Month: March 2022

Let yourself belong to yourself. In your totality. Not to your partner. Not to your family. Not to any group or teacher. Not to your country, society or culture. Not to any role or narrative. Nothing. Just you, here, now. You with your softness. Your simplicity. Your scent. Your breath. Your feel. Your touch. Your sensuality and beauty.

Notice how that feels. Almost like it’s not allowed. Like you’re going to be punished for it. Disliked for it. In trouble for it. Notice how there’s fear in taking yourself back in this way. Like you can’t possibly live like this. Spend your days like this. In this “self-indulgence“.

As soon as someone comes into your vicinity, you have to give yourself away – no questions asked. You have to answer to. And the stress of that. The stress of being outside yourself. Available to the other prior to your own self.

Unaware of your own self, your own needs, your own beauty and rhythm. Unaware that you’re even outside yourself.

Unaware of your own self, your own needs, your own beauty and rhythm. Unaware that you’re even outside yourself.

It’s painful living in this way. It’s feeling like a sell-out 24/7 and not knowing why. And the anxiety of being at the mercy of giving away that permission slip to be dropped in on as a given. Having to answer to that. Forced to relate in this – no questions asked, I’m yours before I am my own – kind of way. It sucks. It really sucks.

And there’s grief there. Grief of feeling like you have to leave everyone behind. Give everyone back to themselves constantly. There’s anxiety in that. Because you can see the ways you’re always being pulled, invited even just with eye contact to leave yourself constantly. To cater to. To be ‘out here’ – ready, in dialogue, available, always on call. It’s exhausting.

Allow yourself to really feel into how much you actually hate that. Because you do. You hate leaving yourself. You’re tired of it. You’re suffocated by it. Because it’s not natural. It’s fear-driven.

It can feel almost alien to come back to yourself fully in this way. But there’s a deep longing for that. To belong to yourself. To be fully enveloped in your own yummy goo, your own soft mush. To be cocooned in yourself without having to take one micro energetic step outside yourself.

To be totally self-indulgent in the healthiest most natural way. To give yourself that permission slip. To recognize that birthright and the insanity of anything other than that.

Not answering to anybody.

Not being on call.

Not engaging with the slightest invitation to leave yourself.

Not as a harsh, willful doing but a soft and kind vigilance to stay true, stay real. Stay connected to yourself. To put yourself first in a fearless, loving and self-honoring kind of way – come what may.

What if the struggle is real. What if you don’t gaslight yourself out of how you’re actually feeling, what you’re going through. What if it doesn’t matter what everybody thinks, relates or doesn’t relate to your experience. What if it’s all Holy. All yours. All real. All true. All pure.

What if this is the real meaning of longing in a lived sense. Would you not go easy on yourself? Would you still make an enemy of the pain? The pain that can’t be understood. The pain that takes you to your edge. Where you can no longer just put on a brave face. “Presence it”. Whatever that means.

Just be defeated. Be the Holy mess that you are. Let whatever inconsistencies in you be there. You’re not going to line everything up perfectly. When has that ever happened? Except as an absolute lie. A facade of ‘normal’. Which you knew to be a complete fabrication. You always have. Stewing in worry and blinding effort that this fabricated bubble might be popped one day. What stress. What a way to live if you call that living.

Is it unbearable? Agonizing? Too much sometimes?

Does it feel like something’s gone absolutely fucking wrong?

Does it keep coming back and bringing you to your knees?

Is it a complete lie to say that you’re grateful for it, that it’s all for something…. that you’re on your way. That you can ‘handle’ it. Or try to anyway.

Absolutely.

All of the above.

Notice this feeling like you have something to do, take care of. That there’s something of urgency just waiting for you to snap out of your yin state to attend to. Notice that it’s vague, blurry, undefined. Is it this or is it that?

Allow yourself to drop ALL of it.

No urgency. No hurry.

Nothing to attend to.

Notice the fear that comes up with just the notion of that.

It can’t be true. Where’s the catch?

I have to be alert. Prepared for something. Some line of defense. Something to defend. My life. I have to remember what I stand for in this battle. In this “stand off”.

