"But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world . . ." – The Little Prince
Even after dropping more specific labels such as runner or athlete, I still allowed myself to be somewhat identified by “adventurer” and “explorer”. Those our broad enough, right?
I also explained explorer (this is even in my bio in Light & Dark) as being a person willing to explore both their outer and inner landscape. This is pretty accurate. I just wasn’t doing it.
I was creating and forcing my own adventures. And yes, in terms of mountain adventures, you want to plan appropriately for safety reasons, yet the real grace is when you can let go of the plan and allow the Mother Nature and the day to bring what she will. Being a true adventurer is going with the flow. It’s accepting that when a door shuts on you, or it starts to rain, that you’re being redirected by something greater than yourself and toward something that is in your highest good. (You may have just avoided a huge accident by returning back to your car.) It’s realizing that an injury or illness isn’t punishment, nor is it something to push through. It’s the knowing that something greater is happening in the Yin (resting potential).
Being a true explorer means being curious. Honestly, 3 year olds are probably the best explorers our there. They’re just going where their parents take them and stopping to look at all the bugs and leaves along the way. Adults tend to plan and force, even when it doesn’t feel good or aligned with joy. We’re ruled by our minds and fear. Instead of looking to others for inspiration, we look at them through comparison…If this adventurer has a van, we need to have a van and YouTube channel too. If this athlete is running these races and that’s where the money is, I need to run those race too. If this wanderer is traveling to that state or country, then I need to wander over there too… Rarely are we actually willing to let go of plans and travel into the Unknown, allowing the path to be revealed to us.
Being a True Explorer is going into the Unknown with curiosity, trust, and joy. A True Explorer accepts the redirects of life and happily changes path. A True Explorer is guided by their heart rather than fear. A True Explorer lives from inspiration instead of motivation and comparison. A True Explorer is free. In actuality, a True Explorer doesn’t have to create or carve out a new path. Instead, she relaxes knowing that a unique path is already laid out for her. A True Explorer is willing to follow the breadcrumbs of Life, recognizing animal symbolism, dreams, and synchronicities as guidance.* A True Explorer trust that she will be guided to experiences for her highest good, that the challenges (often in the form of ego** slaying) are necessary for ascension, and that love not be searched for in far away places, but it is always there. A True Explorer is always on the Divine Path back to True Self.
*I just checked my phone and it was, of course, 11:11.
**When the Bible talks about “demons”, the metaphorical translation is ego.
A few weeks ago, I had decided to wait on getting a wisdom tooth pulled because of nice weather and already having a mountain day planned (I was supposed to “chill” for 4 days after the procedure). Even though I wasn’t in pain that day, I knew before even leaving the dentist’s office that I had made another decision with my ego.
9 days later (with the next scheduled appointment nearly 2 weeks away) the pain came back in full force, plus a little more—almost unbearable. You probably won’t understand the pain of a toothache (and infection) unless you’ve had it before, but it left me wandering somewhere in the liminal state between conscious and unconscious.
Pain, a Great Teacher, is also warning sign. It asks us to check in with our bodies and our hearts. Not listening results in…more pain, at increased levels.
I had again chosen a mind want out of fear rather than my heart want of a happy, healthy me. If I had gotten my tooth pulled the previous week, my last Autumn and dry mountain of the year would have been completely enjoyable.
Fear left me impatient.
Love does not fear time.
Pain lets me know when I am listening to my ego rather than my heart and soul. Whether physical or mental and emotional, the Great Teacher lets me know when I have chosen to separate from my true self.
I’ve ignored pain almost my whole life.
As a child, pain rarely brought me comfort from my parents, so I desensitized myself to it and learned to deny comfort for myself, too.
But, I don’t want to live in pain anymore. I don’t want to live in separation from who. I. am. I don’t want physical pain or heart pain for these elongated, semi-conscious periods.
I want to heed pain’s warning on the spot. To honor pain’s lessons and allow it to redirect me back to love.
My win on that last mountain?
Calling out my self-judgement and shame before it could grow. Even if I made an ego decision, I would not then let me ego again win in berating me for the choice and causing such pain.
