What you can become aware of through a thoroughly trimmed hedgerow

This spring we have thoroughly trimmed the hedgerow which surrounds our house. It has become much too wide, branches were over a meter of length, and even though it was a tremendous amount of work, after a while only some fierce stalks were standing upright. Consequence of this was, that we had lost a great part of our privacy with the neighbors (and the street). From their driveway you can now easily look into our living room.

I noticed there was some remaining work for my personality here, which of course was privacy-related. Stripping away those things which guarantee your privacy are a great way to help you become aware of your own issues ;-D

What was the case? After some unpleasant feelings and searching, inspired by my noticing that my personality behaved differently now and then, I found out that the following issues were at hand: my personality of course told me that I somehow was not good enough. As long as he can hide this, that's fine. So as long as you do not see the neighbors (or they do not see you), no sweat, you can be yourself as you like. However, as soon as the suspicion arises that they can see you, you have to behave differently, so as to prevent you from not being liked, and you have to monitor that you are successful in this. Last year I made a beginning with this process of awareness when we changed the lace curtains for luxaflex in the windows, which made it easier from outside to see what was going on in our house. And now a new layer was introduced.

Based on rich experience I know - and so does my personality - that noticing this as an issue already implies the end of it is near, that it is about becoming aware and letting go of the fact that my personality attempts to close my mind on others through hiding behind what he believes is a 'desired picture'. And when I were to be successful in that, I would not only deny others access to my inner Self, I would even deny myself the same.

What is really at the basis comes down to this: being yourself is all right when others cannot perceive you, when they can you have to live up to personality standards (there is a rich choice of assortment ;-), assumed or 'proven valid' through experience ) Not meeting a general picture implies a risk to your personality: the risk of being rejected. What is so terrible about that, can be found out in other columns on this site. For me, these are the last remains of something which has been built out of many layers over each other, and in this example you see some of these layers which helped me over time to use for Awareness and letting go.