Hello sweet soul!
Bridging in between spiritual practice and real life – is there such a thing?
I can remember to be in the world (real 3D stuff to deal with) but not of the world (how I deal, responding instead of reacting).
Take a deep breath.
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Here’s something I just wrote down Sunday morning in my journal that I want to share:
“This morning it’s about feeling deep. I see myself in old patterns, and then breaking out of them, dancing with new ideas.
I’m divine, not defined by my outer circumstances. I get to come home to my eternal essence. It is what truly holds me. What if we dropped all the stories we keep telling ourselves? What if we gazed at the wonders of the world unfolding in front of us? What if we expressed our love and joy as much as we feel our pains?
What if we release the idea of duality and recognize it all as part of the magic unfolding? And who are we really? And what makes me come most alive?
I recognize I go back and forth in between wanting to talk to people about it, and then just wanting to retreat, because I don’t want to hear the objections – but wouldn’t that be escaping from reality?
The retreating is good to come home to ourselves, and yet that’s not where we truly live. We live in connection with others. We live when you and I have a real conversation. When we feel safe enough to be vulnerable with each other. When we trust each other to hold each other’s experience without wanting to try to fix it.
Can we just be there for each other and hold space for the experience validate what we’re going through? Encourage each other to live our truth?”
I have three points that I would like to bring into this and detail a little more, because I know that otherwise my ramblings may stay a bit on the abstract level. The insights from the notes that I was just reading from. My three points for today are: 1) Keeping it real, 2) keeping the vision, and 3) embodying the vibration.
1. Keep it real
The keeping it real part is what I was referring to when I said “what if we express our love and joy as much as our pain?”
It’s sometimes easy to either put on a happy mask and always say ‘oh yeah, it’s fine, all is fine’ and it’s also easy to always be in a complaining mode and talk about what’s not working.
Can we find a little bit of both? Can we acknowledge what’s tough right now and appreciate all the joy around us, and everything that’s good? It requires us to be very present with ourselves. It requires us to be very present with our own experience, and to be present in every situation. So that when I run into you on the street and you ask me how I’m doing that I don’t just blurb my story of how everything that’s going wrong in my life is there, or to just have on the mask of ‘oh, you know, everything is just fine’.
Can I be so present with you to share something that is real without necessarily unloading all the stories that run in the background? Can I just be really present with you in the moment? And can I really listen to what you are sharing with me? Can I be genuinely curious about your experience, instead of trying to slap my own experience on top of that and come back with an ‘oh yeah, I remember a time when a similar thing happened to me’. Because when you tell me about your experience it’s not really about my past. What you said is not about me – it’s about me acknowledging and validating your experience: ‘oh, thank you for sharing that, I hear you, that sounds really beautiful’ or ‘that sounds really tough’ or whatever it is that that you’re experiencing and sharing in that moment. ‘Tell me more about that’ and ‘how does it feel when …’ this or that or ‘what what does it feel to you?’ And enquire what this means for you.
Presence, and listening, keeping it real. Internally and externally, by the way, let’s pay attention to that even in our inner talk.
2. Keep the vision
The second piece is about keeping the vision. That is where I might want to say: ‘Well, what if we dropped all the stories we keep telling ourselves?’
And what if we release the idea of duality? What is duality? When we have a strong perception of good and bad and the need to label things as such. There is always more complexity to it. But that’s another point I pick up further below. Let’s stick with the vision first.
When we have a vision something that we are desiring, something that is within our soul’s calling, we’re really being called forth to do something, and then the next thing that happens is this. If we do dedicate ourselves to it, then all the obstacles start creeping up, like they always do, because that’s life, because we’re human – welcome. And so we may have an initial success, and then it becomes tough, and then we want to persist, and it becomes tougher, and maybe we ease back and take a step back and say ‘oh, is this really it?’ Okay, I revalidated it, that’s really it, and I keep going.
And then bigger obstacles come, and it’s just the dance of life.
Instead of letting the fact that obstacles do appear, and that challenges seem to become larger hold us back – can we just acknowledge that as the path unfolding? Can we let that be part of the adventure, instead of letting it question what we were going for, instead of letting it question our vision?
The deeper we can tie ourselves into the vision, the more we can image that vision the more clearly. I see it within my mind’s eye, within my soul’s eye. The more I can relate it in detail, the more real it will become to me that it is actually an attainable thing. And I don’t mean attainable in the sense of ‘check that goal off the list, move on to the next one’, but to acknowledge it as something that is continuously worth striving for. It is the beautiful vision that I hold and I’m in my process of making my way there. Yes, parts of it will be strenuous, and parts of it will require me to grow tremendously as a human – and that’s okay, because that’s what I came for.
Yes, we all need that balance in between growth and expansion on one hand, and then also some safety and calmness and just peacefulness within ourselves on the other hand. One nurtures the other. It’s a back and forth in between lunar and solar energies, in between yin and yang, in between the sacred masculine and the sacred feminine energy. All of that. And because it’s all part of the big whole, it’s not duality, it is one organic thing.
If you don’t feel quite that connected to your vision, take a few minutes to yourself journal about that vision. Go into it in a lot of detail, allow yourself to feel it. What would it feel like when that vision has come true? What is the feeling state that you’re aiming for? What does it smell like? What does it taste like? What does it feel like in your body? What do you see around you? What are the parts of it? What does that look like in your everyday life, having that vision come true?
And that brings me to the third piece: embodying the vibe as.
3. Embody the vibe
What do I mean by that? When we tune into our vision, and into how we want to feel when we live that vision, that is the vibe that we aim for.
That doesn’t mean trying to slap it on top of everything and trying to make myself happy when I feel sad. No, in every moment we can be very present with what we feel in our bodies, because our bodies are always giving us feedback. Every feeling, every emotion that you experience in your body is feedback about your present reality, about your inner circumstances, about how you perceive the world.
Allow yourself to feel that. It’s super valuable.
It gives you very rich feedback about the world. Trust those feelings – not in buying into them and drawing major conclusions from them as in ‘I feel an emotion and label as something negative, therefore this is all wrong’. No, use it as a fine-tuning mechanism. Listen to the sadness and ask it ‘what do you need from me?’ And trust that answer that comes through.
Once we allow ourselves to feel those emotions, they can pass through us, and then we can come back to our natural state. That natural state is a very peaceful one. It is content, it is calm, kind, sometimes with bubbles or sparkles of joy all over it. We can tune into those. Also, not getting attached to them, but just enjoying them as they happen. If that needs a little assist, then just remember what makes you come really alive. Which activities make you come fully alive?
Those are the things that lead you to your natural state of being, the one where you feel really alive in your body.
Good, take a deep breath here.
Yeah, one more, exhale with a sigh.
I want to invite you:
First, to keep it real today. Be really present. Listen as much as you want to be heard, or as intensely as you would like to be heard.
Second, keep your vision. Take the time to really tune into the vision of what you want to manifest in your life, what that feels like, what that tastes like, what you see, what’s the soundtrack of that vision?
Third piece, embody the vibe. What gets you into that feeling state? Feel everything that is coming through as feedback, and then allow yourself to return to that natural state of bliss.
I’m sending you so much love!
If this has served you, and send me some feedback. I would love to hear from you. Let me know what other topics you would like me to talk about.
(Check out my contributions on Insight Timer if you want to join some of the live or recorded meditations.)
Thank you and have a beautiful day!
Blessings and love,
Birgit
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