…A final, free-writing journal question: Pain, is there anything else I am not seeing? Anything else you have to teach?
I am not an enemy. I am love in disguise.
Keep coming back Home to yourself. It doesn’t have to be perfect, just let that, Home, be your intention.
Thank you, pain.
(Much more on pain and it’s relationship to death coming soon.)
To what depths will you go in the search of
finding yourself?
Do you dare to stand in the lakes of your
pain and uncover the roots of your anxiety?
To upend the rocks that surround your heart
and move them one by one?
While you may go to the mountains, the lakes,
the valleys for solitude and refreshment of spirit,
you will not find yourself there.
Unless you have first met yourself,
you will simply see and grasp
at what you cannot yet feel.
You must go within.
Only there can you find what you seek.
Then, you will find peace in your place
of connection with all beings.
Earlier in the year, I made a decision based on a thought I had. The thought seemingly came out of nowhere, so even though my body felt resistance to it immediately, I rationalized that it might be a sign from the Universe telling me what I should do.
But that could never be true.
I was again worshiping the false god of the ego-mind which I had been taught was the truth. The Universe, Spirit, God…that Voice speaks through the heart. For me, as an empathic female, the lost connection with my own True Voice may be the biggest tragedy of my life. I lost trust in myself and gave my power away to the false god that family, school, society, and religion taught me was reality. Doubt consumed me. Hence the on and off struggle with the symptoms we call anxiety and depression (undiagnosable, which is an arbitrary system anyway) that I’ve dealt with since my pre-teens, when the innocence of my Little Self was lost.
In the fight for myself in the protective grips of my ego (fear) identity, the past few months have been some of the hardest of my life, although not as outwardly tragic as losing my oldest sister. I have brought light into the illusion of the ego and allowed myself to fully experience the pain (of separation) my body has held on to for 25 years. I didn’t just “deal” with my panic attacks…I experienced them, often using the simultaneous timing of my period (bringing up my pain and world pain) and the full moon (bringing up the unconscious) to rise within as I cried and breathed into my emotions, letting the energy to flow through my body. At times, I honestly wasn’t sure I was going to make it. (To go back to ego-rulership would be so easy.) I got so lost in the shadows that I lost myself at a level just short of psychosis (that I now believe many humans deal with). I am eternally grateful for the people and doG in my life that have been my Sunshines, as well as the little bit of Consciousness I was able to hold on to the last few rounds. “Ray, remember who you are”, became my prayer to myself.
As of this writing, I still haven’t fully reconnected to the Voice of My Heart. I am still remembering who I am at an embodied level. I am doing my best to lean into the trust of knowing that I am on the right path even as my ego-mind chimes in asking for power. I also write for You…to help You remember who You are. And, if you’re in a time in your life where you’re experiencing panic (ego) attacks, I want you to know that is your soul trying to escape the confines of the ego that have been placed around it. Freedom is found in the surrender, the letting go of thought, and moving in and through the emotions/energy the body has been holding on to for so long. I highly recommend seeking out support, a sun to your moon, someone to remind you who You are. Allowing someone else to be a light is a request of the heart, for only the ego values the false toughness and sense of separation of needing to do things on one’s own… Which may be your important first step of not feeding the ego-mind and instead reclaiming your heart and giving the power back to your True Self.
Recently, Obi-Wan* (my Reiki therapist) told me that even when I’m at my lowest of lows, I’m still at a higher vibrational frequency than most people. I gave him an incredulous look. He had seen me at some of my lowest points and even cried with me in his office (and that my friends, the masculine recognizing and being with the pain of the feminine, is the power that will heal the Earth)**. What was he talking about? How could that be true?
And then I realized he was right. Even when I was just feeling “okay” (sometimes joyful, sometimes still having ego/panic attacks), I had, without almost any effort, called in a 3 bedroom house on 5 acres on hidden piece of land that offers both privacy and easy access to trails (and, most importantly, is perfect for Pacer). I would have never even had thought to ask for such a large, beautiful space. I didn’t think such a space could be within my budget. In fact, I hadn’t even know the space existed in Salida.
