It's really funny how beginning this post is even still striking up the discord within me over whether to write authentically. I follow several spiritual teachers, and have been since an awakening experience to my growth as a person and feeling a sense of purpose in life. I feel like people attach all of this baggage to the word "awakening" though, as if there was some dramatic moment in which the nature of the universe suddenly hit the individual and they experienced ecstasy... um, no.
At least, for me the word awakening represents the moment that I didn't just ask "Why?" and received answers, but actually asked, "Why don't I ask why?" Why do we continue to live our lives by unquestioned standards and expectations? Why don't we question when we are told, "That's just the way things are"? As someone who believes there is meaning in every experience, and if not then at least causation... it is so important to ask these questions. To question everything. Because, quite literally, every standard we live by, every construct of our societies, is all resulting from humanity itself. If humanity created it, when things aren't going so well, why not create something better? "Waking up" is part of realizing that we are only shackled by believing our own creations have power over us.
No, we may not be able to fix world hunger over night, we may not be able to stop war or rape or child abuse... because we are all collectively co-creating our reality as well. But, we can challenge and change those things in our lives that we give our power to. We can ask, am I giving my power to something that is benefiting me or hurting me? We can choose to develop our own healthy rules for living our life, and doing so begins by asking the question, "Why?"
If we are not content with the life we are living, there is a reason. We may even have all the things that make a healthy life, and still be unhappy. The vast majority of people are not living happily in the western world, and we can see this in our great attempts to cover up our negative emotion. We avoid how we feel with a multitude of things. We drink alcohol. We develop drug addictions. We smoke weed. We sleep it off. We watch tv so that we can forget about our terrible job. We take a pill that will "fix" us and our emotions. We help others so that we can forget our own problems. We exercise to escape feeling lazy. Even meditation, which can be incredibly healthy, can be used to help us escape our negative emotions.
But what would happen if we stopped trying to desperately escape ourselves every time we feel a negative emotion? What would happen? We find that it won't kill us.
I've found that asking "why" you feel this way is one of the greatest tools. Some of us know why. Some of us don't, and we say, "But I've lived such a good life, I don't understand why I would feel like this." But guess what... you are! You are feeling this way, and you can't just pretend you're not or turn it off. The same goes for those of us that know what we've been through and why we feel that way. This is why this post is titled: Embracing the weather.
After a particularly dark Mercury Retrogade (I'm actually not super interested in astrology, but this one has always really lined up with how my life flows oddly.), came to light some shadows I've been holding for a long time. Probably the biggest one yet, my lack of self-worth.
One of the primary teachers I follow is Teal Swan, who I greatly appreciate and whose messages have helped me overcome and embrace this new process. Teal served as a sort of reminder to me. Throughout an emotionally abusive childhood, some techniques Teal teaches, such as non-resistance, were things I did naturally. However, the abuse was stronger and overcame me in my early teens and I forgot those things which I innately knew.
I came to adopt these core beliefs which rub onto us from childhood experiences. This is that inner critical voice which says, "You are worthless." and "You don't deserve to be happy or be loved." And little did I know, these are beliefs that almost everyone has, to one degree or another. Only, they are hidden from plain sight. I've come to wonder, and actually believe, the root of our now-existing problems is rooted in our childhood traumatic experiences.
Whether you had a great childhood or not, everyone has had experiences that make us feel bad. Since it is human tendency to avoid pain, and popular current parenting methods do not validate children's emotions, we instead buried those feelings and events. Now, we continue to find ourselves in situations and with people that "push the wrong buttons" so to say.
So the question stands, if we can't escape it, what then?
Embrace it.
This has been a particularly difficult part of my journey, because let's face it... no one wants to go back to that time that their mother threw a shoe at them, or when their father said, "You have no right to feel that way." It's painful. But, if we are ever to learn from what happened, we must embrace it. And when we finally have, we can finally offer unconditional love, forgiveness, and closure. Even further, we may even become able to appreciate what has occurred for how we have grown from it.
The sky does not condemn the weather, so neither will this Sky.
