It was you all along !!
(What matters most and why I named this platform Care.check)
Hello my caring friend,
How have you been?
But I mean really?
I mean in that part of you that you don't share with anyone, that part of you that you might not even share with yourself… that part of you that, hopefully, is learning to trust me, one Care.check at a time?
How have you been? How did your heart feel this week? What about your whole body? How weary or elated is your mind? Which beliefs are finding and freeing you? Which beliefs are stuck and torturing you?
How. Have. You. Been.
I want to know.
It’s a fascinating journey, this ride on Earth, and it’s not the easiest one. So we need to really remember what matters, and what grounds us. To remember what it all means to us, or at least to give ourselves the permission to find out. And we need to have the courage to go find this answer inside ourselves, because it is not waiting for us in the outside world. No matter how much some people like to take shelter into concepts and advertise them as facts, the outside world doesn’t hold the answers. It’s not meant to. That’s our job.
Because our unique way of understanding, shaping, wording, feeling and embodying that answer is what we were sent here to share with the world. I’m sure of that. And this is why I created Care.check.
This is why I needed Care.check, first and foremost. To make sense of my inner world and see how it resonates with yours. To reach the words of our inner wisdom, deep inside, and let them travel from my heart, through my gut, to this page. For soul energy to be invited to guide my fingers.
Here’s my current understanding of how Soul energy–or what we call Self in IFS therapy–“works”. Soul energy is an everlasting fire of wisdom and compassion, here to warm us up and guide us home; Soul is our gateway to the unconditional love that breaths us, moves us, enlivens us and beats our hearts. The unconditional Love that so many of us call God, and that so many others simply call Life.
And in my experience, Soul energy is inspired to speak through us, when we allow our creativity to embody our two core values (I’ve explained here how we have two core values and why they matter so much).
Mine are Kindness and Truth. They are the guiding principles of my daily life and the compass leading me to where my dreams make sense, free me and serve the world.
So when I let myself sink into the well of love that Soul energy constantly refills at the core of who we are, I can connect to Soul’s compassionate guidance and wise inquiry; I can follow my longing for Kindness and my quest for Truth; I can allow Creativity to take over my mind and guide me through the pages and songs she asks me to sing and write. Care.check is my way to find permission to do that. Care.check is my way of sharing all of that. All that I’m learning and receiving.
All of this cannot be for just one heart. And at the same time, if all of this heals at least one corner of one heart, isn’t it worth a lifetime of devotion–even if that one corner is mine? I know for sure it will be enough if that one corner is yours.
I created Care.check because I have been lied to. Lied about how the world is, how the world operates. Lied about a world that kills, a world that hates. I’ve been told that it is a cruel, loveless, terrifying place, ruled by a jealous judge we’re supposed to call “god” and surrounded by demons we all agreed to call “humans”. I’ve been told that I’m one of those demons, that I cannot be trusted, that my body is a selfish tormentor, and that emotions are murderers our thoughts are supposed to despise and distrust. I’ve been told that you want to hurt me, that you want to take what was meant for me, and that there is only a very small pie of resources that only wolves are able to get a bite from. So I was told not to be a sheep. I’ve been told that money turns humans into evil and that evil is waiting for us behind every door we dare to open up. So I should never try to open one. I’ve been told to hide, to lie, to blame, to ridicule Hope and to demonize Joy. I’ve been lied to by people who had been lied to, and that to me is the saddest part.
Because I was fortunate to have been given a very sensitive frame and two core values that would not let me believe that that world was our world. I just couldn’t, I would have died. I just wouldn’t, it made no sense. I was fortunate to experience the perfect storm of chain breaking (here’s what I mean by that), and to not be able to grasp to what my mind was telling me… because my mind had been turned against me so fiercely, it was clear it didn’t have my best interests at heart anymore.
I was fortunate because I escaped the trap… and those who put me in the trap did not. So I can witness how much suffering comes to them, not because of how the world really is, but because of the beliefs they hold about the world. We don’t see things as they are. We see things as we are. Anais Nin taught us that. We project our beliefs onto the world and it drives behaviors we have no awareness of, behaviors meant to obey our unexamined confirmation bias, behaviors which drive ourselves crazy… behaviors that drive others crazy in the process. And in the end, we blame the world.
I created Care.check because it doesn’t have to be like that.
I’ve always known that, but I didn’t know how to confirm to myself that I was on the right track. However, since then, I found my way of integrity and I've been walking on it for more than three years now. I do not see the finish line, and I’m not quite sure there’s a place to arrive at… I’m guessing this will be a lifelong adventure and I’m at peace with that. Because I’m still learning more and more everyday about how kind Life is and how comforting Truth is! and I thought that if all of this is changing me, helping me, and healing me at such a deep level, it might be something you need to read, write and talk about too?
So I created Care.check for me and I created Care.check you. I created Care.check to save me. And I created Care.check for the chance to share this one truth, that in my current perspective has the power to change the world:
You are the one you’re looking for.
Which is very good news… because you’ve been right there all along!
We’re not taught how to find ourselves… We’re taught to focus on others. And therefore everybody’s desperately trying to help those they cannot help, while abandoning the one person they can care for best, the person that will then be able to care for this magnificent world we’re all a part of, the person we’re all constantly looking for in everyone else while that person is not a person at all. It’s soul energy. And it’s… right here, right now, breathing you, reading me. It’s you.
Care.check means reconnecting to the word Care, not through our mind, but through our heart. To understand what it means in essence, and not concept. To understand that we don’t need to study humans to understand humanity, we can simply embody ours. It’s not a science project, it’s a lived experience.
And I named it Care.check because we all need to learn the necessary checks we have to prioritize daily, in order to stay centered in our bodies, in our hearts, in Soul energy… in what matters most. We all need to learn or remember what we need to care about in ourselves in order to be able to care about and for everyone else, every living being, every innate object, every so-called thing, all of it. To understand that the world is made from the inside out, and that we cannot therefore change without, without changing within. That’s how we change a hopeless pursuit into a very rewarding new way of relating.
Care.check will also feel, I hope wholeheartedly, like a place where you can pick up a little bill of love, when you need it to replenish your energy bank, when bully brain is lost in doubt or shame, and when you could use a little love note to remember that you are not alone, you are cared for, you are loved… You are made of love.
That you’re safe... That we’re home! We have each other.
CARE.Check: What does this word mean for you now?
With kindness, love and light–because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo