Category: Introspection

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The Love that Stays: How To Find Self Love

cheerful woman standing near silver tinsel

Welcome to my valentine’s day post about finding that mysterious self love everybody talks about but nobody seems to know how to do.

This will not include tips on how to make your lover never leave you.

I have a secret to share with you; and it is as beautiful as a sunny day after 5 days of rain. It is as refreshing as a cold cup of lemonade in scorching heat. This secret is an answer to the undying mysterious feeling that something is missing.

Just know that the love that stays is the best kind.

It is the peace beneath every breath be it a short one or a long deep one. Surely, let’s not kid ourselves, some days are so terribly hard and some breaths are suffocatingly shallow. Unfortunately too, some people leave us when we don’t really want them to. Simple.Emotions can get stormy and messy, but know that there is a love that never leaves.

There is Hope for Love

Hopefully, you are latching on to my stream of thought here. You were born with the love that never leaves. It is that breath of life the moment you opened your eyes. Love is always there in our bodies, but our clash with the external world silences it. The love in your heart is always there it just gets mocked, locked up and deserted. Love for the self is innate, and not a solid thing contrary to what you might think, it is like water, it flows wherever there is space, and no matter how much it is pounded it will not get bruised. You could feel like this love can be beaten down, and torn to pieces and shredded because It has the capacity to look like other things. Just rest assured that its innate quality remains eternal from the day you were born until the day you die. The love that stays is absolute and complete inside of each one of us.

You might be thinking: But how come I don’t feel it?

There are many reasons for that, and I will help you look at them.

We place so many layers of protection over that sweet love inside of ourselves. In the beginning that love wants to grow and expand into everything we touch and everybody we meet.

But one bad look here, one disappointment there, a good old heartbreak follows, then sprinkle that with different types of rejection, neglect and egoism. That little love now rests underneath every possible defense system you could develop. We want to protect ourselves from pain.

It is a sad story to see that most of us by age 30 have almost forgotten what it feels like to experience that little childlike affinity for things and people. We start experiencing mind love, you hear people say I love with my mind not my heart and that’s ok; but its also a dysfunction, because mind and heart go together. If you don’t uncover, dust off and free that internal self love, then it becomes difficult to use that heart.

How do you find Self love?

Sit with yourself and truly check how you feel.

Really try to answer those questions

Just know that the more sincerely you answer these questions, the more you awaken the love within. There you find the beauty of feeling a sense of connection to yourself. The more you ask and answer, the answers will get sweeter and simpler. The simplest form eventually will appear to you as the love that has always been there, and the love that will never leave you.

You are there for yourself, you can overcome and float, you have pure potential for explosive beauty. Let your heart speak again, let your body feel again and experience those emotions that keep you locked in.

Love yourself first. Self love is eternal and beautiful; once that is done everything else falls into place.

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The Illusion that We Are in Control

I am experimenting with channeling everything I have learned and believed about the energy of being human at this time. All of the meditative practices and the therapy sessions and exercises come into play, as my anxiety mocks me, telling me your worst fears are all happening at the same time. So now what? I am in India, a foreign country, during a worldwide pandemic, with uncertainty at the heart of everything and it plays itself out like a surreal low budget movie. Now what? What can I possibly retrieve to push through and accept this experience?

There is a life force within us that stops at nothing. It travels up from the base of our being, passing through the fleshy parts that make us bleed and into the realm of our minds and our thinking selves. Then it pushes through those swamps of the mind and beyond into our superhuman capacities. The energy finds itself swimming through sometimes with utmost ease and other times crossing currents of suffocated oppression.

What you need to know is that you are so much more than a body that experiences illness. You are beyond the limited capacities of your young brain. You carry the energy of life within your biology. Your physiological body is not eternal and the human experience is identified by its transience; but your spirit pulses through. Allow your spirit to take the wheel; now is a good time.

Let yourself be, let the life force within you play out it’s most beautiful harmony and let your body follow like a toddler taking her first steps. It sounds crazy, but isn’t everything surreal anyway at this point? Why not entertain an idea perhaps even two about the mysteries that surround your being here today?

The process of overcoming only starts from a singular capacity to get up and face whatever it is you are up against. One single token action spurs a series of mini actions that eventually lead to the end; because everything has an end; be it good or bad doesn’t matter. Sometimes an end is all the certainty one needs to get up, take off that frail and afraid body and put that universal spirit in charge. Allow her to travel through where it pleases, allow her to feed whichever other beings it pleases and allow her to swim cross current to stiller places.

