NO LONGER ON THE PERIPHERY

It seemed I dozed on the periphery for a long time. I watched the weather coming and going, the seasonal hum of insects and flowers, and the blooming and decay of all things—that is, of all things I could see and understand. I was not absent. I was simply not yet fully aware of my own presence.

There was a time when I believed I had very little say in my life. As a child, I thought I had no authority to confront not just the challenges but also the horrific experiences I endured. I had no language for them, and no court in which to press a claim. That’s just the way things are. That’s just how life is. These are the sentences that close a mind before it has fully opened. Later, as the daughter of impoverished immigrants who did not speak English as their first language, I continued to find many reasons—reasonable reasons, structural reasons—to support my impression that I was a victim of circumstances. That my lot in life was destined to be one of severe limitations.

As children, we are dependent. We have not yet come into ourselves; we do not yet possess the same powers of self-awareness, intellect, and ferocity that we do as adults. It is easy, perhaps necessary, to create meaning about what life is, and to hold tightly to that meaning because it made so much sense at the time. I held on to mine. And yet, I came in with something that would not let me stay still: an insatiable curiosity to understand both etiology and causation. A deep need to know how everything comes together; why the wound is there, what the wound is teaching, what lies beneath the wound. That need was compelling enough to keep me moving when I might otherwise have given up.

This isn’t to say that I don’t sometimes retreat. Life has a way of knocking you down. Inevitably, something always knocks me over, and then I have to get back up. Again. But there’s a difference between falling and vanishing, and I’ve always eventually found my footing.

I was forced to engage because I needed to eat to survive. I had to dress to stay warm and protected. I had to go to school and interact, at least to some extent, with other children. At night, I entered the world of dreams, where I built relationships and formed strange, glowing connections with inhabitants of different worlds and dimensions. What the waking world denied me, the dreaming world gave me, and it was no less real for being unverifiable.

Gradually, all my experiences, those from quiet observation and those from deliberate participation, those from the lit room and those from the dark, merged and became one. Through this integration, they gave me perspective: a handle I could hold, a kind of anchor I could attach myself to. By simply existing, whether fully present or dwelling in less tangible places, I was inevitably led to develop a consciousness that is uniquely mine. Consciousness does not announce itself. It accumulates. It builds on everything you have lived through and survived, as well as on what you have chosen to explore rather than hide.

That unique perspective, that idiosyncratic way of perceiving, holding, and then communicating experience back into the world, has led me to exactly where I am. Because I chose to stay alert and aware, sometimes kicking and screaming to be sure, no moment I spent sleeping or awake has been wasted. The total of all I have gathered, and all that has blasted itself against me, is what I bring to this moment. The same is true for all of us. Our wounds, our wonders, our refusals, our surrenders—these are the things that give us shape and form. They are the materials from which we build not just a life, but a self.

Over time, I realized that I am an essential and inseparable part of all that exists. The All That Is— the foundation of all being, the field where all experience originates— is the most powerful, noble, and endlessly creative and loving force. It holds every possibility at once, without hierarchy or exception. Even if I have just a single drop of that power, a tiny part of that infinite potential, nothing can prevent me from becoming. For I am Tao’s pioneer, its own scout, sent ahead to chart the terrain, to taste the unknown on behalf of the whole.

This is not arrogance. It is accountability. To see oneself as a creative force is not to elevate above circumstances; it is to cease waiting for circumstances to excuse you from living fully. How can I not see myself as the origin of my experience? The more I accept complete responsibility for shaping my own life, the more I unlock my true inheritance. The more I can go with what is and what happens—rather than just deflecting blows but dancing with them, understanding their rhythm, discovering the intelligence within the collision—the more I can step into my ability to create instead of merely survive.

Even though many events seem to result from other people’s choices, failures, and cruelties, it is most empowering to take full responsibility for them. Not because we caused everything that happened to us, but because the alternative—victimhood as a permanent state—closes the very doors that lead us home. By accepting unconditional responsibility for everything that has ever happened to us, we become the masters of our own lives. We move from being subjects to being authors.

It’s time to embrace who I am. It’s time to fully open up to the next level of being that life intends to express through me, and to face it with everything I have, scars included. I only have a glimpse of what I am about to undertake, but I am driven by a strong desire to pursue this journey into the unknown, into the unexperienced, into the expansive and generous realm of what I have not yet become. I understand that through this process, all that I came here to be will have the chance to be revealed.

Welcome to the most unprecedented experience of my life.

© | Gloria Constantin | All Rights Reserved |

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