It is not always within our control to make changes in ourselves. Deep rooted habits often need the patience of a lifetime to root themselves out from us. Superficial changes like changing the way you eat or choosing to exercise this much if done out of pure will power will not pass the test of time if they are overriding something deeper in us. If the root is rotten, these changes will be a form of violence against ourselves.
A cycle perpetuates itself between “how I actually am” and “how I should be”. This cycle is violent because it negates and seeks to bypass how we actually are in this moment. And being with how things are in ourselves in their raw honesty is many times too uncomfortable for us to bear before the mechanism of wanting to change fix or heal comes in. This mechanism is our will power. And it does not have the power to heal. It only prolongs the perpetuating cycle of getting off and on the wagon.
True healing has to come from a deeper place. A place beyond our jurisdiction. The jurisdiction of trying to make superficial surface changes to something which lives at the root of us. And that which we cannot see clearly for ourselves.
Is not beauty loving and understanding yourself with gentleness and kindness?
Is that not what true beauty is?
For what is any standard of beauty worth without any of those?
Kindness, gentleness, self-love – bring forth your natural beauty.
It is only when you are kind to the places within you that are violent, that true integration and transformation can happen. For in that, the violence is included in kindness and no longer rejected, it softens naturally.
Without softness, there is no real beauty. There is no ability to meet yourself where you are and have genuine self-compassion for this body and all it has been through. For the innocence that you are and all that you have been through.
The violence in us is the hurt in us from having received and internalized the violence of others and their confusion. This violence feels hard done by. Something happened whereby your own inherent dignity was felt to be lost. And so this hurt that lives inside us seeks redemption from the outside. Seeks to restore lost dignity.
It innocently blames Life for the indignity which has befallen it and innocently believes Life owes it something. But this is what is meant by codependency with Life. Just like in any relationship, where you victimize yourself to the other -this unconsciously happens with Life itself. You separate yourself from it, and from there – begin to bargain and barter with Life.
But if you realize the nature of this codependency with Life, you will see that Life is innocent. More so, that Life has given you the gift of itself. Life itself. Freely. Unconditionally. And to bargain and barter with Life is to miss the unconditional Love that Life is.
You cannot restore your dignity without. You can only realize your inherent dignity and belonging in the fact that you are Life itself. And that it is the ultimate gift. It is hard to see this or feel it when hurt and violence are at the forefront. When everything seems to be working to convince us that redemption is to be found without – in the world. But true redemption can only be found at the core of you.
It could not be any other way. For how cruel would it be if it were not so? Being at the core of you, it is the most loving and most intimate thing – for it is love itself. For Love can be no other way. But it is difficult to see this when everything in us is wired to receive from the outside. And the world will tell you that this is hocus.
That is why your solitude independent of anything or anyone is of the utmost importance. Without it, it is easy to get lost and confused. Just as the world is. Certain in its’ confusion. You must be certain in your solitude. Not in a hard way but softly and gently. For in softness and gentleness, true power lies.
