Life Behind These Bars

To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover that the prisoner was you.
~ Lewis Smede

A few weeks ago, my father-in-law had a heart attack. A piece of plaque that had plastered itself against his heart became dislodged and blocked the free flow of blood to his body. He felt uncomfortable, his chest constricted, he became short of breath. Thankfully, he noticed what was happening, sought treatment, and was saved. It could have been worse.

Much worse.

This is a man with no previous risk factors, and his condition was a surprise to anyone who found out. But for most people who face this in their life, there are red flags, whether they pay attention to them or not. And as with everything, change is possible. Tragedy is avoidable.

Many years ago, someone in my life hurt me. You know what I'm talking about. It's happened to you, too. Right when I said that, it's the first person you thought of in your own life that hurt you. That one situation you just cannot let go of, no matter how much you think you have, or how much you try.

It just sits there.

For me, this thing that they did has been sitting inside my heart, like a little stone, around which the entire rest of my body has learned to function. And since then, all of the joy that I have felt with that person still flows through my body, but always passes by that little hard spot, nudging it gently, reminding me of what they did to me. So that all of my happiness with them is tainted just a teeny bit by that one hurt.

There are warning signs.
The occasional smart remark I slip into the conversation.
The opportunistic jab at them.
The odd irrational outburst.
Risk factors.
Red flags.

This thing they did to me is like that little plaque that glued itself to my father-in-law's artery. And every time I pretend not to notice what is happening, my heart constricts, I am short of breath, and it continues to block the free flow of love through my body. And I bring myself this much closer to a potential tragedy. To my heart closing down a little bit more.

My anger at this person is like a cage. And I foolishly look through the bars of this cage and think that I am free and everyone else is caged in. But it's me who is locked inside of it.

I am the prisoner.

But, in this prison of my own making, I am also the warden. I hold the key. And I can decide to open the door and let myself out at any time. But I haven't made that choice.

What I've chosen is to imprison everyone else in my anger. To look at the world and live my life from behind these bars. To let that little stone sit there. To let every good thing flow past that little plaque in my heart. To harden up. To let my heart close up a little more every day. Every day I choose to hold on, I do an injustice to our bond.

We all do this. We carry around a hurt in our heart and we lock ourselves inside of it. We let a wrong attach itself to us and decide our fate. We let it harden us just a little bit. We ignore the red flags. We do not change. And for every day that we decide not to make a change, we walk a few steps closer to tragedy.

And it's not just that one hurt. We do it with all our hurts. With all our wrongs. And they stack up inside of our heart, and slowly, we close up. And this affects how we are. It affects who we are.

For me, it has tainted my perception of the world. It has affected the bond between myself and that person. It has affected the bond between myself and other people.

But most of all, it has affected the bond between myself and my self.

So today, I am going to stop ignoring the red flags. I am deciding to make a change.

Today, I am making the choice to walk the path of forgiveness.
To dislodge this little plaque on my own, before it can do me any more harm.
I am unlocking this cage and setting this prisoner free.

I am going to free me from me.

Think of one situation in which you were hurt. Can you make the choice to set yourself free from it? 

The Silence of Madame

Do not speak unless it improves on silence.
~ Buddha

I am a woman of words.

Which means I know how to use them well - to heal - and I know how to use them poorly - to hurt. And I do both.

But for a long time now, I have been wanting to be in silence. I guess, since words are so important to me, it seemed apt that I would want to take a vow of silence to explore wordlessness. Every year, as I transfer my life's to-do list to a new page, I have kept this 10-day silent meditation retreat on the list. I've never known why I have wanted to do it, but I've always known that I have wanted to do it. This year, instead of waiting to get it together and sign up for the retreat, I thought maybe even just one day of silence could work. And maybe after one day, I could try two, and then three, and who knows... maybe one day make it out to that retreat for ten.

