Permission to BE
This subject seems to be “in the air”. After multiple conversations this week with clients and navigating my own human terrain, my awareness is heightened around the discomfort in allowing oneself to just BE exactly where we are in every given moment.
As I sit in my own stew of questioning, of lower energy, psychological gunk around my aging body, and the inevitable pull inward during these Winter months, I am called to *normalize* these natural fluctuations. For so many years, I avoided feelings at all costs through various addictions and distractions. I numbed and shamed myself. I overate, underate, over-exercised, and collapsed.
It was a huge turning point in my own recovery process decades ago when I began allowing myself to BE exactly how I was in these varying states, without manipulating or distracting or numbing. What I discovered very quickly is that when I gave myself that permission to BE, everything changed. The emotions moved through me with fluidity and I was no longer stuck in the fangs of addiction to disconnecting.
I learned that I could feel what I needed to feel and I wasn’t going to die or become consumed or smolder in the emotions. That the emotional states would come and go and my connection to my upright self and the trust that I had built within me would be my guiding light.
The phrase “this too shall pass” actually took shape in me. I didn’t need to manipulate myself in any way, but rather I could simply allow, with utter permission, for myself to be exactly as I was moment-by-moment.
That certainly doesn’t mean that we become complacent to growing when we choose to be a fully feeling human, rather the opposite. We are constantly refining our process of meeting ourselves and the world around us as no two states of being are the same.
Why is it so challenging to allow ourselves to BE exactly where we are? Why do we naturally feel like we need to change how we are feeling rather than leaning into and embracing ourselves in the many flavors of this human life?
It is so important to feel it all to heal. When we resist what we are feeling or numb ourselves or avoid, then these emotions embed in our tissues, they persist in penetrating our being and keep us spinning in the same plane of existence, not allowing ourselves to grow and heal.
Trying to force ourselves to be a particular way along our path is counterproductive.
Forcing our healing is harmful to our souls.
Bypassing our emotional states is a disservice to our life path and our true, authentic, embodied, and alive selves.
There is an underlying pull in many to manipulate their state of being, especially if that state falls into the category of uncomfortable, negative, and/or less-than-desirable, hence the epidemic of addictions.
There is a huge reorganization happening at the moment that is showing up in varying ways for everyone. A deep shift from within that is palpable, yet difficult to articulate in words.
We are all changing. This is a very *good* thing, yet the unknown and liminal qualities of this change process can feel daunting and elusive to many.
Embracing our humanness and all of the varying terrains of our human experience of existence is supportive, growth-promoting, and honoring.
Life is not static.
We are not static in our emotional lives.
Gifting ourselves with the time and space to BE exactly where we are and how we are is fuel for our capacity to heal wholly and sustainably.
Layers reveal themselves at the exact right moment. I truly believe that we are never given more than we can handle and that every state of being is important along the journey of being human.
So, wherever you are in this moment....joyful and enlivened, sad and dark, open and fluid, angry and overwhelmed....welcome it...embrace it...honor it all....and, take good care of the crevices of YOU.
Rest, cook nourishing foods, dance, stretch your beautiful body, nap, take a candlelight bath, cry, scream, laugh with a fellow human on the path, write, sit quietly, commune with the trees….meet yourselves exactly where you are.
There is so much information to be gleaned in these moments. So much waiting to be revealed and healed. Opportunities abound to deepen in your connection to yourselves so as to deepen to others.
Trust it. Trust yourself. Trust your process, your unique path, and in exactly WHO YOU ARE.
You are not alone.
I am always out here in support and service.