Allow that one to be held. To soften into safety. Into the truth of what’s real. What’s sane.

Notice the overwhelm of that one. Just completely thrown off. Not knowing what or where the problem really is or what to say or how to address it.

Let that one rest.

She’s been in survival mode over trivial matters all her life. Not trivial to her. Because her survival depended on it. But trivial in the sense that what was presenting itself as urgent and dire was just a flailing, unreliable, no truth or ground to it, noise.

And you don’t have to take that on anymore. For real. For good.

That is madness, terror. With no legs beneath it. It is completely futile taking any of it seriously.

Tend to the overwhelm. Tend to the fear.

It’s safe to let go. You are held. Life has the door. Life made this cocoon for you. Life. Nature.

You will lose 100% of the time in addressing the madness.

The reign of terror is dying.

Bravado is not what you’re after.

Neither is mentation – to prove or disprove a point of view.

All that is fear.

Giving up is not it either,

That can also be fear – in a more subtle disguise,

A subtle rejection, an avoidance,

A false middle-ground of pacified neutrality.

Hopelessness can feel like the place to be,

Like hiding out in the basement – defeated by fear,

In many ways, it’s a step up from bravado,

Which shouts out from the rooftops,

In its delusional readiness to conquer the world.

Fearlessness is not out to prove anything.

Fearlessness is not a confrontation,

Making sure that that person knows, that I know what they’re doing.

It’s not a pretense or an out-maneuvering.

You might be surprised to find grief there,

An unsuspected neighbor,

Beckoning at your door or whispering from the window.

Fearlessness is not activated or charged by something.

Even if it’s, the right thing to do.

It’s not willful.

Nor is it on hight alert.

Fearlessness is kind.

A primary kind of kindness.

Directed towards yourself, first and foremost.

A kindness that redacts the burden of trying to be kind.

Leaving you sound, equanimous, sane.

Feeling like you have something to prove, to present a facade of resilience, ‘okayness’ – all the while, you’re hot and bothered on the inside is futile and exhausting. It’s an attempt to escape the pain. The pain of feeling ganged up on. Judged. Ridiculed. Deeply misunderstood. Deeply neglected. Ostracized.

Like you have to defend yourself and your life every single day, every moment. That’s what the incessant thoughts are. An attempt to defend ‘your place’. It’s a guardedness. Not being able to land anywhere. Fully land. Fully belong. Fully root down. Keeping you disconnected. Dis-membered.

It takes great patience and compassionate persistence to land regardless. To not wrangle with the old nightmare and softly land. It’s not easy. And it’s okay and important to acknowledge that. Otherwise, you’re left wondering and berating yourself for seeming ‘failure’.

And the feeling like you’re surrounded. Like you can’t seem to escape. Can’t get away with the slightest living from a resourced place without some sort of energetic backlash from your environment – that is real. A feeling reality of which that constant confrontation can wear you down into hopelessness, despair and collapse.

Especially if you’re being asked to answer to things. And feeling tongue-tied there too. Like how can I possibly explain where I’m at right now? And it’s true. It’s not possible. And that’s the catch-22 that the mind is confounded by. Caught in a loop of constant explaining, defending and the futility of that. The mere exhaustion of it.

But there’s goodness here. There’s goodness here regardless. And you don’t have to struggle to find this goodness, even though it might feel like it sometimes. And you don’t have to struggle to land.

The struggle is tied up up into this belief that there’s something you can do and you’re just missing the mark. That what’s happening, the situation you’re in is somehow wrong. The environment, the subtle nuances you feel, are somehow wrong or imagined.

And this has to do with believing the facade of normal presented to you by the old nightmare characters. Taking that facade to be true. And once that’s believed, you’re putting up a facade in response to the facade. It’s a loop. The facade of okay-ness and resiliency up against the facade of normal. Playing in no man’s land.

And you don’t have to be stoic and willfully uninvolved in all that because you can’t. You can’t impose your will here. To rise above. To transcend. No, I won’t engage in this dance. It’s not your call. All you can do is notice. And bring kindness to the places in you that struggle. Wrangle. And understandably so.