So when the new year rolled around and I was writing down the things I hoped to undertake this year, I kept Silence on the list. And one day last month, I decided January 31st would be my first attempt at a day of silence. So much happened in the two weeks prior to my Silent Day that I almost thought I wouldn't go through with it. But it seemed apt that in all the fuss, I would take this time to be in silence with myself.

I looked at it as an opportunity to reflect on the past month; to realign myself with my goals for the next month; to take some time away from the everyday bombardment of communication; and to hopefully learn something.

The night before the big day, I wrote myself a little note that said "Today, I am in silence." and carried that little piece of paper in my pocket throughout the day.

I can't say being in silence was hard, but it was different. For one, people still tried to communicate with me, which made it a bit frustrating since I couldn't communicate back. And within the first few hours, I began wondering why I was doing this. Somehow, I felt I was missing the point.

But then, in the afternoon, as someone was speaking to me and I was listening, they said something incorrect. I wanted to correct them, but not being able to talk, I couldn't. The conversation went on without a hitch, and that's when it dawned on me:

It didn't matter if I corrected them. It didn't matter if I had the right answer. In the grand scheme of inconsequential things, what I said or didn't say right then didn't actually matter. And I realized that most of the things we think we need to say - we don't.

But more importantly, most of the things that actually matter, we never even say.

And worse yet are the meaningful things left unsaid that we can no longer say.

Further into the day, I found myself noticing the sarcastic remarks I might have said but that remained muted on my tongue, and realized that it was better to not have said anything at all.

Benjamin Franklin said: "Remember not only to say the right thing in the right place, but far more difficult still, to leave unsaid the wrong thing at the tempting moment."

I sure hadn't been doing that in my life.

There is a French saying along the same lines that goes: "tourner sept fois la langue dans la bouche," which translates to "turn your tongue seven times in your mouth before speaking." 

What I found was that in my life, I wasn't turning my tongue even once. I was giving in to temptation and saying anything that came to mind - sometimes even things I didn't really want or need to say. I wasn't thinking before I spoke - I was just reacting. I realized that there have been a lot of words I wish I had never said, and so many more I wish I had.

And I think that's an affliction most of us face. We just say what comes to us. We say things that don't matter. We say things we wish we could take back. We even make it a point to say things we know we shouldn't. We don't think before we speak.

And we also don't focus our energy on saying the things that do matter, the things that make a difference, the things that lift us and others up.

And who knows when we won't be able to say those things any longer.

In my life, I don't want to regret the things I said or the things I didn't say. But I want to be aware of both before I decide. And so I realized that I would like to cultivate silence in my life, and take a moment before I speak. 

I cut short my day of silence in the evening. I felt I had learned what I needed to for that day. And after it was done, I wanted to make sure that when I spoke again, I would be improving on the silence.

And so for the rest of the night, I didn't have much to say.

Can you hold your tongue at a tempting moment? 
Let me know how you felt afterwards.

Awakening Joy

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance; the wise grows it under his feet.
~ James Openheim

At one time in my life, when I was working really hard at changing my perspective, I decided to write a journal. This was not an ordinary Dear Diary type of journal. I decided that before I went to bed every night, I would write down a minimum of five things that made me happy that day.

Let me tell you, it was hard at the beginning. When I started off this project, I would sit in my bed and have to painfully eke out good things from my day. It was like pulling teeth, and at the beginning, I dreaded it.

But then a strange thing happened. Slowly, when good things happened throughout my day, I started paying attention to them. I started thinking, "Oh, maybe I could add this to my list. And this." And soon, I started noticing so many good things that I had to write them down during the day so I wouldn't forget all of them.

It was amazing.
I had actually managed to shift my perspective.

Suddenly, even the littlest things started being noteworthy. The crisp breath of fresh air when I stepped outside. The guy who let me merge into the lane. The woman holding the door for me. A smile. A conversation. My mother's lap. My father's laugh. I was inundated with goodness. Everything was a blessing. It was so wonderful. Life was so beautiful. I was soaked in joy.

After the year was over, I kept my journal. But I didn't start a new one. It had fulfilled its purpose. I had found gratitude and appreciation for everything, and I even managed to maintain this feeling of thankfulness long into the coming years.

