Death’s Invitation

This photo may elicit emotions across the spectrum from beauty to repulsion.  Why?  Many of us recognize the putrid, rancid death as aspects reflected in our own lives...where we have held on too long in a relationship, job, or self abuse and watched that part of us die off in an abnormal, unhealthy manner. It is never too late to choose again, in each moment, and claim your integrity - the state of being whole or undivided.

For some reason every time I look at this photo my stomach turns a little.  There's just something unnatural about it, something not right and so it doesn't sit well with me.  Or, perhaps it hits too close to home in the world of nature metaphors I have been swimming in...is it reflecting a part of me that has been withering, atrophying and dying because I've held on too long, or failed to leap because I feel safe in my current location, even though the waters are up to my neck and rising. 

This is what our lives look like on the physical, emotional, mental and spiritual realms when we compromise ourselves, when our integrity is breached and we cling to the broken, dysfunctional,  and unhealthy.  The challenging part is that no matter how much we might deny it, we know where those places are, yet protect them through distractions, guilt, or worst of all, shame.  What happens if we cling too long...the answer is self-evident.

The beauty is that the solution is just one choice, and one choice, and one choice away; until the good choice becomes your new habit, the new way of being and thriving.