When your whole culture feels insulted and aggravated by living from and in goodness – it’s not a small thing to be confronted with, to feel into. And there’s something to being reminded of that when it seems like you’re falling into states of despair and collapse because of how hard it actually is.

What you’re seeing and feeling as a backlash from trying to live from not knowing, from handing your will over, from goodness – is not imagined. And the patience, softness, kindness and cocooning required here in this place of taking baby steps is something worthy of protection.

It is worthy of leaving others hanging with no response, no solutions, no submissiveness, no answers – because you’re not pretending this. You really don’t know. You really can’t do. You really can’t explain. There’s really no solution. Nothing you can think your way to anyway. And they really wouldn’t understand anyway.

It’s not your imagining. It really is like this. And you don’t have to come up with any solutions – which is hard. Because something wants to get out of this. Move on already. It doesn’t want to be pinned. Feel the feels. Because it’s not easy. And that’s okay too.

As much as you can, stay with the goodness, stay with the resource, birdsong, plants, clear sky. And know that there really isn’t something you can do. It’s not up to you anymore. And you can hand over whoever you think you need to answer to – to That. Hand them over. Because you can’t explain, don’t need to explain and it’s not your doing.

At the bottom of the well of all the fear is a deep sense of worthlessness. A worthlessness clothed in loneliness. In that loneliness, seperateness. And in that seperateness, fear.

It’s a wounding. An open wound. A wound that aches a distrust in Life. A wound that feels too vulnerable, too raw, too hurried, too scared, misunderstood. A wound that doesn’t know how to explain itself even though it longs to be known.

This wound can sense the slightest of energies of non-attunement. It can sense impatience. It can sense when it’s met with confoundedness or over-simplified rhetoric. The other to it can often feel far-reaching. Like trying to communicate underwater or in space. Entirely focused on getting enough oxygen – no energy for much else.

This wound wonders whether there are others who know it. It feels let down when it can see in their eyes that they don’t. Which amplifies it’s sense of loneliness.

This wound is not up for ‘breakout rooms’, dyads, or relational healing. When it’s dropped in on, all it can muster is infinitesimal. Nothing grand. Not the time for experimentation, not the time to put yourself ‘out there’, or ‘be a good sport’.

But often, in this wounded place, it’s easy to get caught-off-guard. Easily overwhelmed. Desperate. Overridden. Rushed. Because it’s so tender. So tender. So confused by whether others can sense it or not. Wondering, trying to see… Do they see me? Do they know what I am? Can they tell me?

And in this desperation, losing itself to the other. Letting the other set the tone. Letting the other speak for it. All the while knowing it’s not totally actually true. Because it doesn’t touch the ground of this wound. The real- you can’t just transcend this -struggle. The pain of it. The pain of it that won’t let up.

This wound was there from the beginning. It let itself known unannounced from the depths. It wailed and shot up in fear in the middle of the night. Feeling itself to be an un-understandable burden for others. Which it was. And then shame burst the wound even wider. Shame became the wound’s authority. Seething at it to be buried and pushed down – deep deep deep down. The shame of having this agonizing fucking mystery of a pain that no one could understand or relate to.

What are you? Why have you been with me so long? Where did you come from? Why do you visit me and elude others? Are you here to teach me defeat? That’s what happens when the mind gets involved. It can’t help it, it can’t stand the openness of this wound. The nakedness of it. It’s unbearable to it.

The shame bit is a big one. On this wound. The shame of the wound is the top layer. The desperation of trying to find someone who knows this pain is tied up in that shame. The grooves and carving of this wound is shame. Deep shame. Deep hurt. Deep pain.

Notice when the whole world is in your head. Notice the weight of that. The burden. When you’ve conceptualized where you are and what now is. And you’re living in that narrative. That story with those people. And their problems with you and your problems with them. And where all the relationships stand.

When you live there, you’re going to be on the run. You’re going to be in time. And that time is hurried, fast, not enough, one thing after another. It’s constricted, there’s no space there. No leg room. You’re sitting tight, moving fast, trying to catch up or afraid to be caught up with.