A few years later, I did the exercise again, when I felt I needed it in my life. It was wonderful again to find the good things in my day. Even on the bad days, I would force myself to see how much I had in my life that others didn't. Even if I had to write down things like "good food" or "warm blanket", it just made me realize how much I had. And once again, I managed to shift my perspective toward joy.

Things changed over the years, and I admit now that my gratitude has waned. But since this year is my year - the end of my trying 7 years - I was so happy when my sister suggested we take a course called "Awakening Joy".

I needed it.

The first session of the course began this week, and one thing it suggested was that we start noticing the joyful moments in our life and spend even just five seconds soaking it in when it happens.

Let me tell you: it's not easy. When you've programmed yourself to have a general negative sentiment override, you forget how to notice the good things. You forget how to appreciate them. You even forget (sometimes) that they exist. You forget what true joy actually feels like. But I guess that's the shift. That's why I wrote those journals years ago. And that's why I am trying to shift my perspective once more.

I have spent enough time focusing on the negative. The blur that I sometimes feel my true self is stuck in is fading and I am getting back into focus. And like when I started my journal long ago, I am ready to reawaken my joy.

And I think it will be as simple as that. Deciding to do it.

Because when we put our genuine intention out into the world, we get what we need. It may not be in the form we hoped or expected, but it comes. And we have to notice it right when it happens, and then revel in it.

So I am done seeing happiness as a goal that exists somewhere in the distance. Instead, I am going to plant its seed under my feet.

And I know that I will grow.

Can you name one thing that made you happy today?

The Murderer and Me

Holding onto anger is like grasping a hot coal with the intent of throwing it at someone else; you are the one who gets burned.
~ Buddha

A little over a year ago, my sister and I witnessed a murder.

We didn't see the shooter's or the victim's face closely, but we saw the shots fired (at close range) and the victim gasping for breath and then falling to the ground. It was such an unbelievable scenario that we actually didn't believe what we had seen. It couldn't have been real. My sister was convinced it was just some kids playing with a BB Gun. I wanted to believe her. I mean, that kind of stuff only happens on Law & Order, right?

Wrong.

We called the cops, went into the precinct the next day, and even looked at pages and pages of mugshots before conceding defeat. We hadn't seen much.

But we had seen enough.

When we found out it was a real shooting, at first, I felt shocked: I can't believe that happened. I can't believe I saw it happen. I hope the person is ok.
Then, I felt angry: Why aren't guns illegal. What kind of world do we live in. How can someone actually do something like that. 
Then, I felt disconnected: I'm fine with it. 

I completely disassociated myself from the event. I became apathetic and began feeling rather indifferent towards the situation since I couldn't logically or intellectually process it. But it happened. And ignoring it certainly wasn't going to get me anywhere.

So one day I sat down to write out some thoughts about it. I needed to address the issue in a way that would allow me to comprehend and process it. As someone who believes everything happens for a reason, I needed to understand why I was there at that exact moment to witness such a horrible crime.

After sitting with it for some time, I came to the conclusion that I witnessed this event so that I would take the opportunity to visit my anger center. To understand what separates the shooter from myself. Yes, he took a life and I would never do that, but what was the root of his actions? An imbalance? A disconnect? Whether he did it for money, revenge, or just for kicks, he was disconnected from the good place inside of him. I know it sounds crazy - I mean, how can someone who did something so horrible have a good place inside of them? Well, the truth is we all do.

Murderers aren't born, they're made.

At moments in my own life, when I let anger control me, I was disconnected, too. And just because I didn't pull an actual trigger, that doesn't mean I didn't pull a metaphoric one. Haven't I ever said something mean to someone in my life, lost my temper, acted in a way I later wished I hadn't? Hadn't those words or actions acted like a weapon and injured the other person?

What I realized was that the murderer and I are the same.

