Do you have a minute?
Your life depends on it.
It takes time to be alive.
Take a second to let those words sink in...
How does it feel?
Does it resonate, makes sense, opens something up? or are you patiently awaiting for me to explain what I mean?
This year I'm finding a lot of support in Mark Nepo's The Book of Awakening. Every morning in his poetic and soulful way, he walks us closer to Truth and Compassion.
It's a gentle push in the back to guide our intention for the day. A little gift I receive when my eyes first open and before I even put a foot out of my bed. A prayer disguised as advice, which can only be experienced by the heart and is not meant to be understood by the mind. A few lines I can get lost in to feel "found" for the very first time, all over again... It took only four words today:
"Being alive takes time".
Those words woke me up this morning in every sense of the word. From the shallowest interpretation to the deepest recognition.
As everything in this fascinating journey on Earth we call Life—as if Life was something in front of us, something we own and could therefore somehow survive without... as if Life was a “what” and not a “who”, as if Life was something we have and not who we are—it takes both an instant to come alive, and a lifetime (if not more).
This first instant can be thought of as the moment the sperm weds the egg or at the first cry of a baby in the outside world, that's not the debate here. In any case, it takes a second to come from nothing to BEING. However it then takes us if we're lucky, decades, and if we're deeply asleep, a few rounds on this planet to truly come alive.
A few rounds if such thing as reincarnations exist ... I obviously have no idea. Maybe we miss our chance entirely. That's okay too. Coming alive is not an achievement, it's a miracle. It's not a goal, it's the reward. It's not the end game, it's the beginning of what it's all about. It's not a crusade into the wild, it's a coming home. It's not a one person endeavor, it's the reason we all "are".
I digress ...
My point is that between nothing and being, there is doing. An addiction we fall into in our single digits and that most of us will never be able to completely let go of. Which is fine. I'm not sure we're meant to! There's so much magic to be manifested in this world ... And doing can be a truly wonderful adventure.
IF we don't lose sights of what it's all about, of where we're meant to arrive, in the unfathomable depth of our essence.
I never expected to write about my spiritual reflections ... It took me 35 years to realize it was even something my heart yearned to beat for. I was raised to be logical and practical, and as a Capricorn, I excel at both. No one urged me to sing, meditate, wonder or put my thoughts onto the page.
No one apart the voice of who I truly am.
I went to Med school and immersed myself in Science, in the glorification of Knowledge, in multitasking and exhaustion. I became a human doing, sacrificing my heart and my body on the altar of my goals. I climbed the ladder as high as I could, and people started congratulating me for having arrived. That's when the "wait a minute" started to explode in my mind … “Is that all there is? Is THAT the view I fought so hard for? Is that the only kind of difference I am meant to make? Is that all the help I can provide? Is that what all of this is all about?”
Those were very triggering questions for me because I knew right away that I couldn't live with the answers. It felt so empty, so pointless, so heavy; it felt like … despair.
I have learned that people will only be able to meet us at the depth that they have met themselves ... and I can testify that we can only meet others as deep as we have met ourselves! I thought I knew so much about what others were experiencing ... I had bags of advice and suitcases of opinion to offer to anyone who crossed my path, whether they wanted it or not. I thought it was my role to fix their world and I took no responsibility for mine.
How could I? It takes tremendous energy to watch over the entire world. It takes an unimaginable amount of denial to go through the day without realizing that it doesn't work. I was exhausted ... and I had no time for your problems, so I took it upon myself to fix them, never checking if you needed me to! OR if I was fixing them in a way that made YOU feel they were fixed.
I swam on the surface of the ocean of worry so many of us are trying to not drown in and didn't dare to look for a second what was going on below my feet.
If you'll allow me to come back to my first metaphor, it was frightening at first to jump from the ladder I had been climbing for three decades and to land back onto the ground, where I fell on my knees to collect the pieces of my broken heart and then bravely closed my eyes to start exploring the rumbles of my inner world.
Yes … bravely. They don't call it a dark night of the soul to prevent Disneyland from being overcrowded and to enjoy the ride without any lines or noisy tourists all around. No. They call it a dark night of the soul, because that's exactly what it is. Dark.
The first stars appear pretty fast and we are incredibly resourceful creatures ... so we quickly adapt to the darkness and start seeing what we couldn't even a few seconds ago. We also then realize that there are other means to see than with our eyes, and that there are far better ways to learn and know than by relying on sleep deprived, malnourished and starved for love brains or minds. But still. It's brutal. It's sickening. It's lonely ... It's terrifying. It's dark.
It's worth it though. Because once you understand that there is nothing to fear and that there actually never was anything to fear in all this darkness, you witness sunbeams coming from every angle... and you watch, in awe, rainbow after rainbow appear on the foundation of your new awareness and way of life.
Suddenly everything makes sense. Suddenly everything had to happen the way it did, and you can see clearly why and how. You don't have to like it, that's not the point, but you start choosing to live with what is and not what our ego thinks should have been or should not have happened. You understand that we don't have a choice in all of this, and that it's a good thing because we have no way of understanding the consequences of our choices with the very limited amount of understanding we're able to collect. We understand that it's not about us, but that we're a part of it all. That it's not on us to save the entire world but that we have a crucial part to play in our little corner. That we're a lot less important than we think we are at the level of form, and tremendously more powerful that we'll ever realize on the level of soul.
