Note #5: Taking the leap

Sitting in front of my excel spreadsheet and looking over my finances, I felt a sinking feeling inside. How in the world am I going to make the changes and live the life I desire, when not even that is crystal clear at this point, and finances do not dictate a vast amount of time to sit back and figure it all out!

If I based my next decisions, in fact if I based any of my decisions lately from a financial perspective. I would be living in the same home, going to the same job, feeling the same way inside.  Essentially, nothing in my life would have changed, except perhaps a few more visits to the doctor as I would continue to have stress and depressed related issues.  Nothing would have changed.

I have to say here, that, my life has changed, and continues to change, but none of this has come without stress, worry, a mountain of emotion and insecurity. You see, I don’t want to paint a picture of simply deciding to change my life, and in the next paragraph, have landed, and oh isn’t this wonderful, everyone, come this way, do what I did and you too will change your life.

This has been the hardest endeavour I have ever taken, and it is filled with moments of clarity mixed with moments of being terrified beyond words, moving blindly, feeling my way through the external  and internal chatter saying…What the hell are you doing?

But beneath the incessant chatter, beneath the anxiety and fear, there is a nudging, a knowing that has not manifested as a clear vision, but a nudging that is requiring me to learn to trust, believe, and move beyond my own understanding.

To take a leap of faith, requires courage and a willingness to be open to transformation in whatever form it may need to take.  To change my story, requires living beyond my comfort zone, and learning to trust myself and the process of transformation itself.

All I know is that once I take the leap, I will not remain the same. I will have taken the first crucial step away from my known self, into the chaos where the world of possibility exists.

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Note #4: The search for self

How far back must I search, in my endeavour to understand and unravel from the patterns and conditioning through which I have lived my life?  The experiences imprinted on me which lead to my choices? To my parents? My ancestors?  My cultural heritage? Or do I start at the fundamental root of life naturally expressed as a human?

My mind, filled with thoughts, perceptions, interpretations from gathered experiences; a collection of data, has been running the show.  My feelings of disconnect and discontent stem from living life from the neck up. A place where I reside as the observer of my life, rather than living in the full felt experience of it.

I have wondered about the notion of the search for self, as though it is a destination. That I will ‘find myself’ beneath layers upon layers of programming. It feels like another new age dangling carrot, where we are endlessly seeking for a place we will never really arrive.  I really won’t know until I begin the deconstruction process, the unlearning, and re-learning with a more wholistic integrative narrative.

Truth is, I have never been separate or disconnected from anything, but I have been conditioned to see myself as separate. To live in the perceived isolation of my mind.

I was indeed living in my head. That illusionary place of safety where I did not have to feel, but could observe and analyze and have some sense of being in control. I lived compartmentalized, categorized, always separate, always living in a past or future moment, living from the dictates of a society moving farther and farther away from any experience of connectedness.

Photo courtesy of Jasper van der Meij on Unsplash.com

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Note #3: How do I begin to unravel my life?

The seed of discontent did not lie in specifics, but rather in a general discontent that manifest in almost every area of my life. A low grade depression, low enough in the background to allow me to function day to day, to even smile and laugh, but high enough to signal on the inside, I was in some type of distress.

To the outside world, I looked good. I had a husband, owned a home, had a few good friends, took care of pets, raised a family, worked at a job to add to the household income. All looked well and as I thought it should from the outside. This is what success looks like, right? I had arrived.  I had everything in the equation of what society deemed as successful. I had everything I thought I wanted.

Except. I was depressed and I was lost.

My internal world felt very different from my external world. I had created the picture perfect life, and was dying inside trying to maintain it all. My life was built on a concept, on an idea, and an ideal of which I had not plugged myself into the equation. I was living an illusion. Deluding myself every step of the way. Buying into a version of happiness, that was contrived, that had little to do with authenticity. I was not the tree, rooted in a solid foundation of truth and natural law.

Somewhere along the way, I had de-railed. I was on autopilot, following a prescribed ideal of the evolution of a human being living in this society.

How much unravelling did I need to go through?  How far back did I need to travel to the point of departure from my true nature?

There I stood, at the edge of the known, beginning the painful process of pulling out one thread at a time for examination. A process in which I had no idea of the length, height or depth of the terrain I would be exploring.

 

 

Photo courtesy of Mark Harpur via Unsplash.com

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Note #2: What are you at the edge of?

What are you at the edge of? Feeling at your wit’s end, the last straw, that nagging feeling inside that will not give you a moment’s peace. That thing that keeps you up at night, or sends you looking in the medicine cabinet for relief. Are you able to identify what that is?

It’s a feeling, stemming from a thought, rooted in a circumstance, simmering in a perspective or perception.

That feeling of uncertainty, has our feathers ruffled, as an internal or external circumstance, invited or uninvited has shown up in our lives in some way, shape or form requiring something of us.

When things don’t go as planned, or meet our expectation, we find ourselves, at that uncomfortable edge, required to make a choice. It can be big or small, but each choice contains within it the direction of our lives, for our lives are created choice by choice.

Understanding what is behind our choice is key. Always looking beneath the surface to discover what is motivating us to make the choices we are making, and holding our choices up against our ideal outcomes.

But what of that nagging ‘thing’ inside of us? That restlessness? We are being given a signal that a change is required. It can be a change in circumstance, or a change in perspective.

And once again, we are at the edge.

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