After all, what differentiates his anger from mine? He just has different boundaries than me. I could never think of killing someone, but that's my boundary. Perhaps he could never imagine writing a blog about his emotions - but that's him. We approach our emotions differently.

From him, I learned that when I feel anger, it is ok for me to feel angry, but it is not ok for me to use my anger as a weapon against others. From this event, I realized that I needed to become more aware of my emotions.

What I also realized is that I hadn't yet allowed myself to feel sadness. Sad for the victim, sad for the shooter, sad for what the world has come to, sad for myself to have witnessed this. I was repressing my emotions and in letting them sit inside of me without addressing them, I was muting all of my emotions. Because my body hadn't been allowed to process sadness, my body also didn't feel allowed to engage fully in happiness or joy either.

This was a serious problem.

They say your body stores your emotions, whether or not your mind processes them. In Traditional Chinese Medicine, each organ of your body is associated with a certain emotion. Kidneys with fear, liver with anger, lungs with grief, stomach with worry, heart with joy, and so on. So in not feeling an emotion, your body just stores it and becomes congested. People throw their back when they get stressed; have stomach ulcers when they are anxious; children pee when they get scared. It is all connected.

So in the spirit of growing and learning this year, I have decided to engage in Rasa Sadhana once a month. Rasa Sadhana is a practice of emotional fasting or focusing in which a person puts aside any period of time (day, week, month) to focus individually on each of the nine principal emotions (love, joy, wonder, peace, anger, courage, sadness, fear, disgust) in order to become more attuned to their presence and as a result, master them.

This is not a practice of denying emotions when they arise, of not feeling "bad" emotions or only feeling the emotions we label as "good". We are, after all, human, and all emotions are a natural part of who we are. This is rather about feeling everything fully, observing emotions in an active instead of reactive way, and getting to the root of why we are feeling a certain way. An emotion is a symptom, not a problem. So it is important to understand where our emotions are coming from. If you figure out the problem, the symptom will dissipate. In this way, we can gain mastery over our emotions.

It is important and necessary to address and honour what we feel in order to process it both physically and psychologically, and equally important to enable ourselves to let go. And after bearing witness to someone else's disconnect, I am ready to reconnect and let go.

I am putting down this hot coal. 

I am done getting burned.

What emotions are clogged in your system? 

---------------

P.S. If you would like to do Rasa Sadhana with me this year, reach out to me and maybe I can create a little workshop for us to go through together. 

Scribblie Perfection

When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt your head back and laugh at the sky.
~ Buddha

I've got this little two-year-old in my life.

No, this is not one of those posts about the little two-year-old me who lives inside of me; this little girl is real and in the flesh. Her name is Reya.

Ray-ahhh

When they're this small, they're little sponges soaking up everything you say and do and all the things you didn't realize you said and did (eep)! But although she learns a million things from me, I am always surprised at how much I learn from her.

Take this drawing of hers:

Yes, to the untrained eye it looks like pencil scratches, circles, and general two-year-old scribblies, but after she ran proudly and excitedly to me and said "Look!", I contemplated it for a minute and then asked her what it was. Without a moment's hesitation, she said,

"Buddha."

She knew exactly what it was. And when I looked again, I saw it too. Right there, in the middle of the scribbles and the lines and the circles, there He was. The Buddha. Staring straight back at me, wondering how I hadn't seen Him there in the first place.

I guess I wasn't really paying attention.

Buddha is said to have attained enlightenment and transcended this physical existence. So Buddha isn't something specific. He doesn't look a certain way. He is a concept. He is the idea that you can break free from this physical box and see the world differently if you choose to. He is transcendence, stillness, or whatever you make Him out to be.

With her drawing of the Buddha, Reya made me realize that even in the chaos, there is order, there is meaning. In her drawing there was nothing, and yet, there was everything. And she showed me that whatever enlightenment and perfection mean to you - that is what it is, and no one can argue with that. (Anyway, try arguing with a two-year-old!)

So I kept her scribble, and I will post it on my wall to remind me that it's all secretly perfect.

