The Middle Passage
If you’ve had the chance to read the “About” section of this website, you may have somewhat of an understanding as to where my curiosity and quest for meaning emanate from. Oftentimes, our awakening is preceded by a transcendent event (e.g death of a loved one) that stuns us into consciousness and henceforth determines how one values and utilises every subsequent moment one is afforded in this realm. Many of us treat life as if it were a novel. We meander from page to page passively, assuming the author will tell us at the end what it was all about. The longer one remains unconscious, which depth-psychologists refer to as provisional personality, the more likely one is to view life only as a succession of moments leading toward some vague end, the purpose of which we tell ourselves will become clear in due time but never does. In the words of Ernest Hemingway, “if the hero does not die, the author just did not finish the story”. So, on the last page, we die, with or without illumination.
Life is long and lived in chapters. The middle passage begins when a person is obliged to ask self-probing questions of meaning which once circumambulated the early imaginations of childhood, and thereafter was replaced by the provisional personality moulded through “experience of” and “interactions with” our environment, culture and other individuals (family, peers, colleagues etc). The provisional personality is the lens through which we view life based on our experience from childhood to adolescence and first adulthood. The middle passage begins when one summons the courage to face issues that hitherto had been patched over. When questions of identity return and can no longer be evaded. The middle passage begins when we ask, “Who am I apart from my history and the roles I have played? What am I summoned here to do?”. The middle passage is where first adulthood ends, and second adulthood or true personhood commences.
However, the imperfection of what it means to be human is that we carry the history of our life in our psyche as a dynamic and autonomous presence, so more than likely, we are defined and dominated by our past. Furthermore, we’re institutionalised, conditioned and controlled by the power of societal mores and norms (e.g marriage, religion, roles etc) which further shape and embed the provisional personality we’ve acquired. We are beguiled into believing the understandable delusion that if one lives oneself life as one’s parents have, or rebels against their example, one will thereby be an adult. That getting married, bearing children or becoming a taxpayer are confirmations of adulthood. Conversely, the middle passage is an opportunity for redefining and reorientation of the provisioned personality, a rite of passage between the extended adolescence or first adulthood and our inevitable appointment with old age and death. The middle passage represents a wonderful, albeit often painful opportunity to revisit and revise our sense of self. If we are deficient in courage, no revisioning can occur. Those who travel the passage consciously render their lives more meaningful. Those who do not, remain prisoners of their provisioned personality, however happy or successful they may appear in normal life.
The middle passage is a unique invitation to become conscious, to accept responsibility for the rest of the chapters of one’s life and risk the largeness and immensity of purpose to which one is summoned. In the middle passage, one is required, psychologically to die unto the old self so that the new self might be born. Such death and rebirth is not an end in itself; it’s a passage. It is necessary to go through the middle passage to more nearly achieve one’s inherent potential and to earn the wisdom of mature ageing. Thus, the middle passage represents a summon from within to move from the provisional life to true Personhood, from the false self to Authenticity.
Neither regret nor resentment are of use in this phase. In fact, the reviewing and revisioning of one’s life from this vantage point requires a deep sense of understanding and forgiveness of the inevitable crime of unconsciousness. But not to become conscious through one’s journey of life is to commit an unforgivable crime.
Remember - “Who you truly are is only limited by who you think you are” - Normandi Ellis
Peace, Love & Light.