Oh how my view of the Humankind has changed since I took a little bath into the energy of my heart... How much reverence I have found for all that is. For Life. For you. For me. For every animal, plant or stone. For every drop of rain and every ray of light. For the beauty of your laughter and the sacredness of my tears.
It's crazy to then realize how little understanding, humility and deference we are being taught in Med school. It's crazy to witness how hard we are on each other and ourselves, while being so complacent with what our thoughts create, from a negative emotion ... to a worldwide war.
Our thoughts are not who we are. No matter how much they want us to believe they are. Our thoughts are automatic processes generated by our brains, and led by the conditioning our culture imprinted on us. By a torrent of unexamined beliefs which rule on our world and turn Earth into Hell … and turn Heaven into desacralized lands and oceans we both relentlessly abuse in the name of greed and ego.
I explained what I meant by ego in this post but it bares repeating. The ego is our false sense of self. The voice is our head that says "I" and that we therefore believe is who we are.
The ego is made of the labels we put on ourselves and misguidedly allow to define us, the limiting beliefs and masochistic aphorisms we unconsciously live by, the past versions of us which got frozen in our most horrific, lonely and shame-inducing memories, and of all the expectations that we inherited from those who came before us and from those who have lived around us since we came into this world.
The ego is in charge of our days until we take charge of our ego. And taking charge of the ego takes time. Time the ego is very good at convincing us we never have.
Yet, being alive takes time. In every way. Our aliveness borrows time to exist and evolve in this realm of form ... AND connecting to our aliveness requires us to stay intentional, grounded to the present moment, aware of our thoughts and emotions; it requires us to connect with time, to slow down, to take our time. It requires time.
Being alive takes time because if we're rushing, we miss it. Plain and simple. We run after the golden egg of productivity without caring about the golden goose that we are. Without realizing that no instant will ever come back, ever, that it was our only chance to see the majestic bird who flew above us, to catch the fall of a leaf, to understand what this moment meant for the one we love, to feel what this moment meant for us.
It was our chance to choose a different answer to a question which might never come again, to convince a child that they're welcome into this world no matter how they behave, to smile at a stranger who needed to remember that hope exists and that kindness matters. To meet a lifelong friend hiding in a distant co-worker, or the human being acting as our nemesis. To learn to know ourselves. To honor our hearts, to open our mouth as an answer to love and not in reaction to fear ... To catch the thought fueling the nightmares we blame on fate, never realizing the part we play in them.
Being alive takes time, because it requires smelling the yellow roses on the coffee table, touching the soft blanket keeping us safe in the winter. It requires tasting the extraordinary flavor of a peach, of your favorite curry or dark chocolate ... it requires hearing the symphony which Life plays generously all around us and seeing all the Beauty that suddenly surrounds us when we allow ourselves to pay attention.
Being alive takes time because the ego is constantly commenting, judging, complaining and separating, in a misguided attempt to protect the parts of us it thinks this world would destroy on a whim—not realizing that those parts of us are what the world needs and yearns for, to finally heal.
The ego mistrusts compassion and hope, convinced they will disappoint us—or worse drain us—and thereby cutting our access to our greatest sources of strength and support. It tells us that our dreams are foolish and takes any chance of failure as an opportunity to self-erase, caging us into the chains of resentment and heartache a dreamless future ties around our necks and waist.
Being alive takes time ... to BE. To just be. Doing has its benefits, but if we're not careful, doing also traps us in a forward motion which can be so exhilarating and overpowering that we then spend all of our days rushing through every second and situation without a glimpse of presence, without an ounce left of intention, without any agency or even a vague sense of direction.
Being alive takes time if you want to know what it really means to be alive. If you're ready to feel it... To come back to what is, into your body, within your heart, to be guided by your gut and the truth of who you are.
Being alive takes time if you want to become aware of the limitations the ego puts on us and of the boulders it places between us and everyone else ... If you want to take back your birthright of choosing love over fear now, now … now! and then again NOW. If you want to feel love, to truly give and receive love, if you want to BE love.
Being alive takes time. And that's the beauty of life. The preciousness... The magic! The secret.
We can either lose ourselves in doing, or find the courage to find ourselves in being still.
Nothing and doing are not our only options, this is a fallacy sunk into our subconscious by the ego, to prevent us from ever finding our way out of its grasp. Nothing or doing are not our only options. If we stop doing, we do not disappear, we do not die: we come alive.
Being alive takes time and it's worth every minute it takes.
Don't miss it.
ENJOY it.
And remember, you don't have to earn your right to take the time to live! You ARE Life.
Live it.
CARECHECK: Take a second to close your eyes and connect with your breath, with your body, with the sensations in your hands or in your feet. (And remember: a lack of sensation is a sensation.)
Open your eyes and look around you. Take your time! And really look around: What are five things you can see, that you enjoy seeing, that brings you a sense of calm, of awe, of joy or any other kind of energy?
What are four things you can touch right now? How do they feel? How does it feel to NOTICE how they feel?
What are three things you can hear around you? How does it sound? How does the sound resonate in your body? Did you ever notice before? Does it shift something?
What are two things you can smell at the moment? Is it pleasant? Is it energizing? Does it move you in any way?
What is one thing you can taste? What kind of taste is it? Is it sour, is it sweet, is it interesting?
And now take a second to wonder... who is this presence checking right now with what is? Who can feel... Who can BE !
Check in with your body again and just listen.
Breathe in. Breathe out.
You're home.