And every time I look at it, I will tilt my head back and laugh at the sky.

Can you find perfection in your chaos? 

The Tears of Last Year

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can afford to let alone.
~ Henry David Thoreau

A few years ago, I spent New Year's Eve in India with some new friends I had made while volunteering there. At midnight, my friend pulled out glasses of water and handed one to each of us. We were to think of the sadness and negativity of the past year, and then pour the water out. This simple gesture was meant to symbolize throwing out the tears of last year. Emptying one's cup of the accumulated negative energy in order for it to be filled again with whatever we choose to focus on in the coming year. This little ritual stuck with me since then and now, eight years later, I still take pleasure in emptying my cup at the beginning of every new year.

Wherever I am in all the hullaballoo surrounding the new year, I always try to take a moment at midnight to think about the negative energies of the past year that I would like to let go of. This year, I spent midnight with my husband and some friends, and after the customary champagne toast, I offered them all a glass of water, hoping to pay forward this little tradition that had inspired me so many years ago.

We all stepped outside into the crisp winter air for a moment, each with our own glass of water, and took a moment to think of the things we wanted to let go of. As I was thinking of the tears I wanted to leave behind in 2011, I stopped for a moment.

There it was: a permeating silence. The kind of beautiful silence that accompanies a moment of sincere reflection. It was a personal experience for each one of us, and although we were all standing there together, I knew we had each entered into our own universe for a moment. 

It was a beautiful thing.

After we poured our glasses out and went back into the house, a pervading peace surrounded us for a few moments. Everyone thanked me for introducing them to this ritual, and my heart soared a teeny bit. In a fast-paced world full of noise and action, I had managed to engage stillness and reflection in myself and also provide it to others, if just for one brief moment before we resumed the party.

Secretly, I think everyone needed it. In the rush of life, with the constant connectivity of technology, we so rarely take the time to be in silence. And months pass while we hold on to so many things and let them fester inside of us, even if we think we have let them go. But taking a moment to pay homage to our past and then to let it go is such a powerful practice - one that need not only be performed once a year.

What a wonderful way to start off the new year: with silence, surrender, and gratitude.
And an empty cup.

I feel rich beyond measure.

What negative energies do you want to leave behind in 2011?

The Shortest Day, The Darkest Night

So the darkness shall be the light, and the stillness the dancing.
~ T. S. Eliot

Last week, we marked the winter solstice. The shortest day of the year. That is also to say, the longest night. Which means we were immersed in darkness for the longest period of time in the year.

I attended a shamanic drumming circle a  few weeks ago in which we explored The Dark and the concept of Darkness. Most of us think of darkness as this negatively charged, depressing, or angry place or feeling - something to be afraid of. But we were encouraged to leave our judgments at the door in order to learn openly about the dark and the darkness.

We started off by discussing the concept of Yin Yang, which, in Taoist philosophy, relates to opposites and balance. For our purposes, dark and light. The visual representation of Yin Yang is the circle of light and dark with a dot in each side. So there is dark and there is light, but within each is a speck of the other. Basically, the concept is that opposites are interdependent, and only exist in relation to each other, so both are present in everything.

So without darkness, we wouldn't know light.

This resonated with me.

I have spent so much time fighting my darkness, associating it with depression and anger and all the things that go bump in the night, but there I was being told this may not be so. That I might have to throw everything I thought out the door. That I had to stop thinking all those horrible thoughts I had about the darkness, and give in to the idea that I could be completely wrong about it all. And if you know me, admitting I'm wrong isn't exactly a piece of cake.

But I tried it anyways. We did an exercise to explore what darkness meant, and when I came out of it, I had this huge realization:

The universe is dark.
Light came afterwards.

There I was, sitting on this deep well of understanding and I didn't even know it. And just then, something inside of me let go and surrendered to this knowledge. I began thinking about what I had just learned and how it could be applied to me and my life. And these thoughts started creeping into me:

Darkness isn't bad or angry or depressing or miserable. Just like the universe, the darkness just is. And it is only against this darkness that the light can be seen. So the universe is made of this all-pervading darkness and the stars are just microscopic reflections of light against it.