The shift in focus requires resilience and a sense of optimism, a romanticism if you like that welcomes adversity and ease just as much. So what is to be done or decided when the authority to decide was an illusion all along?

You sit in your little body and let the energy pass through.

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Our Way Back Home

Words had never intimidated me until recently. Words started to gain weight and lay shamelessly on pages I had grown to trust, eager to expose me and provide relief to whoever was seeking. Words slowly stopped being only mine and gradually belonged to others; using my experiences to tell stories and i sit here looking, reading in retrospect and watching as my words live on and out of my world and into yours. Knowing that, I decided to muffle myself and my words in turn would always be mine, never shared and never exposed.

I did not anticipate that that would come at the expense of drowning out my truest voice. Little did I realize that the words I used were never mine, because what is mine anyway and what is yours at the end of the day?

I write now, knowing that my words are travelers and that I no longer provide them a home, perhaps I never have. The music I had missed helps me find my voice again in hopes of catching a thread, a life line back into this empty space where you and I can leap in, without judgement without blame and say what we really mean because what else is there?

I let the writing happen through me, and I sit back and watch; ego and all, my humbleness and humility rooted in the ground; I become fingers and a beating heart capable only of singing at the top of those words that hell; belong to no one and everyone all at once.

So if you’ve been reading on with me, and living true with me, I say thank you because the space grows as we become better able to recognize one another between the lines and over the noise of everything that remains unsaid.

So pray for this world my friend and do not fret because nothing truly belongs to us after all, not these words, nor our faces or our lives. So trace your hand gently over everything you touch and remain honest and true, because what is work after all? what are words and promises and relationships but paths back into ourselves trying to find meaning and glory in the little things and in the greatest things?

So let this take form, and become something; let the world find its place inside you because in the contrast of it all; in the nonsense of it all- I write for you and through you to myself in hopes of remembering that here too in the constant shifting waves, we have a home.

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Over-thinkers Anonymous

Right now I am thinking of me in terms of you.

You read this sentence and you wonder what is she possibly talking about now? Then again you might not be thinking this at all, but that is why I wrote the first sentence, to get it out of the way once and for all.

Right now I still am thinking about you and what you think, not only of me but of many things, however it pains me to say that my conclusion is not always accurate. Why is that? Why aren’t our thoughts accurate about other people’s thoughts? Now that’s a good one.

I catch myself talking to my husband sometimes, and I seem to respond before he even asks or says something. Why? Well, let’s just say I saw it in his eyes. Or that’s what I told myself before I over exaggerated his look and his entire thought process. Do you ever do that? Think on behalf of the other person? Do you find yourself trying to be inside someone’s head? You might have the most noble of reasons, you might even be trying to be considerate or quick. Does it generally work?

I have been training myself lately to think on behalf of others LESS. Let’s just say it’s a really sticky quirk i have. Thinking on behalf of others to figure out how they feel, what they want, or what they might say had at times served me well, but it generally has led to absolutely nothing short of overthinking without resolve.

The good news about learning new things about ourselves is that we can choose to be proactive about them. I just learned that there are other ways that we could learn about what other’s are thinking.

Here’s a one item list that will make your life easier.

1- ASK

Good luck to all of you brilliant over-thinkers. Let’s spend that energy on something else!

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Who Else is Lost?

The lost ones are my favorites; the ones who are walking barefoot and naked amongst crowds of fancied out liars. The ones who almost got it, the ones who kind of have it figured out; the ones who laugh as they think about the past and the pressure it held.

I walk with the hopeful ones who definitely have no clue but are at least trying. I wait with the patient ones who have been tested more than enough and still cannot catch a break. I dance with the weirdos and the wall flowers; we trip over expectations as we line the dance floors of society. I look at your face and you stare into my eyes that were never blue or green; and I feel enough simply because; and you never even have to say it.

I write for the readers who cannot but. I write for the thinkers who need to stop and need to try something else for a change. I dread with the brave ones the what ifs and the I wish we could. My singularity melts as I think about the whole, as I think about you as you read this and how I could possibly make you feel even if for 2 minutes.

