Embracing Experience
"If the only thing people learned was not to be afraid of their experience, that alone would change the world" Sydney Banks.
We are designed to live our lives in the moment. What does that mean? We do very well in each moment experiencing what comes. Feeling the feeling of the moment. Experiencing the sensations, feelings, or pain in our bodies. We are designed to live in our bodies.
I noticed that my habit was to resist a lot of experience. The way I would do that is by saying to myself "It shouldn't be this way". War - It shouldn't be this way; a pulled muscle at the gym -It shouldn't be this way; a flu - it shouldn't be this way; my daughter gets mad at me - it shouldn't be this way. Every time I judged that something should be different or shouldn't be, I resisted, I tightened up, I clamped down, I held in, and was holding on.
Interestingly when I started experimenting with stopping the resistance and just being with what is, I relaxed. Then I started to be curious about "what if I embraced experience", "what if... no experience was a problem".
Then life started getting really interesting. In embracing each experience that came I had a much stronger sense of my own wanting, my own simple desires in each moment. My own intuition. I knew more and more often what it is I wanted. It may be that I don't want to read any more about war. I want to read a fun novel and have a beautiful meal with my husband. In embracing, there was no more resistance, no more holding on at all. I feel much more open and more allowing of all emotions and feelings. This then allows for more actual feelings like love. Numbness or polarity starts to melt and dissipate. It was never real to begin with.
We are made to live life in all its expression. But we are made to live our life. Not your neighbour's life or your mother's life or the life you think you should be living. We are made to live our personal moment-to-moment, what-shows-up-for-you life.
As my mentor and friend Michael Neill often says, "Show up, Be yourself, and See what happens."
Embracing Experience