“Therefore, you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.” —Matthew 5:48

The two things that once gave us that sense of wholeness when we were young children, our external holding environment and our natural connection to the soul, seem difficult to recover in adult life.

Where did our longing for wholeness begin?

Perhaps it began in our earliest days—when we and our caregivers formed a kind of holding environment. In that space, our needs were met. We were fed, protected, comforted, and—hopefully—loved. There was a quiet completeness in that experience. A kind of early wholeness. But as we grew, life became more complex. We encountered limits. We lacked certain abilities. We experienced rejection, disappointment, and comparison. We were not always understood, accepted, or affirmed. Slowly, we became aware of what we did not have… and what we believed we were not. And so, something transformed. 

To realize our wholeness is to acknowledge our deficits as growing edges, and to genuinely embody our divine selves— all our qualities that make our soul a unique and divine being with a personal purpose. There are many ways we reconnect to our divinity. Many spiritual practices reveal our divine qualities and help us shift toward them. 

Having everything we need, and being everything we are, is wholeness. But so many times, we do not realize that we have what we need and that we are complete as we are. So many times, we feel insufficient, damaged, and not enough. We feel unwhole. Without feeling whole, we are more susceptible to hopelessness. But the good news is we can rediscover our wholeness that was there all along and live from it. Our wholeness is a gift bestowed on us at our making—it never goes away. We can spend our entire lives unaware of it or forgetting it. Or we can embody and live from it. 

The opposite of wholeness is fragmentation… what we often experience as brokenness. In Enneagram language, this is called disintegration: a movement away from our healthy center where our thoughts, emotions, and actions begin to unravel. We lose coherence. We lose balance. We lose ourselves.

Welcome to this week’s daily Reflections on “Wholeness.” 

Regardless of what happens, we are whole. Even during scarcity, sickness, conflict, and loss, we are whole and free. We may not feel whole, we may feel wounded and depleted. We may feel there is a gaping hole in us. But even with these challenges, the truth is we are whole.