Notice all the people in your head. All the neighbors, all the family, all the society, all the teachers, from the street cleaner to that dude that just keeps showing up. Notice how they in exist in your head in the context of what day it is.

Oh, it’s the middle of the week, everybody’s going to work. And you somehow have to pay tribute to that – energetically. Oh, it’s the weekend, everybody’s hanging out with family. And you somehow have to take that in and what that means about you.

Just notice that whole scheme of things, that whole world, that whole dance, that loop that keeps on looping – and looping you with it. Notice how it is an overlay on the goodness that’s here – always here. The goodness in the leaf, the goodness of the feel of the sun shining, the goodness of the clear blue sky, the goodness of the breeze, the air. How it’s freely given, just here, just available.

The goodness of the plants dancing in the wind. The goodness of your back resting on the chair. The goodness of being given another day to live in this wonderful, mysterious existence. Without any requirements. Openly giving itself to you. Presenting itself to this. Being this. Ising this.

Notice how there’s no problems here. No one waiting on you here. Tapping their foot on the ground begrudgingly and impatiently. That monster is in the nightmare. That monster needs to be seen and felt through for what it is. Fear. Conditioned fear. With no basis. No real ground to stand on. Like a myth or a superstition.

Notice this sense of feeling obligated to a certain sense of structure of going to bed at a certain time, waking up at a certain time – as if you have somewhere to get to lest you be found slacking. As though you are being held accountable by the world around you somehow keeping tabs on your behavior, on how you spend your time, and what you are doing or more so, not doing.

Your internal clock and external behavior is dictated by a feeling that you answer to someone. Some authority. A parent. Society as a whole – coming and going as they do – and you idly fermenting on the side. Your spiritual teacher(s), God, Life.

There’s a sense in you that you need to explain yourself, explain your life. Give good reason to be. To be left alone. As though you are unreliable somehow when left to your own devices. And that you are costing others in doing so.

There’s a sense of growing impatience from the world. The more you return to solitude, quiet integrity. You feel a mounting tab on the side – people you have to get back to, things you should probably do. But all this is a blur. An old nightmare. Fear.

The nightmare has you gripped in fear. To doubt that you can live in simplicity and joy. The nightmare gives you this subtle feeling that you will be punished. That you can’t under any circumstances fully land here. Because there’s always something that needs to be done, seriously, now!

But that’s the voice of the past, the voice of the mother, the traumatized, lost mother. Flailing about in the dark. In darkness, she is. And so is everybody else.

You are stepping out of the darkness. You are leaving the nightmare behind.

And so, feel the fear, feel the urge to rush, to do, to flail. And let yourself learn slowly, that you can land here. Your landing here is God-given. God-chosen. Not at the behest of anyone else.

There is a story of a woman running away from tigers. She runs and runs and the tigers are getting closer and closer. When she comes to the edge of a cliff, she sees some vines there, so she climbs down and holds on to the vines. Looking down, she sees that there are tigers below her as well. She then notices that a mouse is gnawing away at the vine to which she is clinging. She also sees a beautiful little bunch of strawberries close to her, growing out of a clump of grass. She looks up and she looks down. She looks at the mouse. Then she just takes a strawberry, puts it in her mouth, and enjoys it thoroughly.

Pema Chodron, The Wisdom of No Escape

It’s ok if an exchange or experience with a teacher left a bad taste in your mouth. It’s ok if you didn’t like the dynamic. It’s ok if you’re disoriented by exposing your most vulnerable self and wanting to feel that personal connection with the teacher. Instead, feeling flattened by the impersonal dynamic of teacher-student.

You have to give yourself that freedom. That freedom to notice. Something in you felt questioned in that, like your experience isn’t valid. And it’s okay to acknowledge that.

Especially if you’ve had your experience extremely validated and honored and not over simplified in the past even if it was just once. That one time counts. And so noticing when there’s a qualitative difference there.

You’re not ungrateful for the exchange but it’s okay to discern that there’s a difference. Because when you don’t, you’re actually going against yourself.

But noticing your experience, validating your experience – even if it isn’t like everyone else’s – is important. And trusting yourself, your instincts and your ability to tune into nuances – not gaslighting yourself out of that.