As I write this, tears stream down my face. I haven’t cried in months and months. I am overjoyed, even though these are not happy tears - I am in pure joy and gratitude that I have been reminded of how much I have grown these past few years, how my heart cracks open day by day and how after a lot of soul work, I have allowed my sensitivity and vulnerability to be a part of my life rather than burying it under the rocks of fear.
Humans have such a vast array of different emotions and as individuals, we all have different ways in how we respond emotionally to different situations because, well, we are all individual, and we all experience and perceives things very differently from one another. This is what makes us so special. Whatever your emotional response is to any specific situation, always remember that you have every right to feel and experience it in your own unique way. Every human emotion is valid and we have a choice in how we choose to respond and process them, but sometimes we just don't know how.
For too long we have been told not to cry, not to get angry or get upset. We have been made to feel shame, guilt or embarassment for our emotions. We have buried our anger, our fear and our sadness in the depths of our bellies, we have ignored the signs that something doesn't feel right, and we may have even dumbed down our joy or our hearts desires in the fear of upsetting someone. But now is the time to get brave. Let's honour these feelings, let's witness them and listen to them.
These emotions come up to remind of us something that frankly, we don’t want to know. Something that we have likely buried and tried to ignore. We don't want to know and don't want to confront these fears so we end up developing coping mechanisms to try control the many different voices of fear that masks itself as the voice of reason or common sense. Not knowing why we feel like we do, or feeling like that we are out of control we end up over indulging and acting out through unhealthy habits with relationships, food, drugs, alcohol, cigarettes, work, gossip, tv and even exercise.
We have been made to feel shame, guilt or embarassment for our emotions. We have buried our anger, our fear and our sadness in the depths of our bellies, we have ignored the signs that something doesn't feel right, and we may have even dumbed down our joy or our hearts desires in the fear of upsetting someone.
Healing ourselves isn’t just crystals, burning sage and dancing around fires in the forest till the early hours of the morning. It takes courage and resilience, an open mind and open heart to address these buried emotions and it isn’t always a pleasant ride, but, it’s definitely one that is necessary. It often takes a sometimes-devastating shock to the system for someone to sit up and take notice and accept that something needs to change.
Its April 2020, and we are all sitting at home, having been forced to slow down, to sit, to stay, to take note. We can’t go about our days tending to what we would normally, leaving us more time to think, time to go inwards. Many of our coping tactics have been taken away from us. In between learning new skills, baking, trying to keep the kids busy or whatever it is that you have been doing over these past weeks, in between all these activities, there are more moments of stillness than most of us have never allowed ourselves to experience. Sometimes these moments might be filled with joy, with love, with creativity, but they are also filled with grief, sadness and fear.
We are living through the biggest emotional roller coaster that our generation has ever faced. This morning I woke with a full heart and so much gratitude that I didn’t know what to do with it. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, I did a 2 hour juicy yoga practice, took a walk in nature, experimented in the kitchen, read part of a new book, spoke with friends from all around the world, but as the day grew to a close, this sudden feeling of lonlieness crept in.
Now, I am a brave, fierce, strong and independent woman, but I have spent so many years shutting down the connection to all my emotions, building a concrete wall of what I thought was for protection but all it did was create a barrier, not only between me and the outside world but ultimately it created a barrier of connecting to myself, my truth.
Fear is the real pandemic that is infecting the world
I know that I am not the only one who has felt this. And this isn’t because we are all social distancing. This is an old shadow that has come knocking at the door, reminding me that there is unfinished business to attend too. This slowdown in time, forcing me to go inwards has dug up things that haven’t healed properly and are showing up because there is still work to be done but this also means that there is still an opportunity to learn and to grow, and that's what makes this work painful and beautiful and the same time.
We all have a story, a path. I am not a finished article, none of us are, not even the enlightened masters. We all have shadows that we have to address that come up when we least expect them too. They are here as a reminder. A test of our faith, our connection, our strength.
So today, today is a reminder, for me, and for us all that actually, we are never really alone, and we dont have to struggle.
Fear wants us to believe that we are all separate. It’s been telling us this since before we can remember. Fear is the real pandemic that is infecting the world. Throughout our lives, we have absorbed a multitude sources of fear from the enviroment around us. This could be from our parents, from our friends at school, from what the newspapers or the TV has led us to believe. We are infected with negative stimuli 24/7. When was the last time you turned the news on or opened the newspaper and saw something truly positive? We might not even consciously realise that something is making us fearful when the event actually happens, but that’s what fear does, its sneaky, it hides in the shadows and often goes unnoticed in our unconscious and it can end up controlling our lives and inform our day to day decisions. This is the true separation - the separation that we create within ourself.
What we often don't realise is that in every moment, in every second of every day, we have the ability to make a choice, to choose differently. We have the ability to choose how we experience something. So do you want to experience it in fear, or through love and joy? And I don’t mean romantic love, I mean that connection to our true essence, that magnetic field that surrounds us, our inner power, our inner strength - this is true and authentic love. None of us were born with fear, we learned it all and we began creating illusions that we thought would protect us but instead, it created a block from the deep inner knowing and strength in our hearts that we all hold. Fear stops us from experiencing life’s great synchronicities, our innate freedom and our true essence.
So this is why we are never truly alone, because we are all connected. Connected to the essence that lies within us and we are all connected to each other, to nature and ultimately, we are all connected to the universe, the creator. But we have to be brave, we have to witness these emotions and ask ourselves, what is this emotion, this reaction, this situation, what is it really trying to tell me? We have to strip back the noise, expose it, welcome it in, talk to it, understand it, and it is from here that we grow and we can begin to find our freedom.
Fear stops us from experiencing life’s great synchronicities, our innate freedom and our true essence
There is no wrong or right when we are doing this. Some of us may have been dealt a rougher hand than others but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have the right to feel something. All of these experiences are giving us an opportunity to learn and grow. They show up as a reminder that we need to reconnect to ourselves. We have been given the perfect opportunity during this global shutdown to reconnect with ourselves, our friends our loved ones, with nature. We have the time to re-invent ourselves. We can wake up each day and give ourselves the permission to do something we truly want to do, free of judgement and the expectations of the outside world and the expectations that we put on ourselves.
The value of wisdom that we gain through enduring life’s ups and downs free's us and returns us to a place of authenticity. We are being shown that we cannot control anything. We are constantly trying to control the outcomes of our lives in one way or another and we have all learnt that actually it’s not up to us. None of it is. For sure, we can try and influence things, we can study in this and we can do that to try and help us achieve our goals, but when it comes down to it we have no control over what happens. We have to trust, surrender and listen and allow ourselves to be guided wherever it is we are going and know that whatever happens, it’s going to be ok and it's all going to work out.
We don’t know what the future holds, but when we open our hearts and stop trying to control the outcome we begin to free ourselves of living in fear. When we confront our shadows head on, we turn on the light and the darkness disappears. It is from this place that the feeling of separation and the fear begins to dissolve.
And let’s face it, when you strip back whatever emotion that is coming up for you, one of our deepest fears is that of separation, that we are alone. So if you are reading this, I just want you to know that you are not alone, I, we, are right here with you and if you look within you, you are right there with you too.
With love.
Lily