Wholeness Part 5
May 23, 2026
Wholeness Part 5
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.
We moved from a felt sense of wholeness to an awareness of lack. From abundance to the feeling that something in us was missing. Naturally, we tried to regain that lost sense of completeness. We worked harder. We developed skills. We adapted our behavior. We learned how to present ourselves in ways that would gain approval and reduce rejection. This is where the ego stepped in. The ego is not our enemy—it is our attempt to cope. It helps us function, protect ourselves, and navigate the world without being overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy. It creates a version of ourselves that allows us to feel whole by imitating it.
But no matter how refined the ego becomes, it cannot fully restore what we once felt. Something always seems just out of reach. And so we strive—believing that if we can just become enough, we will finally feel whole again. But here is the deeper truth: Our longing for wholeness exists because we have already known it.
In our earliest life, most of us not only received what we needed in our holding environment, we also lived naturally from the qualities of the soul: openness, trust, joy, and connection. If you think about it, we had nothing else to be except our soul. Our experience of life was from this deeper place, and it shaped a quiet inner memory of what it means to be whole. That memory is in our DNA, heart, and our spirit. Whether we consciously remember it or not, it never leaves us.
By midlife, or whenever the ego’s strategies begin to fall short, we often feel that longing more strongly. We begin to sense that no amount of striving can reconstruct that original wholeness. And this realization can be daunting. Because the two things that once gave us that sense of wholeness—our external holding environment and our natural connection to the soul seem difficult to recover in adult life.
Unless…
Unless we begin to increase our consciousness. Tomorrow we will reflect on how to be conscious of our spiritual holding environment and how to shift from the ego to the qualities of the soul.
Spiritual practice and self-inquiry: What ways has your ego tried to reconstruct a holding environment? In what ways did its reconstruction bring satisfaction and in what ways did it fall short?
Prayer:
Dear God, For the journey back to you, back to the bliss, I am thankful.
