearing) and will austically not understand. I’m too good to do anything other than what I’m uniquely suited to do.”
I heard it speak again during the silent round of the sweat later that night when I felt my work was done and I’d had enough of being there.
This time it meant “I’m too good to submit to my teacher’s decisions about what I need to do. I’ve prayed all the prayers and sweated all the sweat, I’m yawning and falling asleep and I’m done, I’m ready to come out and yet, I have to wait until my teacher decides we’re done. I’m too good to do anything that I haven’t chosen myself.”
It spoke again today, sitting here eating green curry and writing cards - cards that are between 3 months and 3 days late.
It said “I’m too good to struggle to write these cards, painstakingly doing the mundane and yet challenging work of copying addresses, especially foreign ones with #allthenumbers (dyscalculic hell) onto the envelopes, and then going into battle with the mysteries of overseas postage. I’m too good to do anything that costs me time and energy that I won’t be fully appreciated for.”
That’s what my shadow tells me but the truth is… I’m not too good for this, I am not too good for any of the divinely human mess and magic of life. I am here for it.
And I will honour, celebrate and love the unique soul I am every step of the way, something that only becomes possible when I submit to the ways life teaches, heals and liberates me, even and especially the ways my shadow thinks I’m too good for.
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