Monday, November 5, 2018

Salutations, Sun Rotation



Salutations to another rotation around the sun. My physical form turns 31 on Wednesday but my soul is eternal, so whose really counting anyway?

I spent the second half of my twenties obsessed with self improvement. I've been renovating myself like a house for the last five years, working room by room. Sometimes tearing out things that weren't rotten in the first place. Design and vision shifting constantly as I took in more wisdom, lessons, and influence. Hammering away at foundations from childhood, stripping walls built through icky experiences, updating the plumbing through which I process shit; ultimately exposing more and more space until there was nothing left except, space.

I've been consumed with becoming a better version of myself. I took on a full-time job of cultivating personal responsibility. Every chapter read, hour spent contemplating/journaling, walking one foot in front of the other on long solo hikes, apology offered, boundary erected, was about me being: Better, More, Realized, Assured, Responsible, Aware, Evolved, again-Better.


As the next birthday approaches I've suddenly awoken to realize that in all this becoming, I haven't done much Being. For some, that comes easily. For me, it takes a lot of self-soothing to stop trying and just Be. Exist. Often lost in my own thoughts and neuroses, I obsess about my potential. 

I've chewed through self help and spiritual literature. I've thought a LOT about my mistakes and misgivings, my lacks and my character flaws. I've named my issues and limitations out loud, taking the power out of anyone else's accusations.

Now, here I AM. Just am. Me. Unfurled, unwoven, stripped bare to realize that it took all that work for something so simple and meaningful to be awoken inside of me: The pleasure of liking myself, seeing my goodness, suddenly unlearning the perverse need to be broken, and thus fixed.

No more anxiety (forward focused), no more unpacking my guilt complex (past obsessed). Just now. Over and over again, NOW. Every moment defined unto itself. No context needed, no urgent sense of responsibility and analysis. The is-ness of this very second in time.


The thing is, and I think this is actually incredibly important, neither route is superior nor wrong. You require both approaches at different phases: unabashed self love, and sincere self reflection. I haven't figured out yet how to hold both inside myself simultaneously. Maybe that wisdom comes in your forties...... haha. All I know is that right NOW the pendulum is swinging towards ease and admiration, and I'm willfully setting the baggage aside to unpack at a later date.


My intentions and affirmations for this powerful thirty first year in the ongoing experiment of waking life:

1. I will stop myself mid-sentence when I'm defaulting to self deprecation, judgement, and taking responsibility for shit that isn't my burden to carry
2. This year, I set aside the question "How can I be better?" and replace it with the daily prompt "How am I wonderful?"
3. I'm not worried if I'm not right for people or situations. I make peace with the understanding that I am a mirror for what people don't like about themselves
4. I'm finding new ways to express my immense gratitude for the human life I get the pleasure of experiencing
5. I create without any thought or notion of how it can/will be interpreted
6. With all the space I've opened up in myself and my life, I'm inviting my Guides and the art of synchronicity to expose new opportunities and experiments for my little human self
7. I am a beacon of light. Me simply Being invites and allows others to Be. And so it goes for all of us
8. I am a magnet for miracles
9. Unfolding (and healing) is a matter of time, not strategy

~*All photos from my recent-and first ever!-trip to NYC*~


















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