The message for all of us: Maybe life doesn’t have to be so hard. Maybe, as Mary Oliver wrote, we just have to “let the soft animal of your body love what it loves.” (Translation: To live beyond our ego (human) desires and allow our expansive, open, and vulnerable hearts (the voice of our soul) lead the way.) Maybe, when we relax our grip of control (fear) and allow life to unfold, we will be presented with more love and beauty than we ever new existed.
*I might have to change the nickname for my Reiki therapist as I recently met a man who’s last name is pronounced “Kenobe” and also holds the nickname Obi-Wan.
**Therapeutic cry: Obi-Wan wasn’t taking on my pain, he was simply bearing witness to it. As an empath, I would have tried to make him feel better if I saw him taking on my pain and then felt bad for having emotions. Instead, he simply allowed tears to form in his eyes while he energetically stayed both strong and calm so I could relax ( be messy) and release my pain.
Why do we work so hard to resist who we really are? Why do we hide the gifts that come naturally to us?* Or rather, from the gifts that come from our spirits.
Blatantly put, I am a cancer** sign made of light. My purpose is to bring people back Home to themselves.
The manifestation of this comes easy to me as a therapist and writer. It just kind of flows. To those who know me, they may have unapologetically (okay, maybe a little…I’m still working on coming Home to myself) heard me say “I’m really good at my job”, which is something I rarely to never say.
Of course, I’m also very true to myself as a therapist, writer, and coach. Unique is a very accurate word…unique and a little eccentric, which is why I think my clients like me. Me being weird allows them to be themselves. While I’ve read almost every therapy and spirituality book I have time for, I tend to just blend it all together with a touch of intuition. Actually, I’ve really just re-defined my job as mental health therapist and switched to using “psycho-soul therapist” instead.
Yet I tried, at least for an extended break, to walk away from these “jobs”, or callings. I thought other professions were better and more exciting (ie. more travel, more free time- but free time isn’t the same thing as freedom). Or, at least, they get more validation from parents, extended family, and Instagram followers. My mind believed all of this, even as the rebel in me rejected the office job, nice house, marriage and kids ideals. Really, I simply just trapped myself in another world from the ideals of other rebels and adventurous types, rather than just listening to my heart and creating something new altogether (or, even if it was “old”, staying true to me).
This is what wanderlust is all about…not traveling, not going adventures, not exploring new places. It’s about walking the path that is unique to you and yours alone. It’s unknown, and that is the wilderness.
*Okay, okay. Of course I know the answer, at least partially, to this question. The mind takes over when the heart has been invalidated. Anytime a child has their emotions ignored, goes unseen, is told how they feel or should act, a child’s flame is being dimmed. This goes much deeper than someone telling a kid that their dreams are unobtainable, although that can certainly play a role. We can read all the parenting, teaching, therapist/coaching books we want, but our only job as adults who have kids in our lives is to keep their inner flame burning bright. It’s just really hard to do when our own lights have been dimmed. So we all must ask ourselves the questions “Who am I?” “What are my divine gifts?”, and do the work to get back Home to ourselves.
**Cancer zodiacs are water signs and some astrologists relate cancers to preferring being at or around their physical homes. My belief is that may or may not be true and that cancers are more accurately about connecting their inner and higher selves, which also connects them back to Spirit.
The heart and body are in direct communication with each other. The heart is the voice of the soul. If you are not living in alignment with your soul, your body will let you know.
[In reflection of my own journey and others who share a birthday close to mine, my theory is that anyone who is a Cancer zodiac sign (especially for females), a natural born empath and sensitive (attuned to energy) soul, has in some way been directed towards this message this year, perhaps through an injury or illness, if she is not already living 100% heart centered. (I would love to know if this is true for you if your a Cancer sign!)]
The message the body is revealing may be slightly different for everyone. A good starting point is checking out Heal Your Body by Louise Hay, where she listed out the spiritual message of various injuries and illnesses based on body parts. Then, if you have an injury, you can further explore the message based on what side of your body is injured. The right right side gives voice to the ego (or masculine), while the left side speaks for the spirit (or female).