And it was this thought that began leading me towards accepting me as I am.

If I equate the darkness inside of me with the darkness of the universe, that means the universe is inside me. And my darkness may be necessary so that I can see the light in others (and myself).
And in terms of the Yin Yang, that means there is always a light inside of me, keeping me balanced.
And all of that sounds like something I can live with.

Since the solstice, the light in our days has lasted a little longer, and will continue to tomorrow, and the next day, and the next. And as we travel in this circle of Yin and Yang, remember that wherever there is darkness, there is always a speck of light.

And I will dance with the idea that maybe my darkness is my light.

What does darkness mean to you? 

Telemarketer Compassion

Be kind, for everyone you meet is fighting a harder battle.
~ Plato

Today, like most days, the phone rang and the caller ID had some weirdo name and number - which is when I know it's going to be a telemarketer. My heart starts racing, blood rushes to my head, my entire body stiffens, and I find myself in this angry place. And that's before I pick up the phone.

This whole reactive process is new to me. When I was in Montreal, I never felt this level of aggravation with telemarketers. Since I moved, though, I've had some pretty heated phone encounters with highly aggressive and annoying callers who leave me dizzy with anger (literally). So like Pavlov's dogs, I guess it didn't take long for my body to adapt to the auditory and visual cues of impending disaster.

It was weird today, though. I felt most of the physical and emotional things before I picked up the phone, which led me to be slightly curt to the caller. But as he was talking to me, something came over me. He gave me his shpeel and I told him I wasn't interested and then there was a silence. And just as I was hanging up the phone, I had a fleeting thought that caught me off-guard: I was thankful he had a job.

I have no clue why I thought that, or what was different at the end of this particular conversation, but I wasn't dizzy. I wasn't angry. My heartbeat was normal. I thought of how he must have felt after not having made the sale. Deflated, perhaps. I wondered what his life was like, somewhere in the world. If he had a family, parents, a wife, kids, and was just trying to make it by. And I got this feeling of empathy. And then I became glad that he was making an effort. And then I felt grateful that he had a job.

Maybe he was trying to sucker me into a scheme, and maybe the people he works for are crooks, and who knows, maybe he is one, too. But maybe he's not. And maybe he's just doing what he needs to do to get by.

That's when I remembered the Buddhist virtue of compassion, and how if you go through your life with compassion for everyone on your path, you won't have space for any other emotions. Everyone is struggling with their own problems, and if you understand that and approach everyone with compassion, it gets harder and harder to be angry. The next time you are faced with an angering situation, try imagining that the other person just lost their job, and react from that place of compassion instead. See how different it feels.

I hadn't intended on being compassionate with that caller today (though I wish I had), but it came to me anyways. And the feeling of compassion was so much better than the feeling of anger. And I hope the next time the caller ID says telemarketer, I remember the guy sitting in a room on the phone just trying to feed his family.

And I hope I smile before I pick up the phone.

Is there any situation in which you wish you had been more compassionate towards someone?

Of Traffic Jams and Monkey Gods

Stillness is what creates love. Movement is what creates life. To be still and still moving - this is everything.
~ Do Hyun Choe

I can't stand traffic.
I go a bit mental.
And by a bit, I might mean very.

I've tried to figure out what exactly it is that gets me so worked up, why my heart starts racing, my blood starts pumping, and I feel like I'm losing my mind, and I've come to the conclusion that it's the stagnancy of it all. The desire or need to go somewhere, get somewhere, and the inability to move - forward, backward, whatever. I think I can't handle traffic because it reflects the stagnancy I sometimes feel in my life.

I know it sounds crazy (especially because I keep talking about other me's), but I often think about this little me that lives inside this big me, restless, paralyzed, stuck, unable to move, because the big me encases her and she cannot go anywhere. Little me screams and bangs on big me's chest and begs to come out and live fully but this big me, she just sits there, unable (and I think secretly unwilling) to move. She crosses her arms and just sits there. And I just want to shake big me and yell, "What are you waiting for?! Move, dammit! We have a finite amount of time!" But she just stares at me blankly. Frozen.

