Hello Friend,
The past few months have been the most transformational of my life (thus far lol). I have been waiting to feel the right time to share with you. After reading the poem, The Guest House (see below) I felt inspired to share more about what’s happening.
It has been a time of acceptance and immense inner peace. Acceptance used to be my greatest battle or rather my spiritual target.
Whenever I heard the words SURRENDER, ALLOW, or ACCEPT, I knew they were for me. I understood what they meant as a concept but in life experience I knew very little.
Like many of you, I resisted and fought against the emotions and thoughts that scared me. I didn’t want to welcome any feelings that were uncomfortable or dark. The moment the sadness, anger, frustration, anxiety arouse , I put my gloves on trying to avoid it or escape it.
Putting our gloves on looks like a lot of different things; most commonly it looks like moving away from those feelings into our heads/ego. Where we then create a story to make sense of it and create a reason for the pain. “It’s because this person did this to me, it’s because of me, it’s my fault – I created it and need to solve it, it’s because they don’t love me.”
Often times we get lost in the story of the pain or just get lost in the pain itself. Anything used to numb it creates more stuckness. As I like to say, “YOUR PIPES GET CLOGGED!”
The resistance creates the BLOCK, it creates the ATTACHMENT to all the things we think we do not want to experience which leads to more disconnection within yourself. So the question becomes, how can I let go? How can I accept what is without battling against it? There are many different ways.
From my personal experience, I can share that when the pain you have been trying so hard to escape meets you when you least expect, when the false story you have been telling yourself about yourself and about life becomes too heavy to bear;
you have a choice, to hold on and drown or to let go and rise. I choose to rise.
Everything we do in life, every experience we have are building blocks that lead back to our TRUE nature. Facing my fears and doing things I didn’t want to do or feel (because they scared me, because I didn’t feel safe, because I kept thinking it meant something was wrong with me or with life) kept showing up in my life and sometimes in hysterical ways (i.e. my plane ride home from Israel lol).
Situations and emotions that I desperately wanted to control were out of my hands and there was no faking it anymore. When you fight so hard and so long, you will get eventually get exhausted and even the smallest experience can teach you how to let go. So I felt it all, (with the support of my coach and teacher) I released a lot and I began to WELCOME each emotion and experience as my guest. This is why I know it is possible for you too.
Practice welcoming it, practice knowing you are safe, practice facing uncomfortable experiences, practice remembering who you really are <3
Use this poem as your guide – I LOVE YOU!
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice.
meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes.
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.
— Jellaludin Rumi,
translation by Coleman Barks
