Excitement and fear are basically the same things in our bodies. It’s the stories we tell ourselves that determine which category it falls under. My words for 2018 are ‘whole expression’. I am choosing to step into greater authenticity and to stop editing what parts of me I think others may ‘be ready for’. Part of this process has been posting more here. Part of it is sharing my writing. I just submitted my first piece to an online publication. This face is how I feel. Part excitement, part fear... but the fear is just letting me know how close this is to my heart... how much my ego senses we have to lose... how soulful and passionate this calling is. So why wouldn’t I do it anyway?
using creativity in business
If you practice yoga or meditation a lot, you’ve probably heard something about ‘right mind’ or using your mind as a tool rather than letting it be the master. This is an ongoing practice for me- especially when it comes to creation, the act of making something intangible tangible. This morning in my creativity period after my meditation I am working on developing workshops and other programs for me to offer for 2018. But instead of deciding what to do, I’m listening. I listen into how it has been recently to take other teachers’ classes and what might be needed to keep our yoga community growing together. I listen into common themes I have noticed among my Energy Medicine clients and how those might be introduced to a group of people. I listen into the sum of my experiences and where my passions are and what I have to offer and what might be longing to express itself through me. And I listen to all this from the heart. Once I have the outline, I let my brain come in quietly to figure out logistics, but I keep checking back in with the heart. I’ve found it’s easier for me to do this when I’m writing or when I’m creating jewelry or wall totems, but nothing is separate... not even my business. So I’m practicing it here, too. It’s has not always been my first instinct, but it feels really good.
self-sabotage
My meditation practice comes and goes. But I can always feel it when I haven’t been spending enough conscious time in stillness. And it continues to amaze me how easy it is to make self-sabotaging decisions. The way I feel when I carve out time to come home to myself regularly feel sooooo sweet. I hope wherever you are in your journey you continue to challenge your ego’s narrative that coming home to yourself is ‘hard,’ ‘too much work,’ or ‘takes time you don’t have.’ Because, after all, what else is there really, outside of you and your journey?
Mess and Miracles
What is a miracle?
In common usage, we often think of miracles as something magical, divinely-sent, extraordinary. We expect fireworks.
But I'm coming to see that true miracles are all around us, everyday. They are quiet. Often we don't truly know they are happening until after the fact. The true miracles we experience are nothing more or less than coming back to a state of love when we have fallen into fear.
And we do fall into fear. It is part of this human experience. We live in mortal bodies and on some level are always afraid that everything we have and want could at any moment be taken away. That if only we were good enough, worked hard enough, lost enough weight or looked a certain way, cared for others well enough, planned carefully enough... that only then will we be able to live happy and meaningful lives that can't be shaken. And then if we do manage to get what we want, we spend so much time trying to hold onto it. Convinced, on some level, that we only got it by cheating because how could we ever truly be worthy of it? Or what we wanted becomes not enough and then we want more and we are never satisfied.
All of this is fear.
The true miracle is to find ourselves caught in the middle of these stories our mind spins, deep in fear and a sense of limitation... and to take a deep breath... and to ask ourselves: In this moment, right here and right now, what is lacking?
Try it.
When I ask myself that question, what comes to me is silence. Grace. Love. When I look at someone in front of me who I have hurt or who has hurt me and I feel fear and guilt and I ask myself, "In this moment, right here and right now, who is this who stands in front of me?"... what comes to me is a stranger. Someone I have no history with. Someone I can now discern in this moment if I need to fear or if I can forgive and love. Because forgiveness is not a choice we make, nor is it something we can give to other people. It is the result of loving ourselves enough to see our mistakes and not get hung up. To see our fear and to realize that we don't need it and to shift back to love. And when we do that, we are free.
I have made a practice of these kinds of questions. I have made a commitment to miracles. I can tell you that it is simple, but not always easy. That it can be messy. But when I see how how much more peacefully my life flows, when I take deep breaths and feel space and grace, when I see my ordinary life take on the glow of something magical, I can tell you - to me, it's worth it.
Reflections on the gift of this human life
I knew it had been a while since I'd written a blog. But I just looked, and it's been over a year.
Words are powerful. They are one of the best tools at our disposal for creating our lives and our stories. They shape how we receive the world and also how we are received by it. They clue us in to how we feel and where we have been wounded. They shake with our passion and our fears. They ring out with our victories. They connect us and disconnect us.
Sometimes we hide behind them or try and use them to control how others perceive us. When used kindly, they can lead to an unfolding like a flower or the cleansing rain of tears. When used to manipulate or deceive either our own selves or others, they become like a weapon which can cut deep, with no truth to rinse the cut and begin the healing.
Have you ever been through a transformation so deep it felt like being born anew? All the words and stories you were so used to using suddenly weren't right... You shed all your identities like skins and in your new naked, tender, vulnerability it was like learning language and life all over again. In times like that, all you can do is hold yourself close and love yourself back into who you always have been, but fresher, clearer... perhaps more minimalist. And a little closer to your own sweet soul.
To speak preemptively during this period of incubation would be to throw the new baby out into the harsh world, defenseless and soft. Sometimes we need to hold our tongues and allow what wants to be born through us it's gestation before we voice it and watch it being blown around in the wind, from ear to ear.
This last year has been one of deep transformation for me. It's held unexpected news, deaths, miracles of forgiveness, some increasingly deep and rich friendships and the soft disintegration of others. It's held sacred ceremony and work and adventure. It's held successes and failures. It's held mistakes and lies - the biggest mistakes being the lies I tell myself. It's been letting myself be opened again and again by the beauty of this world... no matter how many reasons fear finds to close myself off. In this last year, I began traveling again and I had incredible adventures in India. I also finished a two-year program in Integrative Energetic Medicine. I have had periods of disorientation and confusion, followed by such deep clarity and knowing... only to lose myself again, at a different detour in the road.
And now I rest in the sweetness of seeing how all of these experiences have brought me to deeper levels of compassion, presence, trust, and vulnerable authenticity.
In closing out 2017, I found myself filled with wonder at the very simple truth (and the key to why energy medicine works): that there is almost nothing in this life that, when looked at with a loving and compassionate gaze, won't soften.
Now I'm not talking about the kind of love that is fear in disguise - the kind that wants, that fears losing. No. I'm talking about pure Love. The kind that sits in silence and waits for us to reveal ourselves. With no expectations or agenda. That doesn't see us as we were or as we could be, but sees us right here and now. Exactly as we are. And that sees our beauty, not in spite of our imperfections, but because of them. The kind of love that this life has guided me back to, the kind of love that we each deserve to receive, and that we each are capable of giving. The kind of love that we fear, while we so desperately long for it, too.
To look at the world with that kind of love is at once so simple and yet also one of the most challenging choices we have. So once more so you can really take these words in:
There is nothing in this life that, when looked at with love, won't soften.
I invite you to try it.