For some people, the most uncomfortable part will not be the pain of the injury or illness. It will be in the deconstruction phase of the ego as it is the ego-who we believe we are- that block us from listening to our heart. Many of us “think” we know what we want but the heart does not speak through thoughts. The heart speaks through feelings, emotions, and the body, especially when the soul is really trying to get our attention.
The deconstruction phase asks us: Are you willing to let go of all that you think you are?This may be attachments to past memories or labels that we or others have given to us, such as athlete, cashier, hard worker, or even “Type A” person.
The deconstruction phase may represent the “chrysalis phase” of the transformation process (where our insides turn to mush) or it may represent the “coming out of the cocoon phase”, as the ego represents the outer shell.
There is both a letting go and a fight. A surrendering of who we think we are, while also fighting not with but through the ego so as not to turn back, to return to the old version of ourselves that lives from the mind and not the heart.
How do we trust our hearts when most of us have been give the message we must fear love and trust a voice outside of ourselves to gain “salvation”? Yet trust is the essential piece. Every time doubt comes in, we must fight to come back home to ourselves, to trust, to allow the light to shine through. (We don’t fight the darkness, we fight for the light).
When we go through the deconstruction phase, you may literally feel like you want to crawl out of your skin. As others have reminded me, I will remind everyone here: this is a sign that you are on the right path. Growth is uncomfortable. Yet it is in breaking through her shell that the butterfly gains the strength to fly. It is in pushing through harsh conditions and rocky soil that wildflowers gain their vibrancy. This is the message that life gives us, the signs from the Universe that we are on the right path (sometimes the Universe puts up with me when I ask for a “signier sign”).
We must trust the signs, trust ourselves and step into the flow of life. Once we break through the ego, peace and ease will follow. Yet we have to push through the discomfort to allow the joy to come through. If you take my hand, we can make the leap of faith together…
Normally I hate a candid photo, but this ended up being a very authentic photo of me in my deconstruction phase.
People don’t actually kill themselves. Nor do they kill other people. Thoughts kill people.
Now that I’ve got your attention, let me explain.
For many people, there is no separation between their thoughts and themselves. In fact, many people still believe the Rene Descartes quote “I think, therefore I am.” Just because something sounds good, doesn’t mean we should listen… (Descartes has a few other bad theories, such as “The Great Chain of Being.”)
We are not our thoughts. If we were our thoughts, we wouldn’t realize we were having them*. Many of our thoughts, mostly automatic, come from the ego (fear-based) mind. The ego mind was created in infancy and further developed in childhood, born out misattuned love: trauma, the times caregivers ignored our needs, abuse, and systems that measure success by achievement, etc. Because our caregivers couldn’t always protect us or be there to help us feel and soothe the emotions in our bodies, our minds kicked in. Our minds developed equations like: “If I do xyz, then dad will be proud of me.” If I never do that, then mom won’t yell at me.” “If things always go this way, nothing bad will ever happen.” “If I achieve this, then I’ll be enough.” These types of equations are bound to fail.
*Michael A. Singer writes in depth on this topic.
Yet without the separation between Self and thought, our ego-minds (and remember, the thoughts from our ego mind developed when we were kids) run the show, oftentimes getting stronger and stronger year after year. This is the same as saying that fear (of not being enough, being abandoned, or not feeling lovable) and negative thought cycles take the lead. With negative thoughts comes uncomfortable emotions, such as more fear, sadness, and anger. Again, because no one taught us how to feel our emotions, we suppress them…until we can’t anymore. Some people will internalize these emotions (at this point, we can really use the word “shame”), and some will externalize*. This is the difference between suicide and murder.
*Thank you to my Naropa professor Max Woodfin who first explained this occurrence to me, which allowed me to further extrapolate.
Let’s back up for a moment and take things back to childhood.
