Time for some radical honesty here folks. Honesty with myself, with friends, with those I love. Some of this is hard to say, but somehow sharing makes it better, taking it out of the dark and into the light.
So what’s my big secret? Sometimes it’s all just an act. The positive, upbeat, healthy vibrant woman you see at work and in the community, yep—there are days when it’s all a show. There are days that I am just pretending like it is all okay, everything is good and wonderful—because I am supposed to, right? I am a therapist, a yoga teacher, all about mediation, and mental balance, and go get sunshine and eat some fresh fruit!
But guess what? The truth, the real truth, is that some days I feel so stuck in the ruts of my samskaras (mental and emotional patterns), stuck in habits that do not serve me, stuck in ways of being that serve only to bring me down, that I feel I can never change even though they are incongruent with my true self.
Yep, you heard right. I have a lot of mess, regret and frustration in my life. I have fears about my future, my health, my finances, and my spiritual progress. Mainly, I worry a lot about getting it all right—having control, grasping for some solid ground to stand on.
More and more I realize that my fear comes from a deep seated belief that maybe I am not enough. More and more I realize that all my clinging to security, stability and permanence is just that—clinging, attachment—and that the only way to deal with the fear is to embrace it. To sit with the knowledge that there is no permanence, security or conformation in the external world.
Pema Chodron said it in best in her book When Things Fall Apart. She writes:
“We think that if we just meditated enough, or jogged enough or ate perfect food, everything would be perfect. But from the point of view of someone who is awake, that’s death. Seeking security or perfection, rejoicing in feeling confirmed and whole, self-contained and comfortable, is some kind of death…we are killing the moment by controlling our experience.”
And that is the trap I fall into again and again and again. My samskara is to work just a little harder—eat more perfectly vegan food, meditate more, exercise more, smile more, try harder and keep striving the fears away.
If I control enough, my mind habits tell me, I won’t have to feel the loss, or experience this fear, or feel insecure about how I am. I won’t have to miss my family, wonder about the bills, doubt my competence, feel afraid or alone.
In those moments I am forgetting that feeling, experiencing and going through the loss, the fear, and the anxiety is what it means to be human. To experience life fully, is to know the depths of despair and the joy of freedom. AHHHH! So here I am trying to escape from the very things that makes us awake and alive!
And this is where it gets tricky for me. How do I change the habits that I know do not serve me, if it means I have to experience some form of suffering as I go through the change? It’s not that I want to embrace suffering with open arms, but I don’t want to run away from it either. That denies me the very thing that makes me, and all of us, human.
I believe the answer can be found in our willingness to step into the unknown. If the mental habits and patterns that I have formed have kept me in a place that is unhealthy for me, I have to be brave enough to go forward into a strange “in-between space” before developing new, healthier habits and patterns.
I have resisted changing some of my ways of being, because I have become utterly convinced that these patterns make me WHO I AM! When I accept that these patterns, are simply that—patterns—and nothing more—I can step into an even more evolved version of myself—no longer dependent on these habits and ways of thinking to define myself. Exciting Stuff!
As we let go of the old habits and patterns, new ones will form—but luckily the new ones can be positive, and can help us to chip away at the habits we once believed defined us, and come a little closer to knowing our True Self.
What can you let go of in your life right now? What patterns, beliefs and habits do you hold on to because you’re comfortable with them, identify with them, or don’t know how to function without them?
I promise you, you will never get it right. You will never have it all under control. But have faith that when you embrace the chaos that emerges, we can illuminate that part of yourself that is solid, unchangeable and Divine.
abundantlifevegan 