What stands in between you and me
According to our brains at least.
“Where do you go when you're scared, when you can't go anywhere, when you have to stay?
Where do you find safety when the dark feels dark, dangerous, out of place? And how do you regulate yourself when your mind is doing the dysregulation?
How do you tell others that you don't understand them when you've done enough inner world to know that all you see is a projection? That it’s actually not about them, that it’s only and ever about you…
How do you tell yourself that you don't understand yourself when you can't find the time and space to be alone with your heart? To cuddle it… and let it know that it's safe to be lost. That it always is.
I don't have any of the answers, but I do have a lot of questions… and writing has always been my inhale; so I'm hoping it will soothe my body in some way. Because as long as your body is stuck in survival mode, you can’t access your rational brain! And even more importantly, you can’t get still enough to connect to your inner guidance. Your soul. Your essence. And I need guidance right now. I really do.
Something happened between one of my best friends and my heart:
They got disconnected somehow and we’re walking on eggshells, having suddenly forgotten how to speak to each other. As if our thousand hours of exchanged words had vanished forever. As if we were strangers in the bodies of two beings passing for friends. As if we didn’t know and love each other.
I feel small, cold, alone. She looks like she’s a million miles away and yet we’re tiptoeing around each other and my coffee table. I want to ask her what happened, but I’m too scared of what she could answer. Is there really something awfully wrong with me? Will she be the one to finally admit it in front of me? Did she see something that will make her walk away for good? My mother kindly warned me after all: “No one will ever love you. Don’t fool yourself. How could they?”
How can I fix this? How can I solve a problem I don’t see? I need data for logic to save me. I need my friend to explain to me how to get my friend back. I need me! but I’m panicking, and therefore nowhere to be found. I'm becoming aware of how much I need my daily structure, my morning routine, the yoga, time to meditate… time to safely regulate. Embodiment got me out of Hell and moved me away from the worst part of my inner jail. It got me out of solitary confinement. Yet, I'm still in jail in so many ways! I just upgraded to home arrest. It's definitely better. But it's not freedom... Not just yet.
I guess this is the reason why Richard Rohr was explaining this morning in his soulful book 'The universal Christ" how the Buddhist and Christian GPS softwares of spirituality complete each other in their guiding system towards unconditional love and God's consciousness. And why we need both.
The Buddhist teachings focus on our inner experience. Digging into ourselves and by exploring our deepest inner worlds, we do get very aware of most of our patterns and can reconnect through our body's heart to our soul and Source. We find our way to God in the stillness which lies beneath all of our egoic thoughts and culture conditioning. We experience God’s consciousness and learn unconditional acceptance of ourselves in the process. Acceptance leads us to compassion towards the self and then others, and compassion is the gateway to unconditional Love. By finding our way back to our Self, we find our way back to the oneness of all that there is, which includes everyone else. And suddenly -or very slowly- everything around us changes. Because, as Wayne Dyer often said, “When you change the way you look at things, things change”. They really do.
The Christian teachings focus on our externalized ways. By opening to others, light -and salt- can land on some wounds we thought we had outgrown or were not aware of in any way. And we need the world to open us up. “The world is not here to make you happy” says Echhart Tolle. “It is there to make you conscious”. I believe that. I accept that. I'm grateful for that! I've come to love ego work and to almost celebrate when people are mean to me or stuck in a toxic behavior. They make me go deeper into my resistance, they make me kinder... and then I get to move on. I look for unconditional Love and learn unconditional acceptance of others in the process. Acceptance leads me to compassion towards others and then the self, and compassion is the gateway to God’s consciousness.
But what happens when the boulder you identify stands between you and one of your most beloved soulmates? There's so much at risk. It feels like there's too much at stake! What if we lose them in the process of breaking open? What if the shadow is more than they can take no matter how sweet, loving and trustworthy they are? What if there really is trauma we can't recover from?
I don't believe that... but what if it's too soon? What if, again, if it is just MUCH too soon? And/or much too much? How can you trust what you don't trust?
