Lately, I have been reflecting a lot. Reflecting about how life is this wild adventure. Moments of contraction followed by beauty and expansion. Brutal learnings woven with smooth sailings. Excitement and heartbreak. And so much potential for growth, every second of the day. It feels true to me to say, Life wants to Awaken. That this is the ultimate "purpose" of being alive - to go through all of our embodied experiences, to clear our karmas, shed the layers of our personal untrue, and re-emerge on the other side remembering love, stillness, ease. Taking a full seat in our bodies, back home in the heartspace. Newly 35 years old, when I look back at everything that I have experienced - traumas, gut-wrenching events, addictions, eating disorders, loss, rock bottoms, I can see the trajectory so clearly - all of these times my mind could label as hard or unfair or painful, in fact paved the way to where I am at. I needed to go through it all to find my way back to me. And perhaps, it's not that the ebb and flow of life ceases to pulsate - it's our relationship to what arises that does. We learn how to sail through these periods of contraction without causing ourselves more turmoil by pushing it away, by reacting, by immersing in victimhood. These have been really challenging two weeks, on so many levels - my body wasn't doing too good, my internal landscapes were full of emotional intensities, there was so much confusion in regards to what lays ahead and my current circumstances. And I let myself feel all of it. Suddenly, I am on the other side of that passage. Back to feeling clear and centered, body back to a sense of greater equilibrium. Just like that, it comes and goes. This journey has no ending, no finish line of finally being done with the inner work. So to me, what works and what feels useful, is to truly see it as an adventure, like the Hero's Journey - the template of human life by Joseph Campbell. We set off into the wild forest, meet all the creatures, some benevolent and others not so, we face our fears, learn, find some magick tools, and eventually return home, so much wiser, so much more true to who we really are. Sending lots of love from my forest to yours. Let's keep going.
