Let yourself see. Let yourself be.

On recognizing and breaking out of self-imposed limits

As I write this, I sit outside with the wind announcing itself through the trees’ rustling leaves while tiny, icy raindrops fall on my skin, reminding me of my mission: to evoke and invoke the world’s aliveness. 

Now I am swimming in the depths of watery tenderness thinking, “maybe I should just share that idea from a couple weeks ago. Then, at least I’d be showing up and offering something.” I recognize my fear of being seen speaking.

Then, I pause and feel a surge of tears coming and I remember: it’s okay - it’s the safest place to be - it’s necessary - to be human and messy. And that’s the moment’s message. Plus, if I’m navigating these waters right now leading up to the eclipse - probably some of you are, too. So this transmission will be more useful. 

In the depths of emotional processing it can be easy to forget the mission beneath everything. The foundations we’ve been building. The strength we’ve been cultivating. Our love. Our awareness. Our support system. 

It can be easy to forget all the tools at our disposal. 

It can be easy to dismiss them as useless when we feel desperate for someone to pick us up and do it all for us or make it go away - the challenge, that is. 

But that’s the thing. The whole point of the lives we’re gifted with: 

The challenge and growing through it. 

The challenge is what we wanted, when we came here, to Earth.

The challenge itself is what we’re really desperate for.

We came to experience, to learn, to share, to connect, and ultimately to become the embodiment of our experiences through these brilliant bodies. 

We did not come to sit and watch from the edges of our lives, while all the world goes on spinning.

Mary Oliver says this:

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - 
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

•••••••••

How do we arrive at this recognition?
How do we embrace the challenge of living?
How do we air our suffering when it feels like we are drowning in it?

First: we must observe without judging. Recognize what is present and stop resisting. 

Judgment leads to fragmentation - right and wrong, good and bad, “I shouldn’t feel this.” “This shouldn’t be happening.” 

We must break the binaries that hold us captive to our suffering.

If we wish to move forward, the next step is this:

Feel the mother fucking feelings. Remove expectations. Cry. Laugh. Scream. Stomp. Be angry. Be tender. Be WITH it - the wave that is coursing. Get into the center and fire breathe it through your body. We are forces to be reckoned with it. Feeling our feelings reminds us of this. 

It reminds us, too, that though in the moment it may seem like life is going to end, it isn’t.

Each emotion is a passing wave if you let it be. 

Pause. Breathe. Recognize what is. Accept it. Let it in. And keep letting it in. Let it exhaust you, the process, until you have no reason to fight it. You’re alive. You moved through it. You’re SAFE.

Next comes the investigation - through observation, not judgment.