A conversation with my guide

(This exercise was taken from a book called Awaken Your Genius, by Carolyn Elliot. I have been working my way through the exercises in the book, and it has helped me tremendously on my journey towards claiming my "healer" title. In this exercise it is suggested that you choose someone who you feel is a guide to you, either in your waking life or your dream life. This person can be someone who either attracts or repels you, either one can be a helpful tool to begin to see qualities about yourself that you would like to express more. This conversation is with one of my teachers, who is someone that I have felt very drawn to since I took my first class with her. The key is that you write the whole conversation yourself, by telling that person what you admire/dislike about them, and then asking them what they would like you to know and writing their answers to you in their voice. It seems a little crazy at first but it was a very powerful exercise for me.)

Me: You are so inspiring to me. Your heart shines through your words and your face, and it makes me want to always be around you. I feel inspired by your dedication to your craft and by your obvious dedication to your inner journey. What do you want to tell me?

Her: You too can be open and loving towards yourself in the ways I have learned to be. I was not always this way. I used to hurt and feel unworthy. I used to self-harm and doubt myself. I would smoke and drink too much just like R. did and like you did, because I did not know how to deal with the feelings that were inside of me, burning me up from the inside. I had to do a lot of meditation, near-constant meditation and chanting, Asana is only a part of it-really the joy I feel is found on breaking through the deep sadness and the darkness inside of your heart.

First, you have to forgive yourself.

Me: I put you on a pedestal. I think you are a better, more advanced person than me. In my admiration of you, I forget that you and I are the same. I forget that we are one being and I can learn and unlearn the behaviors that I want to become in order to be more like you because I already have that inside me.

When I place you above me, I continue the story that I am not good enough to do what you do. If I can drop this story, and know that I am as good and pure and wise and true as you are, I can drop the illusion that I am not good enough. I would like to drop the illusion and become my highest potential, which is to be a conduit for others’ healing.

Her: Yes! When you drop the illusion that you are not good enough, you open to the potential in the universe. The universe wants you to heal and become your highest self so that you can also help others become their highest selves.This is your true potential. You have this gift too, I know because you are talking to me. I know that you have the ability to create and to grow this.

Reading what Roxanne wrote to you last night, you know that is also true for you. You already have the gifts. Now you just have to deeply believe that your gifts will bring people to you and that those people-- the ones you are helping with your gifts, will compensate you for them. You will be provided for with abundance. I am so excited for your journey with this!

Take this owl bracelet and wear it each day to remind you that you have the divine knowledge and the gifts you will need to bring forth this future.

You have incredible power within you to bring about deep healing for your clients and those you come in contact with. That is why people are drawn to you. That is why people want to be in your energy. You have already done much of the work that allows you to reside in this higher energetic plane. Now it is your task to bring that gift to others, with joy and light.

Press Here to Open

I've been thinking a lot about doors lately. This is mainly due to the fact that when I enter my workplace, I have to enter through one heavy fire-door, then scan my access card, and pass through another heavy fire-door; then if I choose to take the elevator, which I have been keen to do lately, I have to go through a series of two more sets of doors just like the first until I finally reach the area where my office is, where there is yet another heavy door that I then prop open each morning with a door stop. Each of these door sets are big and very heavy and I am usually carrying a heavy load with me (metaphorically and otherwise) and-- more often than not-- trying to balance a cup of hot coffee in one hand along with my phone in the other hand when I enter the building each morning, and so opening all of these doors has become something of an annoyance to me. Each morning my mind goes immediately to thinking  as I pull the doors open, "Why should they make it so HARD just to get into a place that I don't even want to be?" Queue the "Poor me, wah, wah," strings section of the orchestra. 

Mind you, having worked here for almost seven years, I spent the first six of them exclusively taking the stairs, because why should I make anything easy on myself? I think that I must have wanted for things to be hard, in some subconscious way. I must have thought that I deserved to struggle somehow, or that I would be rewarded in the spiritual realm for all my hard work. (Look at me, how I choose to take the hard road; look how determined I was to make things more challenging/difficult for myself. Surely someone will notice eventually how much I struggle, and therefore all of my efforts will be rewarded.)

