Walk the Talk

Some time ago, I decided to let myself and my life free fall into a great Abyss.

(Decided might be a strong word here. You could say the water was already falling off of a cliff and I said “um ok fine I guess.”)

Letting go was a systematic process. A reversal of everything I’d come to learn and abide by as a functional person in s-o-c-i-e-t-y.

I was a good girl, a people pleaser, a hard worker. And behind that was my tortured shadow indulging in quiet addictions when and where I could.

I flipped everything upside down, like a desperate woman looking for her last ibuprofen at the bottom of an overstuffed purse.

I had help from the universe of course-destroying things in my life I didn’t even think to destroy. (Thanks?)

I swirled and screeched and squeaked like an old train with bad brakes pulling into its last stop.

Eventually, I had to pick up my new self and my new life and try to give society another go-around. I had to try things in a new way, from this new perspective.

The ride to hell and back had been rough, I would need some time to recover before I could try anything.

As my strength returned and I stopped looking like an unruly hairball pulled out of a shower drain, I decided to try “walking the talk”.

What had been the point of this conscious living, spirituality mumbo-jumbo if I couldn’t actually apply it in my life?

Did I really believe? Did facing my fears change me? Could I reach further than I could before?

Now was the time to try. I had to set aside my battle wounds and see if I could magnetize something wonderful into my life.

I tried to imagine the most wonderful feeling I could imagine. Every day I would spend some time in this feeling. I would imagine getting a phone call and from that phone call, I would feel this feeling.

The more I tried, the more I thought of other things I would feel when that phone call came in.

I came to know those feelings so well that I thought, ok, I’ll know I did it if something unexpected comes in that feels just.like.this. And I would say no to anything that didn’t feel exactly like that. (For the sake of my experiment.)

I hated this experiment.

I wanted to revert to my old ways. I wanted to struggle. I wanted to panic. I wanted to give in to options that I hated, but seemed logically like a good idea.

I wanted to fake a solution, to fake an answer. To say “um ok, this is good enough.”

It was hard walking the talk. It was hard walking in belief. It was hard not giving in to my old friends: Stress, Anxiety, Depression.

I had to Breathe way more. I had to take walks in nature often. I had to shift my mental focus constantly. I had to let go of judgements and anger and rivalries with people that were based on my ego’s need to feel important.

And worst of all, I had to feel Good. I had to constantly “tune up”, as I realized my resting vibration was mostly in the gutter. Hovering around worthlessness and disinterest.

Walking the talk was time consuming. It was exhausting. Exhausting to go from constantly expecting struggle to expecting Something Good.

I had trained myself so well in depression and self pity. And now I had to awaken some other muscles, to climb this mountain of Hope, Belief, Worthiness, and Joy.

So did I do it?

I did. I got the phone call. And I was terrified at the beautiful luck and blessedness that was pouring into my life. I questioned it every chance I could. I tried to bring my “bad mood” along with me, just so I could have a friend.

I had to constantly coach myself. To talk myself down from the ledge of rage that wanted to destroy this blessing. To tune back up when depression invited me to spend some time together.

These blessings came and went. And I knew what it took to walk the talk. It takes a lot to make your dreams come true.

It takes bravery and strength to let go of familar pain, to acknowledge that you hold on to pain just as much as you think it holds on to you.

It takes fortitude and training and practice to focus your attention, to keep allowing awareness to interrupt the looping of conditioned thoughts.

It takes something that’s undefined, to believe in your worthiness without condition. To know that you are loved without condition. Because rising in that knowing, means breaking through every painful moment life showed you otherwise.

It’s saying I know that happened, it taught me something incorrect, and I now claim the truth. And that shift hurts in a weird way.

Walking the talk is constant. The constant unraveling of the pain that keeps you heavy, and the will to bounce into better feeling spaces.

It is true faith, that constantly humbles me. How much do I believe? I could always believe more, trust more, practice Presence more.

But I’m human and flawed and lazy.

I love myself just as I am. As a robot scrolling through videos on my phone, as a gremlin reliving a past argument for no reason, as a being of light sending gratitude to a beautiful sunset.

We talk the talk so that we remember. There is always a choice. There is creativity beyond what our conscious mind can imagine. There is hope beyond what we’ve lived before. There is light behind the moving pictures of our lives.

<3,

Heba