I know I gave a pretty brief explanation (but hopefully simple enough that its understandable) of how thoughts come into formation, yet I hope its obvious on why it should be of upmost importance that mindfulness and mental health is taught in schools. If we can teach kids that during hard times, when their thoughts start spiraling in negative circles and they’re beating themselves up about not being good enough, that they are not their thoughts, we could save hundreds of lives each year. All it takes is a few simple mental-emotional tools to let the thoughts and big emotions pass, especially because it is the urgency and intensity of negative thoughts and big emotions that lead to self-harm and suicide. Any type of delay that allows the energy to pass will help, be it a tool like meditation or a suicide prevention hotline. (Teenagers are especially susceptible because of brain development during this time period. Watch the teenage brain episode of the Netflix documentary: The Mind, Explained for more information.)
This is why willpower has nothing to do with suicide or addiction. When our minds are in control, we don’t realize that there is another option, another choice. Our internal vision is literally obscured by thoughts and the intensity of emotions they produce.
During one of my own anxious-depressive spirals, in the midst of all my chaotic thoughts, my training allowed for a new thought to come in,”My thoughts are going to kill me.” This awareness snapped me out of it. I realized then that this was how we lost Robin William, Anthony Bourdain, and a loved-by-all college professor at Naropa (my graduate school). Their minds took over, and the fight got too exhausting to continue. But its not a fight when we realize the voices in our minds are not us, just shadows that can be dissolved in the light of truth.
And here’s the tougher part for me to talk about (only because we’ve created so much division among ourselves on the topic)…
This is where I believe some type of middle ground can be found between the seemingly opposing parties on the gun control debate (although all everyone really wants is safety, especially for our kids). The truth is, people don’t kill people. And as much as the part of me that identifies as liberal doesn’t want to say this, guns don’t kill people either. Thoughts kill people. Or, more specifically, unconscious, fear (and shame) – based thoughts of the ego mind, which, for the added reminder, is working off a toddler’s “logical” intelligence.
The reason gun control laws should be in place that require the buyer/owner of a certain age and for there to be a time period between the buying and acquiring of the gun is because of the intensity and immediacy of suicidal and murderous thoughts. While of course there are exceptions to this (I highly dislike outlier debates), the time period between thought and action gives space for the energy to pass and new thoughts to form. Pause and intervention can save lives. (Automatic/unconcious thoughts and automatic weapons are an obvious lethal combination that I won’t dive into full detail on here.)
The other piece I want to humanize is that those humans who own guns for safety purposes…which other humans who label* themselves as “liberal” also want to villainize… experience the pain of being human too. Many who also thought to use the weapon they own for their own demise. While maybe this accentuates the lethality of guns, I say this to actually highlight our shared connection. We are all human. And to be human is to experience suffering. The suffering only ends when we can transcend the differences that keep us separate (and birth fear/shame-based thoughts) and realize that we are all more alike than different.
To summarize: We are not are thoughts. We are all connected.
If there is ever a part of you that wants to die, please realize that it is just a part (refer to Internal Family Systems). Its a part formed by the ego-mind and created a false identity of you. What is most likely happening is that part is no longer serving you, and your Higher Self might be want to come back to the forefront. In short, what is happening is called a request for an “ego death”…it can be uncomfortable or outright painful. I highly, highly recommend working with some type of therapist at this point, and there are many books and podcasts that cover this topic as well. Remember that you are always, always loved.
First off, let me start out by saying that I love Susain Cain. I think she’s brilliant. When I read one of her books (Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking; Bittersweet: How Sorrow and Longing Make Us Whole) I think “That’s me!”.
But… maybe bittersweet isn’t me. Maybe it’s just my state of mind, and my mind is more of my ego than of me. So why am I often full of melancholy after a holiday? Why do I look out at the mountains with a such a deep sense of longing?
As Cain states and I fully agree, feelings of sadness and melancholy can bring people together, to connect us, in a world where many of us feel separate. In fact, this is usually how I recognize people that are “like me”, the others who are highly attuned to pain and who don’t feel like they ever really fit in. Now I believe this is all an illusion.
The false belief is that we are separate. Not just from each other, but even more so, from ourselves.
