OWN IT TO FREE IT

My mind is not always my friend. In the moments of feeling visceral triggers of fear and terror that let me know that, 'Shit, I've fucked up again', anger follows not far behind. In these moments, I hear the voices of my 'young-me' teachers, echoing forward through decades of history to where I stand now, 'Sheila, you are your own worst critic'. 

Funny, now, I realize that, in that context, I always heard 'worst' as 'best', yet never quite believed either. I felt mortified to own 'worst' yet couldn't allow myself to own 'best', so scary was the feeling of being vulnerable. 

I wore this chagrin as a badge of honour. Can any of you relate? The harder I was on myself served to fuel my hope that I'd become better. My punishment would be my reward. Congers up pictures of self-flagellation, doesn't it? Do enough penance and you'll be good enough, don't you know? Hope ultimately became the never-to-be-surrendered driver for my life, fed by and camouflaged in my own deep despair that I'd never, ever get my life 'right'.  

Hope is a tease. Faith is a platform. Each is a choice. Choose wisely.

Today, I had such a moment. 'Shit, I've fucked up again'. And, today is also the day, that I actually noticed that I had been holding THAT as a running belief all of my life; that this belief actually had held some value for me. Today, is also the day that I chose, again, to allow said moment to propel me into yet another moment of choice to celebrate: Eureka, here comes my life!

While I own that the statement, 'Shit, I've fucked up again', is evidence of the deep dive I have found myself very capable of taking into the latrines of low-level thinking - serving as the familiar (even if declared un-welcomed) defaults for living -  still, I KNOW better, when I remember to stay awake. And THAT is the 'crux' for each and everyone one of us: waking up and staying awake.

When I choose to wake up - in a breath - I can easily allow as 'true', for me, that the historical default I have once again fallen into - forgetting to take even one breath to stay awake - is neither good, bad, right or wrong. Instead of something to 'fix' and 'make right', it is the starting point for a very different conversation with mySelf.

Here are the questions it invites in me:

  • How's this perspective, now that I recognize it, working for me?

  • Am I willing to change my mind and choose something else that feels easier, lighter and more resourceful, inside, where I live? 

  • Am I willing to change my mind and choose to stop blaming myself... and others who mirror my own discontent?

  • Am I willing to change my mind and choose to stop feeling sorry for myself and others who mirror my own discomfort?

  • Am I willing to change my mind and choose to intend and attend to the Being I would choose, in this moment. to become, right now?

  • Am I willing to change my mind and choose to live with the complete absence of all historical reference points to habit and habituation? In other words, I am I willing to live as if with amnesia of my past? And, most importantly, am I fiercely willing to own, claim, respect and reach for the courage this choice invites me to take up? No past, no future; this moment, right here, right now?

  • Am I willing to change my mind and simply trust that everything is unfolding exactly as it should?

  • Am I willing to change my mind and choose to feel and hear myself exhaling... and inhaling to exhale again? No breath, no life. Point finale.

I live in this world AND I choose to believe that I AM not of it. I believe that the same is true for you. Are you willing to consider THAT as your most intimate and personal truth... in yourself, for yourself?

Honestly,  it takes significant, determined, sustained and internal resolve to walk the uniquely and intuitively-called journey of SELF that naturally eschews all compromise and compliance to any external and mainstream assumptions that serve to disconnect me from ME, you from YOU, and us from each other. End of story, when I forget my courage and let myself fall unconscious into the stinking morass of self-deprecating default that entrains me to 'Shit, I've fucked-up again', I feel the disconnect that comes with having - yet again - abandoned the real essence of whom I AM. There is no feeling of joy in that. My committed evolution of Self for its own sake requires the fertilization of an entrainment to a much higher-order paradigm shift in thinking about who and what I am as a quantum biological human being. Exhale to inhale is a start.

The most compelling question I believe that we can ask of our Selves, in every breath, is this one:

How does the godForce that I AM choose to live my life today? 

The presuppositions (assumptions that have to be true in order for a question/statement to make sense) are abundant here. Thanks to Louise LeBrun (LouiseLeBrun.ca and WEL-systems.com), this question changed my life and my direction for living my life. And, in the eternal presence of the internal unknown structuring my reality, today, this IS the sustaining question that continues to invite me forward into a different reality of my own creation. This question demands of me that I remember.

 So, I encourage you. Live the question, own the truth of your experience, trust your sensory cues, take direction from your intuition as your one-of-kind guide from inner space. And, when a once denied belief reveals itself, OWN it to free it. 

I just did. Thanks for reading.