This may be reaching, but eventually one day I realized that there is really nothing wrong with allowing the technology that we have (i.e. The Gifts of our Present Circumstances- in this case the gift being the elevator) carry us. I started going through those extra sets of heavy doors each morning in order to allow my body to be gently transported up to the second floor in mere seconds, and with hardly any effort to speak of. And for a while this felt like a nice respite from carrying myself and my heavy load up the stairs each morning. Until, eventually,  I started to feel annoyed by those pesky heavy doors. Soon those doors started to bug the shit out of me, and I began to really resent the doors for the barricade I imagined them to be in my professional life. I hated the doors for making things harder for me. Now I was finding myself feeling angry at the doors for their very existence. Of course I knew that it wasn't really the doors I was angry with. I was mad at myself for allowing myself to remain too long in a situation that was no longer serving my highest good, and I was using the doors as a metaphor to represent all that was holding me back from doing my dream.

Every morning I would literally think, "Fuck these doors," as I struggled to balance all of my crap in one hand and pull them open, one after the next after the next, becoming increasingly agitated until finally I arrived at the door to my office. And I'd sit down at my desk and begin my day mired in that pool of negativity.

One day as I was entering the building, I happened to be following closely behind Alan, a man who uses an electric wheelchair to get around due to being unable to walk & limited use of his arms/hands. I observed as he pushed the button for the automatic door-opener that is placed halfway up the wall for those using wheelchairs, and I watched him sail through each of these same doors I had struggled with (and-increasingly- hated) for the last 6 months. Before you start thinking too highly of me, this isn't some big revelation about how I came to understand the gifts of being able-bodied. This is simply a matter of a change in my perspective. 

 Seeing Alan breeze through this process that had been such a bear for me those past months allowed me to realize that those buttons work for everyone, not solely those on wheels. And so the next day I pressed the button and watched as the electric door magically opened for me to pass through. And then I did the same for the next door, and the next, until I arrived at my destination, and I thought ”Wow, that was exceedingly easy!” And then I did the same the next day. Eventually I came to realize that those buttons had been available to me all along, all I had to do was to notice them, and then choose to press them.

And now we come to the metaphorical part of the story. I started to apply this magical button-thinking to other areas in my life. Where else was I struggling and pushing too hard and getting mad when I didn't have to? Where were the "Press Here" buttons in my psyche that I could apply just as simply as pushing a button with my index finger, to open those doors which I was struggling so much in my mind just to walk through?

Over time I started to see the places where my own mind, in the form of fear, self-doubt, and unworthiness were holding me back from getting through to the other side where I dreamed of being. 

And so now here I sit, about to embark on a fresh path, where I will undoubtedly encounter more heavy doors. But I am hopeful that I will be more willing to spot the places where there is a sweet "press here to open" button. I intend not to let heavy doors hold me back anymore. Surely there is nearly always a "Press here to Open" button available. I may just have to look around a bit to find it. 

A little Caterpillar Action

"What if you could see your current obstacle as a sign of transformation? Because, when you set an intention for growth you also manifest the obstacles that have been obstructing your path to freedom...don't let yourself get hung up on the upset." http://www.robinhallett.com/

Lately I have been working to allow what my teachers teach to flow through me into action. I have several inspirational thoughts posted around my bedroom to help me think positively about my future and my possibilities, to try not to lock myself into one particular thing or to think of myself as limited. I know that I am limitless (Thanks to Lisa Hecke, my teacher, my friend, for that particular refrain that has been intermittently running through my mind since this summer when I did some vision boarding workshops with her and Heather Janesky) and that I have gifts to share with the world, they are singing to get out. Right now they are like a bird who has been caged for the last 6 years (I know why the caged bird sings, yes, I know a tired metaphor when I see one, but it's apt) and it's time to let that bird be free. 

It's time to start leaving the door to the cage open, and letting the little bird take some trips to see what she can give the world. I know I have been taking these little journeys all along the way, and that, in reality, I have never been "stuck" as my mind tries to name it, only ruminating, marinating, learning, getting stronger, and preparing myself for the next step in my journey. A little bit like a caterpillar in her cocooned state, I have been transforming myself in my chrysalis for a long winter and now it is time to eat that shell (did you know that baby monarch butterflies EAT their chrysalis when it's time to become a butterfly, so they can create the fat stores they need to fly across the continent and mate and lay their own eggs to create the next generation of butterflies?) But I digress...