I think traffic reminds me of feeling frozen.

When my husband and I visited Kuala Lumpur, we went to see a cave temple outside of town. At the entrance to the area was a massive statue of Lord Hanuman tearing open his chest to reveal images of Lord Ram and Goddess Sita. Legend has it that Lord Hanuman had immense powers, but due to a curse, he would forget about them and need to be reminded before he could use them. When Lord Ram was sent into exile for 14 years, he met Lord Hanuman, who used these powers to help them through various trials and tribulations. Lord Hanuman was such a strong devotee of Lord Ram and loved him and Goddess Sita so much that it is said they lived in his heart. And when Lord Ram returned home after having slain his demons, Lord Hanuman was there to embrace him and remain by his side.

I think I'm a little like that. If I ripped open my chest, you would see the exiled little me living in my heart, just waiting to return to the world. I want to tear away my boundaries, set her free, and let her do the great things she dreams of doing and go the great places she aches to go. And I think I forget that I have the power to do this, to do whatever I want to do and be whoever I choose to be, if only I could be reminded of it sometimes. And hopefully when my true self returns after so many years away slaying demons, I will embrace her, and we will remain side by side for some time... like maybe forever.

So this is little me reminding big me that I have the power to make a change. And though it might take me 14 years, I accept that that might be my path, and it will happen - one step at a time. After all, happiness is a journey, not a destination. And maybe sticking me in traffic is the universe's way of teaching me to appreciate the stillness of where I am instead of always needing to get somewhere else.

And maybe if I embrace this stillness, I will find what moves my heart.

How do you feel when you are faced with stillness? 

It's all a blur

And then the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was greater than the risk it took to bloom.
~ Anais Nin

This is how I feel sometimes.

Like there is this ecstatic me somewhere in the distance, waving her arms, laughing, dancing, and screaming for me to notice her. But she is just a big blur.

Once in a while, she comes into focus, and I revel in her presence. I take her all in and I feel light, and care-free, and full of the excitement of love, peace, and inspiration. And I so desperately want her to stay, but eventually, she starts to fade.

I think I'm secretly scared to have her around for too long. Darkness is a place my eyes have become accustomed to, and I'm not sure how to function fully in the light.

Those who know me know that there was a point in my life when I was the best version of my then-self. After dealing with a lot of darkness as a teen, I worked hard for 7 years and finally tapped into my endless inner source of light. With my friends, I often refer to that version of me as Happy Rachna or Buddha Rachna, because I feel I had mastered life and the art of enlightenment.

Then, something happened.

I don't know exactly what happened, it's all just a big blur, but something shifted. The true me began to move out of focus. Like water toward a drain, I started flowing helplessly towards the darkness again. And the biggest mistake I made was to succumb. The path of least resistance was to ignore the inner awareness that something was amiss.

Looking back over the past 7 years, I have a lot of theories about what happened, but only one truth:
I am no longer living my best life.

And I think that's what matters. I could postulate on all the reasons why I am where I am in my life or why what has happened has changed me but I don't know if it matters (unless I'm working through something major that I need to release). What matters is that I am not satisfied with the way things are and I need a change.

It was brought to my attention that our lives run in 7-year cycles, and scientists have said that the cells in the body regenerate every 7 years. If all of this is true, that means my time is up. My 7 years of darkness are coming to an end. Finally.

I know that Buddha Rachna is still in me. She never left. She just took a backseat for a while as I went through the things I needed to go through to bring me here. Now, I'm ready to tap into that light again. I've learned even more since that ecstatic time in my life, and I'm ready to bring forth an even better version of me. Like a Buddha Rachna 2.0. Yeah!

Everything is slowly coming into focus.

I am ready to bloom.  

Are you living your best life? What change have you been aching to make?