My survival relied upon having my needs met by others.
I developed coping strategies to optimize the potential my needs would be met.
I had to believe I would survive. I was reliant on others.
As an adult, I can survive on my own.
I can need nothing.
My needs are now replaced with wants.
Wants are preferences that guide my choices and mold my experiences.
From the space of wants, I transition from believing I can survive to knowing I can thrive.
I move from engaging coping skills and relying on others to making choices in collaboration with those who authentically support my growth along with theirs.
There is power in wanting and knowing.
Wanting and knowing bring assuredness, clarity, and focus.
Expectations fall away, choices become simpler, and I begin to align more and more with my sense of fulfillment, harmony, and success.
Don’t wait for them to see the richness and uniqueness – see it yourself…
Unwind your tangled perception of you…
Enjoy the where you are and the where you will be, each full of challenges and delights…
Please love yourself just a little more…you are harder on yourself than anyone else ever could be…
Do all things because they feel good and nurture you not because they are “right” or provide a shield from the deep dark thoughts and feelings that face you…
Fearlessly take the hands of hurt and pain and walk with them for a bit, let them guide you out of the darkness until together you find the space to release each other…
Take your time in the process of caring for you above all else…slow down and tend to each and every element of you as if massaging a baby tenderly with the balm of divine love…
Feel grateful for the ease and healing in every breathe…
Move your body with the joy and freedom it was designed for…
You, my friend, are made of love and all those with truest loving eyes will see that and that is all that matters…
Turn your truest loving eyes towards your own heart and hold it sweetly, love it dearly, and this will be enough.
Disappointment implies that joys and successes rely on others.
Anger signals the breaching of important boundaries.
Fear rises from insecurity and a false sense of incompleteness or inability.
These are not bad or broken parts surfacing to limit and constrict.
These are powerful markers built into me that arise over and over again not to point out my weakness, lack, or flaws but to strengthen my knowing and clarity.
My power lies in being not formed by them but informed by them.
“I am afraid…afraid of hurting others because I feel their hurt as if my own…hurting others jeopardizes my relationships and in that I run the risk of feeling their anger or worse, their scorn and disappointment. It is better to deny my joy than risk upsetting theirs.”
For a long, long time that belief walked confidently along its path unhindered. One day, it stumbled on that well worn path upon a rock of joy. It tripped over pebbles of power, and fell upon a bolder of truthfulness. As the belief lost its balance, it fell into a net of beautiful jewels all connected by a golden thread of love, of creativity, kindness, and great joy.
The belief grasped at the edges of the path, grappled with the sensation of free falling, longing for the predictable order of its existence. In the blinding beauty of the sparkling jewels, the belief had no choice but to release its fear, to drop into the wide and open net, to be held by a greater force in the space of free will and joy.
Gradually, the belief allowed itself to let go of the path and discovered its power to attract truthfulness and joy. It found that in that vibration there was no room for fear, hurt, or loneliness…only love.
So, I sit here day after day wallowing in my mistakes, misfortunes, pain, and suffering.
I hold onto them in my body like appendages…the tension in my muscles, the crookedness of my bones, the heaviness of my head…and heart.
I carry them as reminders of my faults and flaws.
And yet, when I sit in stillness, when I fill and empty with awareness on my breath, I find only peace…ease…joy.
Remembering…
…the gentle touch of others, through their hands, hearts, and smiles.
…the power of my cognition to work the puzzle pieces of every day life.
… the essence of my kindness and great capacity for love.
…the gifts of receivership and gratitude that present so abundantly and frequently.
I’ve been conditioned to hold onto and dwell on the lack and sorrows as if they belong permanently.
Love, joy, and freedom are somehow deemed as temporary.
Today I give myself permission to release it all – to breathe in and out with equanimity in every moment, to imbibe and cleanse, receive and release, storing none as defining me and simply allowing it all to live through me without reliving or retaining any of it as me.
Clearing the channels of experience so that all flows, informs, and re-minds me that I am everything and defined by nothing.
Monday Mindfulness 