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A deep pressure in the middle of my chest. The sky begins to open up to me, cracking itself wide open so much that a light makes my eyelids begin to flutter. A pressure begins to press my heart open to the East as my upper back connects deeper to the earth. I feel the right side of my heart begin to unfold. “Be gentle”, I whisper. A soft gush of wind caresses my cheek. The bottom corner of my view, I begin to see a program being written in sacred geometry. In real time. I realize that the world is unfolding before my eyes and the sacred truth is shown to me. I awaken.
How important is it for you to live in this moment. Do you even have the want ? Are you desired to change your dirty little ways or is it just too difficult to clean yourself up ? Does the heaping pile of mountainous excuses look too difficult to process or do you tell yourself that you aren’t strong enough to change ? Maybe you think the benefits are too far off to reap rewards or maybe you just won’t see yourself as worthy enough. I feel you. I have been there. I love your humanness. The truth is, we get in our own way. We have to learn to step aside and allow ourselves to be accessible to the openness of the world.
Where is the vile in your life? Perhaps it is the triggers that take you to the ruthless thoughts. Maybe it lies in your righteousness. How important is it for you to explain yourself and does anyone really care anyway. Maybe you have a little shadow underneath that pretty cloak you wear everyday. Yes, that one that you keep to yourself, like its nobody’s business. Do you overcompensate with comedy because you can’t sit in the space between words. Do you wait to give advice when supposedly listening. You are living in an ego pattern. Those delicate parts of you will stay delicate, child. If you do not allow them the ether around you to heal. Crawling around in it and faking it to make it. Recently I found myself underneath a tree on my Shady Little Stoop myself micro scoping my own shadows. Realizing more and more about myself. Without identifying with our shadow, it is an essential task to bring it forefront to our awareness. We are so clever in our ways. That shadow trickster is, well, tricky. I like to get all down and dirty and smile at myself sometimes. Wow. You really went there. How dare you judge, little trickster. Let’s get the focus back on self.
Scrolling on instagram hijacks our attention. Fifteen minutes later we are secretly hating on someone who is being mean to puppies. Or laughing at a prank. Or looking for the perfect cashmere scarf. Every five seconds a different shadow arises on our continuous stream of vile and worthwhile content. But what is truly worthwhile in that hot mess. Are we just avoiding reality.
It is so easy to look at others shadows, while avoiding our own. We all have our roles and narratives. How dark has your story been marinating in the its own witchy brew, becoming more identified with your pain, making itself more rigid. Creating a density in your pattern. A long time probably. Some of us carry our stories like cloaks, imbedded in every wrinkle, in every inflamed tissue and in our own manifested diseases.
Recently i came to the conclusion that getting well and changing patterns sometimes brings its own bag of grief. Not everyone that you love is along for the ride. Sometimes becoming well sadly results to an end to certain relationships. Changing our behaviors may seem like abandonment to those that you have catered to. I feel hurt as well at times. When relationships begin in our traumas, as we work on our traumas, those relationships sometimes lose their logic. It feels baffling. Both parties are often confused as to what happened. When I look deep into the reason, I can understand more. People come into our life during our trauma. These people are blessings at the time. We truly need each other, and no person that has ever entered your life is a mistake. It is important, however, that we are able to let relationships end when they become unhealthy. I notice that there was a time that I judged people and their decisions. I no longer sit in that pattern. Shifts to higher ground allow me to see how deeply I was living in my judgements. My self righteousness is a beast that calls to be respected, and surrendered to. Who am I to say or think what is best for others. Who was I ever. Not one single person wants pandering and pleasing truly. And people that are drawn to it are extraordinarily selfish. I ask myself how delusional I must have been to believe that I was so powerful that I could change people for the better by catering to them. Or pushing them to change. My own pleasing and fixing was a deeply embedded pattern that began when I was a little girl. Competency grows from our wobbles. Learning to work our way into dynamic rhythm. This is the when work becomes art. We orchestrate a symphony of life by standing on our own two feet, proud and strong. Without wanting or needing but learning through our own lessons. If we fully focus on ourselves, we allow others to grow strong. Helping is never the answer in situations that people should be finding their own way in life.