The sickness fades and becomes part of us, it begins to create a home in our lives as we wonder how we could’ve possibly changed. So peer out with me and unto me as I hold your attention for the next few seconds; walk another sentence and give yourself some time to figure sh*t out.

Nothing is as it seems…so who are you?

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If You Need Forgiveness Let It In

The following is a literary portrayal of welcoming forgiveness back into our lives, no matter what has happened, or why.

Finally you hear that long awaited knock. The sound of it travels into your cold little home with a warmth you keep yearning for. You shuffle to gather your things, and push to the side cabinets filled with ice. Except that warmth comes through and there is no denying it, it fills up your room.

Your steps become quicker and your heart lets out a sigh, some life returns to your body. You pause at the door and you think twice whether your heart and your home can welcome such a pleasant guest. You have lately not been known for your hospitality but for your hostility. Then again, you cannot deny this particular guest, you cannot abandon your agreement.

An agreement made in the darkest of nights. Under the moon you clasped your hands and shed a tear promising to open the door no matter what, no matter when and no matter how long it takes. When all else fails the warmth of keeping a long lost promise shall pull you through.

With that, you open your door gently as not to cause a deliberate scene, but the light enters unapologetically, unfiltered and abundantly. You show your guest in, and you humbly sit on the floor accompanied by her.

Forgiveness stares into your eyes, a long lost friend, a companion you have long waited to receive. She uncovers her hands and she brushes them over your hands and face. You look around you, and your frozen home begins to show life, walls regain some color and you suddenly feel something again, a little flame in the pit of your spine igniting your light again.

You welcome your guest to stay for she has come back to you despite the chill. She brings you a note and in that note your promise is fulfilled. A few words written by a hand that looks so much like yours: “Forgiveness always finds a way.”

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Learning From Nature: The Master and The Mistress of Time

lonely woman walking in forest

Learning from Nature: Foliage

A leaf falls to the ground and I look at it. The more I look at the tree the more leaves fall off. I cannot help but think that maybe my stare is forcing this tree’s nakedness. Melancholy takes over. Then, I find myself mourning over a loss that only I alone perceive as such.

Later, I catch myself hurling my feelings, my own sympathies and tragedies onto the tree that does not suffer like me. In reality, I’ve hurled emotions at people near and far, finding suffering everywhere. Except, now I see that I am the mother of that suffering. I birthed it out of an unquiet mind and a spineless fear of the unknown.

The Questioning

How often do we beat ourselves up over not more than a thought? How often do we spare everyone else but ourselves from punishment? What is the programing behind it? What is that fear?

Signs of Life

We go about calling ourselves and our fears by new names. Since once something has a name to it it becomes slightly more familiar, and our weariness of it diminishes. We swallow pills and smoke cigarettes, we drink alcohols and green teas, making sure that we mix it up. Then, we go on diets and detoxes.

We try to clean ourselves of sorrow and shame. However, our toxins keep building and we see nothing else but the need to rise above it and abolish every uneasiness and dirty thing about us. We do it alone, and then we do it together, because having company helps us feel less alone, as though life will spare us some change and give us some benefit.The more of us the merrier and at least we get to have some fun and somebody to talk to.

Living gets serious and then it gets old, we get sick of it and it gets sick of us and we cringe at the thought of doing it all over again. So, we change and hope to fix ourselves and everything around us. We dwell on thoughts and we get too close to some truths that are convincing enough and others absolutely dubious.

Learning about truth from nature

The truth at the end is that we are just passing through; empty handed at first and empty handed at last. You can either find an immense freedom in that or a life sentence of questioning and resistance. What happens before we awaken? and what happens after we go for our eternal sleep? We learn from nature that both must not burden us. Humans already live life carrying burdens and labels in hopes of being of value or creating it, in a world so much bigger and stronger than us.

And so the tree stays still, and though I wish it could break fee of its roots and come crashing to the ground mourning its leaves and its lost colors, it does not move. It lives to withstand yet another winter and it hopes to blossom yet another spring as it stays still and lives, well rooted despite my emotions. Perhaps a lesson is to be learned here, yet again maybe my mind needs to stay pre-occupied.

I must find a name for this tree. It is a master of time or a sign of the times, it doesn’t move, but I do.

I make my steps across the new path, little do I realize that I also left a part of myself with the fallen leaves. This crash course of learning from nature reminds me there are storms to be weathered and suns to be bathed under; life awaits and I keep on.