What I’m learning is that most of us are disconnected from our true selves. We don’t realize it because the split started within the first few years of life, when the world started to shape us rather than allow us to grow into our highest potential of being (not doing). In order to survive in a conditional world, we split from our true selves, from the joy, love, and light that create* our souls. Another way to say this is that our shadow selves block our light, and if we are disconnected from light (we could also say Source, Spirit, etc) we will always be filled with longing.
*Another popular argument that Cain makes (argument isn’t exactly the right word but the best I can come up with) is that those who experience depression or melancholy are often creatives, or artists. I actually think that we’ve only touched on the creativity possible because the emotions of disconnection block it.
My longing isn’t for the mountains. My longing is for me.
My longing is to return to the Home inside myself, where light, love, and peace reside. The mountains-the beauty they hold- simply bring about the feelings of freedom and joy within me, but in my natural state is just that. I’m just usually disconnected from my natural state because of the my shadows, constructs, and the ego voices that fill my mind.
(Again, this where I wholeheartedly agree with Cain that bittersweet emotions can lead to transcendence, as we learn to rise beyond the ego.)
Therefore, the quest in life isn’t to go in search of connection, creativity, or love, but to find it within oneself. To be able to look at oneself with a sense of awe and wonder for the magnificence within. Only then can life truly be an adventure, as we allow opportunities and experiences to come to us rather than force anything to happen.
It is in sitting still and listening to our hearts, while kindly asking our minds to quiet down, that we can begin to return back Home to Self.
**I totally may have gotten a few points wrong from “Bittersweet”. I read it at the end of last year, so I may-probably-have forgotten many of her insights. I also don’t think Cain could have written this chapter as the science of spirituality is relatively new and there isn’t a lot of a research on the topic. Regardless of any of this, Bittersweet is a wonderful book that I highly recommend.
In Star Wars, there was The Resistance, but the darkness (Dark Forces) could never truly disappear until a Rey (ray) of Light came in. This is because the darkness can never survive the light. The darkness, at its core, is simply the unknown, and once the darkness is known (light), it can never be unknown.
The funny thing is that Rey also bought into the idea that the darkness was something to be scared of and to fight, which led to a lot of internal struggles and external battles. All she really had to do was be herself, which encompasses her union with “The Force” (energy, Source, etc.).
Actually, this is what all the movies on dark and light forces get wrong, be it Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, or any Marvel movie. All these movies/books play off the story that the darkness is something to be fought, that there has to be a battle between good and evil, but we’ve literally created (manifested) each villain through our own ego-based fears. The villains or enemies might be tangible, but no more so than a building that was created from someone’s imagination. The building can pretty quickly be deconstructed and re-built into something new, better, if allowed. More simply put, once we cease to create darkness, the darkness will cease to exist.
Again, the darkness is simply the unknown. What blocks it from being known, from the illumination of the light, is fear. Fear is what causes separation and creates evil, what most of us refer to as darkness. When I’m talking about fear, I’m not talking about primal, instinctual fear (and honestly, I’m not sure how much fear is actually present when reacting to a danger in the present moment) but the fear created from the ego-mind. The ego-mind is fragile and full of insecurities, so each moment can feel like a threat and the ego will protect, defend, and fight for its survival. We are not the ego-mind, we are not darkness…we ALL are light. Our ego-minds create (fear) darkness. When we realize that, that all fear is an illusion, and nothing created by an illusion can be permanent, we can start to break down the barriers to allowing light in. This is why the more we are all our true selves, all Reys or Rays of Light, we can put an end to the darkness without ever having to fight.
(I think more men have bought into the illusion of separation and fear because of the dominant male energy they were brought up with based on their gender identity. While the feminist part of me still wants to call out gender discrimination in the military, I still think this is why more men are drawn to being a soldier. Where I think most of us have “the fight” wrong is that we pick one person “ruler” to demonize and associate everyone under their leadership as evil. Yet the opportunity to change is not in the leader, but with the people on the ground, where shared humanity is easy to recognize without the false identity given by a uniform. And no “ruler” can lead without people giving him power. –I know there’s some cool programs going on with veterans who are healing by becoming “warriors of love”.)
A Dog and Her Girl 