We live in days of great suffering. Friend after friend of mine have passed through addiction. People with a world of potential chose time and time again to obliterate themselves with drugs and alcohol. Dearest friends have died, unable to escape their own shadows. Dark voices in their heads whispering that they just weren’t strong enough to make their way to higher ground. The sweetest souls lose their own battles against their selves. My own beloved daughter is once again in her vicious cycle of heroin addiction. The abyss calls to her in its own murkiness and I am left alone to live in the pain of mourning. That mourning is my own. I own it wholly. I am a mother if I am anything. I am tired and sad. My fears follow me everywhere once again. But not as intensely as they once did. Unfortunately losing people I love through addiction has taught me to find strength in my unknowing. For what may happen, my deepest fear must be dealt with in lucid moments. I cannot escape my own heart. I must stand sober and serious to the reality of my world and I will be the first to admit sometimes it is hard to look at. To truly know reality. Fuck drugs.
I reminisce my youth and recognize that the most difficult time of my life was my twenties. Trying to find your way in the world, and blaming my childhood for my own bag of crap was all that I had to hold on to. It is so hard to look at ourselves and uncover the root cause of why we do things. Raw wounds that won’t heal while we reenact vicious cycles of our own trauma. The one class we all NEED is left invisible to the masses. How do we truly HEAL. As difficult as my twenties were, I must admit that fifty can carry a very different element of pain. I see the wreckage of the wounded and the full on destruction of addiction in loved ones. Greater awareness brings greater work to our doorstep. I feel compelled to reach out, to work harder, and to stay true to my practices. I stay on the path so that a light can lead many others to the same medicine that has healed me. This is Heart Work. And you cant help but to feel deeply when you surrender yourself to it.
There have been times in my journey that I have victimized myself in relation to my daughters addiction. Feeling the “why me.” Could i have not gotten a more tolerant lesson? Why did i have to have this beast tearing my heart wide open. The love of my life in full destructive annihilation. How in the world can I let this journey be her own. I do not see the day that I will not carry a certain amount of pain and anger. An anger at our government for being so passive in its will to protect our youth to a culture of hard and deadly drugs. Anger at a culture that promotes addiction opposed to healing, keeping us in survival instead of ease. Im pissed off. I will own it at this point. Yet to truly know darkness, we find wholeness. I am lifted by the love around me. The worthwhile. The people that I find myself amidst. A pendulum at times seems to tug me from one side to the other. Reminding myself that I am not in control of anything.
Sometimes the vile gains power throughout our attention to it. We must live warrior strong to unthread from the sad and sick delusions of the world. Present times calls for a tenacity for self discipline. Otherwise life can feel that you left your shoes at home on rocky paths. I gravitate to people who own their own shadows. Realness. Stillness. People who are continuously growing and transforming their lives into something worthwhile. This is where trust begins to plant a seed. I can see the beauty around me in my friendships, as well as in the world. Every season churns into a stable calmness, softly, before working into the next season. The sun shines hard midday on our cheeks, but the moon caresses us to sleep. A garden grows. A child is born. A gush of wind, a soft rainfall. Enchantment lives outside and inside of us. LIFE. Everywhere and constant. Our resistance is the only halt to the elegance around us. And our shadow lurks for any opportunity to make its presence known. Without judging it or trying to destroy our own darkness, maybe we can be a little kinder to it. Maybe even smile and wink at it. Wow, there you are again, you little devil. You are clever, dearest shadow, so clever. There are better ways to know ourselves than to berate and hate our darkness. It doesn’t work anyway.
And then comes trust. Trust in ourselves allows for trust in the world around us. Putting down suitcases of other people’s baggage lightens the load. And with time, we can dissolve our own baggage as well. Allow yourself the courage to let go. Surrender begins with looking in the mirror. The painful process of self study allows for you to truly see truth. And begin to trust. Trust. Yourself and the journey of others. To know the love exists close up or far away. To know that a well wish on a star is sent energetically into the heart of a soul across the continent. Trust becomes faith. Someone you love is cared for by a higher hand that does not in any way have an expectation. This same hand gives comfort in lucid moments. Every one of us lives connected to each other.. If I believe so deeply as I feel that I do, I must remind myself that we are all protected by source. In every moment.
The painful gaze into our own abyss unfastens a box. Wrapped in a tissue paper designed by your heart. Opened by a red pearl deep inside your wholeness. That illuminates into a lotus flower, breathing it’s own unfolding into a deep trust. A trust of your SELF. A trust in the journey of others. A trust in our own interconnectedness.
For all of the vile and the worthwhile, remember this. Knowing comes from our own wholeness. There is a space around us and inside of us that is a haunting awareness. This awareness feels no need to over explain, or over think, but to be still. There are enough words in this world, and no reason at all to add more. Be more. Be still and listen to the sweet and stillness of ease. This is an escape of the vile and the space of the worthwhile.
I’ll meet you there….
Tina Chabot
e-RYT 500
Ayurvedic Health Counselor
www.tinachabotyoga.com
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