Yesterday, I went on a 30 minute walk with Russ to get away from my desk and clear my head. On the walk, I decided to listen to a podcast and attempt to stimulate my brain versus numbing it with music. The podcast touched on Nietzsche’s three metamorphoses of spiritual development.
- Camel
- Lion
- Child
In camel, you carry the weight of “Thou shalt” and adhere to societal rules and expectations. Meanwhile in lion, you’re in a rebellious phase, destroying old values and finding out what you subscribe to. I came to understand that in this phase you’re finding out what you don’t like and auditing your belief system. Lastly, in child, it’s the innocence and rebirth of your creativity and establishing new values.
I thought about various areas of my life and where I’m in different phases. The nice thing about camel is knowing you’re on the brink of changing things or shaking them up. Any time I’ve felt stuck or burdened by something, I’m motivated by the fact that the only way through is to change something, even though it will come with temporary discomfort.
In the podcast, the host talked about her own metamorphose as someone who was raised Southern Baptist and dismantled a belief system that had been put in place for her. To me, this topic in particular is deeply personal and one I empathize with. Expectations and oppression surrounding religion, denomination and lifestyle choices are a connector for those who have felt them at any extreme level.
Right after I graduated from college, I was lost and unsure of my path forward. Where would I live? What kind of job would I pursue with my degree? The bigger question: what did I want out of life with everything at my disposal? While an exciting feeling, it was also daunting and paralyzing. During this time I started going to a church but I use that term lightly. To describe it more accurately, it was a meeting of people in a dark little theater downtown where they had coffee and donuts. The music wasn’t religious and the “sermon” was more of a spiritual conversation. It felt like a room of people who felt very conflicted about religion and wanted to feel connected to something greater than themselves. I feel this same energy in a yoga class.
One Sunday morning, the conversation was about unlearning things. This isn’t a prolific topic but it hit me at a particularly timely moment. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment how much baggage and guilt I carried for not wanting to live a certain way. I didn’t feel it was an option for me to subscribe to my own belief system or to explore alternatives. Things of interest had been demonized or cemented into my brain as the wrong way of doing things. In many ways, I view most of my 20’s as a lion phase. I was constantly running from these expectations and myself. I didn’t want to be put into any box (career, religion, relationship, etc.) and I spent a lot of time and energy rebelling against these ideas. Now, I feel that I’ve entered a child phase where things are more aligned to who I am, or who I’m working towards becoming. I feel lighter and creatively inspired with more of a focus on what I do like instead of what I don’t.
Maybe that’s just getting older and having more experience to draw from? I’m not sure.
In Berlin when you go to a club, they put a sticker over your camera to keep places authentic and free. Despite missing my friends and family back home at times, that’s how my life in Germany feels—like having a little sticker over the camera and I can be my authentic self. There’s no pressure for me to be anything except who I want to be. It’s a feeling I don’t want to take for granted and one I’ve been working towards for a long time.
side note: we’ll be entering leo season here shortly… and as you know, i’m the sign of the lion so who knows what will happen.