And how do you even find God’s help, when your heart closed and your body walled up, in an attempt to protect you from a threat you can't even identify? How can you identify the threat when it felt so triggering to you that you switched off your rational brain and unconsciously slipped into survival mode? How can you feel when you can’t feel and think when you can’t think? How?
So many questions... and no answer to share with you. I'm lost. I feel small, cold, alone. It bears repeating because it is all I can be sure of right now. This doesn’t feel right. I don't feel that I'm enough to handle this situation AND I feel like I am too much to impose on this situation. Sounds familiar?
That's what the ego does to us... It uses both end of the sprectum to torture us in a way that can't make sense to others and by definition won't make sense to us. The goal of the ego is not to center us nor to guide us back to clarity. The goal of the ego is to numb and attack. To shake us away from our core, from our inner knowing and intuition. Out of ourselves.
The ego is not our friend and yet the ego needs our friendship. Desperately. Our ego is lost and pretends to be us. We then feel lost and the ego thinks it's less alone. But what the ego just did is destroy its chance at salvation, and the ego leads us to do exactly the same with our friends, our partners, our colleagues. With everyone else. The ego burns the bridge that would guide it home because it's scared that someone will come and chase it into the wilderness.
How do we break that pattern? How can I be “so self-aware” -as everyone keeps telling me I am- and at the same time find it so hard to soothe myself? How can I not find the words to speak to one of my very best friends when words are supposed to come so easily to me? When she’s someone I trust so very deeply? How do I leave the place I’m currently stuck in when everything in me froze and no muscle will make the first step away from here?
By trusting.
Trusting that recognizing the pattern will be enough. For it to heal. For it to leave... when it's ready. Ready to find its way home. To unconditional Love where you can be loved no matter what you do, think or feel. Unconditionally.
It all starts within us. But it doesn't have to end there. I found my way from isolation to home confinement. I'll find my home in the outside world.
I’ll find my way back to my friend and she will meet me halfway. I can trust that. I must trust that. I need to trust that.
I will find my way back to myself, I always have.
I trust… I have to! And more importantly, I choose to.
And if there's only one thing that I've learned in the last 37 years, it is that intention MATTERS.
Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We don’t have to know “how”, we just have to say “yes”.
So… YES.”
This is what I wrote when a dear friend and I had a misunderstanding last week. It was a late Tuesday afternoon and the rain was making its way from our coats to our bones while we walked on Central Park west and shared the highlights of our day (Yes, we decided to set the fight under the pouring rain. We’re dramatic that way).
Something happened between Columbus circle and Times square -we’re still not sure what- and both of us then felt like the other one wanted to stay silent. We just assumed, none of us checked, and with every minute it got harder and harder to break free from the fear that it was going to stay this way for the rest of our vacation.
It lasted for the rest of the night. It was still very present in the morning. It was very short on the scale of humanity’s timeline but it felt like forever to my weary nervous system.
After writing the plea I just shared with you, it took all the courage I had to finally ask what was wrong and realize… that she was wondering the exact same thing. Wrestling with the same kind of questions in her own psyche. It turned out to be a very healing experience and a chance for us both to dig deeper in our friendships and solidify roots none of us are willing to see disappear. Yet, I thought I would share what I wrote with you because we all think we’re alone in those spirals of self-doubt and torrents of fear. We are not. We’ve got A LOT of company.
We are scared because we’re wounded and because we care. We’re not scared because we’re bad, we’re scared because we want to get it right. And we heal because we’ve got each other to remind us that there’s actually nothing to fear. Not if we’re brave enough to check, to inquire, to take the first step.
We love each other. We’ve got this. We’ve got answers! We just need to give ourselves the time, space and PERMISSION to ask our questions first.
To ask and to listen. To our hearts AND to our fears. To the ones we love and who love us… and this has to include our thinking brain, our loving hearts and every scary doubt which stands in between them.