Photograph by Alice Karayianni
To be a gentle mover in a swiftly spinning world. To be present. To extract the poetry. To only entertain the real. To listen. To seek the genuine. To stand inside of the stretch, the momentum, the tall discomfort of change, the knowing that you don't need to rush the practice, or ever fake or force a thing. To believe in rhythm and movement. To trust in the river, the song, the stillness, the storm, and the seed.
~ Victoria Erickson
Yet another year is coming to an end and here I am writing yet another 'end of the year' blog post. One thing I’ve realised is that my blog posts have greatly decreased in number over the last couple of years. It’s funny because I’ve had an increasing (desperate) need to express myself and yet the more I wish for words to just flow right out, spill readily on paper, the more stagnant I feel. I’ve been suffering from persistent lack of inspiration and it’s been frustrating!
You see, my head is a very busy place. I feel too much and yet I don’t write enough to make up for it, to balance things out inside. I just can’t. Creating and analysing don’t go together, and I tend to analyse, a lot. And language hasn’t been in my favour recently either, it seems. Eternally faced by a blank page - or screen for that matter. So how can you tame a heart that is bursting with feelings when the voice within you runs out of words? (I’m actually asking, here.)
My continuous struggle over the last years has been to know myself and to be real. REAL. But it’s been quite hard. Because what does it mean to know thyself? It means to be connected to the source of who we really are, to our higher self. That is the only way to live authentically. But it seems that we are all living in this prison we have created over time, limitations we have created in our minds through our experiences in life while growing up, through conditioning. But it is only by going beyond that conditioning that we can find our true essence, that we can be free…
Knowing thyself entails being true to yourself. It begins when you start loving yourself enough to be open and honest about every single thing. Learning to say ‘no' to whatever doesn’t feel right and starting to let go of whatever no longer serves you. It begins by understanding and making room for who you really are, all your feelings and emotions, both positive and negative. You have to deal with the darkness if you are to break this shell that you’ve created. And don’t worry about being vulnerable in the process, it’s through that crack that the light gets in.
So be present, be mindful in every single moment because this is the only way to allow your true self to emerge. This is where you free yourself from mental barriers and stop identifying with a false sense of self, it is where you stop being unconscious. I find that we constantly define ourselves by what other people say about us, but what do they really know about us other than what we show them? They are merely projecting their own unconsciousness onto us and mistaking that for who we are. We are all wonderfully complex beings who keep growing and transforming, so stop letting other people’s perceptions of you halt your progress!
Not everyone will understand your journey, but that’s okay, because what is real will always stay either way, I can guarantee that.
So for 2019, I hope you finally get to travel lighter. I hope you keep remembering to let go and just BE where you are, alive, in the moment and, most importantly, at peace (with yourself). And I hope that, in this everlasting process of finding yourself, you finally find the happiness you long for.
Remember, the only way out is in.
May this be a year of beautiful transformation :)
