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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Note #1: Life as a Tree

I have always admired trees. They know their place within the big circle of life. From a tiny seed, they grow strong roots within the earth and stretch their branches up to the sky. Rooted in their purpose in this ecosystem, they reach out, touch and sustain other life forms, each with their own unique life expression, each contributing to the whole. They are a living breathing expression of the natural law of life. They are so much more than meets the eye, so much more that goes unseen beneath the surface.

As I make my way through my day, feet walking on the ground, limbs at my side, my head extending upwards to the sky, I am aware that amongst the many intricate systems within my body that keep me alive, there is also much turmoil  beneath the surface of my skin. A restless feeling of disconnect and discontent. An inner tension; a welling up of energy and emotion, calling for my attention.

I am awakened from a deep slumber to see my life, as not being fully lived. I am going through the motions, but I cannot feel the pulse of my life. As I gaze at the tree outside of my window, I have a sense that I am not living in alignment with my true nature. And so I find myself, at the edge. Of what I am not sure, only that I am being nudged from the inside out towards the periphery, towards the edge of my known, habitual self.  I am standing at the threshold, at the edge of change.

Where will my journey take me? I’m not sure. The one thing I am sure of though, is that I cannot go on living a life that is not congruent to who I am.  I must leave my known, habitual, programmed existence, and go on an inward and outward journey into the wilderness that each provides. To feel fully alive, in life, as life, shedding beliefs, perceptions, routine, and moving beyond the limits of my learned, patterned understanding. I need to go back to the root, to the foundation, learning from my own  experience and lived perspective.

This is where my journey begins. In the letting go of the status quo, with a deep desire to know and feel my connection to life, with all of life. To broaden my understanding of the world that I live in from nature’s perspective, because nature is who I am and where I live.

I have not studied biology. I don’t know a lot about the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom, the ecosystem, the cosmos, but I feel it is a part of my learning, to understand the surroundings in which I live. I live on a planet full of life, and yet I do not understand the intricate system in which I live. I therefore, do not understand my place within this system.

Our intellect, detached from our living connection to the natural world will be our demise. The disconnection I feel stems from a total disconnection and misalignment with myself as a natural living being.

Being disconnected has served no purpose. It has rather changed our course to a course of disassociation, depression, and destruction. We can see and feel it all around us. The restlessness, the loneliness, the delusion and the lack of understanding that has served to isolate us from living in the fullness of life, as a bud whose nourishment has been cut off, with the life force draining slowly away.

In finding my way I must shed layers upon layers of internal conditioning, facing challenges and fears while traveling through unknown terrain. Turning away from the safety of the known, into the vastness of the unknown, it will take courage, to be pushed to the edge over and over again. Taking leaps of faith while experiencing resistance, as I will feel like I am experiencing a thousand deaths to my known self.

And yet, this ‘thing’ inside me, this life spark, nudges me on, towards living life abundantly, in the fullness of the human experience.

And so I find myself here, standing at the edge where my journey begins.

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