Thresholds of Betrayal

We inevitably betray people in our lives, not necessarily because we’re trying to - though we can intentionally betray. Rather, because we don’t (continue to) live into expectations embedded within the narratives of who they may think we are. Narratives we (can) participate in the creation/continuation of where “agreements” inform relational patternings that are often assumed to be fixed, steadfast, and unchanging. Agreements that be-hold shapes that long to shed the husks of previous lives.

We betray the assumptions, projections, fixities, and reliances just as much as we can reinforce and conform to them.

Betrayal gets a binary rap, and implicates us in a world where we should strive to “cause no harm” (as a most beloved kin and I discussed last night-love you).

Betrayal, from its Latin heritage, speaks to a “handing over” of, well, anything. In this case, what I’m speaking to is the handing over of said assumptions, collusions, projections, shadows, and relational agreements. Betrayal hurts. It breaks apart the well-constructed ideas we may have had about our entanglements, and thus the world.

It puts into question entrenched and (often) uncontested certitudes that ballast the lofty ceilings-made-foundation of our well-assembled notions of self in relation to other/world. When the other steps away from their designations and assumed place, well-known roles are “handed over.”The world starts to feel unsettling. Topsy and turvy.

Betrayal is an evolutionary force that invokes worldings and unworldings. It shatters the heart, enabling pools of painful possibility and revolutionary acts of love-making to spill forward. And if you crouch down, feeling the pull of the unknown, you’ll find that as you imbibe that bittersweet elixir of change you’re irrevocably altered. And your life moves like a living altar of trans-formation.

Betrayal can be one of the greatest articulations of love. It’s the refusal to live a half-life, an un-changing life. It’s a mighty YES! A great act of passion that honors the magnificence of creation. And yes, it can hurt. Yes, it can cause harm. But can you imagine walking through the world constantly trying to avoid the inevitability of being alive?