It has been a while since I have written here, Life has been full and I have had to make decisions about removing some things from my plate periodically. I also hate writing when I have nothing to say and lately. It has not been that I did not have anything to say, but for some reason I had told myself I needed to write about the spiritual practice of the month and not just write.
So this morning as I sat and twirled the spaghetti squash around my fork I found myself thinking about how interconnected everything is and how transformative a vegetable can be. Yesterday what I was eating was a whole squash. Then I cut it in half, scooped out what was not usable, roasted it, and then this solid mass of squash began coming out as spaghetti as I ran my fork through it. It is not so much what I did with it afterwards that intrigued me, but the process of transformation which spoke to me.
Isn’t that how our lives are. We come out as an infant, this whole squash. Then as we grow and evolve we go through moments in our lives that enable the Divine to cut us open and remove that which no longer needs to be a part of our belief system. In doing so, our identity changes. As what we believe about ourselves shapes not only our identity, but our reactions to things and our behavior in situations. However, even in that state, the squash like us is still solid and firm. We are in a place where we know something has changed, but we are still recognizable for who we are.
It is the roasting process that allows the meat of the squash to tenderize and the strands to begin to develop. Without that roasting process the spaghetti squash cannot yield its spaghetti shaped strands it is the roasting process that allows the transformation to happen. So that one can remove not solid flesh from the shell, but numerous strands of spaghetti which can then be eaten in all the same ways one would eat spaghetti. It is still the same squash; it just looks nothing like what it did in the beginning.
Isn’t that what happens with us in our own journey, we go through our own experiences which remove beliefs which no longer benefit us from us, allow us to go through situations which assist us in the transformation process, enabling us to become who we are at this moment.