Very Lovely Artwork by Robinhallett.com

I came here to write this--

A very Personal Ad: ( I'm flagrantly borrowing this concept from Havi Brooks as seen in the Fluent Self)

What do I want?

I want to remember that I am okay. I want to give myself the space to work on my work and to study what I want to study and to learn about what it will take to make this next leap of faith. I want to open up the window so I can let the light in to grow my soul & get ready to be a butterfly. I want... a sunny room to sit and write surrounded by plants where no one will bother me for hours at a time. I want someone to bring me coffee.(I took a break from writing this and got my own coffee.)

I want to be the yoga I want to see in the world, as my teacher Izzi says... I want to be the change... I want room to grow, I want time, time, time, and a room of my own. I want to write and heal and love and drink coffee. That's what I want.  And I want security of knowing that I will be taken care of, that health care will fall into place when I need it, for me and my kids. I want to know that the rent is paid for the next six months one year, and that I don't need to worry about my needs being provided for, because I can trust that I am taken care of. I want to trust that I am taken care of. 

And I want good sleep, without drugs. And I want someone to make me breakfast. 

It seems that I already have the sunny room to sit and write uninterrupted for hours... it's just that it's in an office building where I lack the freedom to move around, or have appointments at my leisure. SO I ALREADY HAVE one of the big things I am asking the universe for...It's just that I need to transmute it to a different physical place on the planet. 

Maybe I need to frame this space in a different way. I am in actuality, currently getting paid to work out my kinks... to figure out what my next step is. That is precious, and I am grateful to have it. It's just that I can't bring myself to care anymore about deadlines, or about quality of work, or about... anything about being here really, and that is a major indicator that it's time to move on. That I have learned the lessons I needed to learn from this place, the Universe is sending me on my way now, with a fully packed lunch box and a pat on the behind. It's telling me, "You'll be okay, dear! I've got your back, and I will be here with milk and cookies when you return from your adventures." 

I want to have a safety net, a safe place to land. And it's so freaking scary to feel that I don't have that. And I know that as long as I harbor that fear, then that safety net will not exist for me in any tangible form. Except that it does, I know that we are all taken care of in exactly the ways that we need to be...I just need to find some courage to make the leap of faith that I have been wanting to take for the past 3 years. 

But I am fearful of becoming so attached to the security of this space, and this paycheck, let's be honest, that I won't see when it is clearly time to move into the next thing. How will I know when it's Time?

Is it when my boss decides that he is moving to another university in another state? Is it when I get an offer to do another job here that in all likelihood will not afford me the time to think and write stuff out like this? Is it when I feel so trapped within my own thoughts that I imagine going into the bathroom and screaming at the top of my lungs? Do I have to wait here until I do something stupid enough to get me fired? No, I need to pull up my big girl panties and walk out that door. Or, rather walk through that door, and place that Letter of Resignation on my boss's desk. 

"This situation, like all situations, will turn out to have been remarkably useful, and slightly future me will glow a <3 thank you" (--Havi Brooks) Yesterday, post yoga I had this moment of PURE THANKFULNESS...for all that is in my life right at this moment and all that has ever been. Because I had an understanding that all that has ever been is what has created this me, that exists right now, and I was able to see in the purity of the light in the yoga studio, with all of my "junk" washed away, that I am that pureness, and that so are you. And I was able to see that my path that I have been walking is the right one and that I have actually always been on it, even when it feels scary and dark and wrong. We are never on the wrong path for our spiritual growth.. One of my many post-it notes that hang on my bedroom says "I am exactly where I need to be...right now." And another one says "I love myself for exactly who I am today." 

What do I want?

I want to embrace the capacity to grow and change, and I want to have the time to put effort into that change. I want to be able to have a quiet safe little cocoon of blankets to wrap around myself when I am needing a dark room to run to. I want to have a soft bed to land on. I want strong arms around me and I want to recognize my own strength, my own capacity for holding my own self.