When The Sun Shines Through
"When you find that place in you that is already thriving... what kind of a life will get created?" - Michael Neill
I often feel like there are two versions of myself. The loving, compassionate, inspired, and at peace me who is connected to and is, in fact, the energy of all things in human form navigating around this world having adventures. Then there is a duller, more tense, slightly or a lot anxious, perhaps snippy version of myself that I become when I'm preoccupied with thoughts and thinking.
As Michael says in the above quote, there is a place in each of us that is already and actually always is thriving. And happy, content, and peaceful. It's there in the midst of anxious thinking, preoccupation, fear or pain. It's there alongside all of that, all the time. It never goes anywhere.
We go somewhere though. We go to the pain (understandable – it hurts!) and we go to the tension-filled thinking. We go to the past or the future to justify why we are fearful or why we are convinced something is a problem and won't work.
This version of myself, while so familiar and practiced, can feel like a zombie wandering around without any actual animating force.
I came across this quote from Mavis Karn in her book "It's That Simple: A User's Manual for Human Beings":
"In order to return to the truth of us, we need only sense the clenched feeling of having left our true self and wandered back into a habit of thought. It's that simple.
Be still. Let all the mental noise recede, settle down, and dissipate. That's the door back home. That's when you remember who you are and where you can experience the oneness with all things that people who have reclaimed their wisdom have been pointing to forever."
Many people, I was one of them, think that in order to relax and be at peace they need to resolve the tension, anxiety, or pain first. They need to solve all the problems. There is an urgency in anxiety. There is an immediacy in pain. Anxiety and fear are so urgent seeming that we don't look at anything else while constantly trying to tamp it down or make it stop. When the not fear or not anxiety becomes more interesting to us than the stranglehold of the negative emotion, it starts to break apart and loosen. It dissipates, given enough time.
One way of leaving it alone long enough to dissipate is to not make it a problem. If having a negative experience like pain or anxiety was entirely ok and neutral then it gets a little boring and our attention actually wanders from the pain, looking elsewhere for entertainment. It's very much ok to not be ok. However, the more ok you are with your experience, no matter what it happens to be in the moment, the more you default into your own peace and relaxed state.
The real key is to find that space within yourself where you are already thriving. It's the you that is still and calm while walking in nature or walking your dog. It's the you that is suddenly quiet swimming in the lake. It's the you that is stunned by the beauty of your newborn grandchild. It’s the you that kicks out of your busy mind in a moment of surprise or emergency.
Yesterday, I pulled or overstretched or ‘somethinged’ my left lower back and side. I realized it at lunch at a restaurant where I just couldn't sit without considerable pain. It was very much in my face front and centre. I started getting worried. "I won't be able to stay here. I need a different chair. I won't be able to eat. What will others think?". And on and on and on. This wasn't helping. The pain was ratcheting up from all my busy thinking. There was no "solving" this pain in that moment. It would take some time.
As soon as I noticed all this, I was back to myself. It occurred to me to change seats with my husband. It occurred to me to shift how I was sitting. It occurred to me to tell him how much pain I was in. And then it occurred to me to put my attention on the thriving or on the peace or on the energy in my body, my aliveness.
I still had pain but it went down considerably and was sort of just there in the background. By shifting your focus to yourself, your thriving self, ideas and wisdom begin to come in. You can just follow step by step.
Sometimes, I ask myself "What if this wasn't a problem?" and see what comes from there. It feels like letting your thriving-self emerge through the zombie-self. Like the sun shining out through the clouds. Look at the sun and not the clouds. The sun is always shining.
We ended up having a relaxed and most delicious lunch. I highly recommend Trejo’s Tacos in Santa Monica.
With Love,
Sara Joy