Finding the Thread

I used to want to help too much. I didn’t realize it was a problem. I didn’t know that kind of thing could be a problem.

It was what I learned in relationships.

Love is invasive. Love tries to fix you.

I didn’t know that Love was actually free. Love let’s you “fix” yourself.

I started healing from this in 2015, with significant stints of very tough inner work.

And here I am, trying to Love in a way that feels better.

I am naturally an uplifter. It’s what I’ve always loved, cheering people on, seeing the best in everyone. This was the Light side of my Shadow.

There was a reason I was that way, so intensely tuned to people’s “best”. It was because I couldn’t accept the worst.

I wholeheartedly believe that the difficulty that makes you “the way you are” creates a huge liability, but also the greatest gifts.

It is a burden and a blessing.

It’s in these extremes that people find their own individual superpowers. When you know the darkest and lightest of something, it’s yours. Your burden and your blessing, you know that thing inside and out, and it knows you.

There is nothing more terrifying than the shadow of your superpower coming to light.

It comes trotting in, trying to tell you about its genesis.

It says that out of immense pressure, something was born. A diamond within.

And when the shadow appears, it’s time to reclaim yourself. It’s time to reclaim your story.

It says, see the whole story. Claim yourself.

Out of ugliness, something beautiful was born. And so, both exist within you.

As you accept and claim the ugly within (which you realize isn’t ugly at all), you fully step into your power.

What does it mean to step into your power?

I’ll tell you exactly.

It’s when you accept the whole range of your superpowers. From their conception in the dark, to their highest expression.

In accepting the range, you’re able to operate those powers with more awareness and more wisdom.

Knowing the whole of something means you can see it as part of you, rather than it consuming you.

You take the reins back on those parts of you that activated without conscious choice, and so you’re able to weild your power with full vision and understanding.

Eckhart Tolle said that all spiritual teachings attempt to point you in a direction. They point at something that can not be conceptualized in its entirety.

I find that same logic in how we help each other. We point in the direction of truth or light or hope. We fully understand that everyone has to walk their own path.

There is a thread that runs through all of us. It’s where we connect to hope, clarity, and our own reasoning for “best”.

Love points at that thread. It knows that everyone has to connect to their own inner voice. Everyone has to find their thread.

When someone is in great turmoil, it’s when we most want to help save them. I’ve come to understand how important it is that everyone finds their thread under all circumstances. In bitter hell and in sweet bliss.

In fact, it’s of utmost importance that we can all find it in the chaos. That thing that soothes us, that sparks revelation and revolution from the inside out.

Now, when I want to help someone, I remember with them the light inside. That their inner wisdom is speaking to them in the most perfect way. I remember the light within us all, and I let that dictate my actions and my words.

Today, I invite you to remember a time when you connected with the soothing knowing within. When a calm came over you in the midst of chaos and you thought, “I can do this”. Think of someone you know who is struggling, and imagine them finding that clarity. It is theirs to find, but you can imagine with them in your heart.

With love,

Heba

From One Squirrel to Another

The secret to life. I’ve got it. I’ve got a whole bunch.

[So does everyone else.]

Every revelation comes with this feeling of uncovering, a discovery, an unearthing. It’s like we’re all squirrels and we’ve hidden nuggets of wisdom for ourselves all over this life experience.

When it’s time to dig, we scurry all over and try to sniff out a distant remembering. Aha! There it is!

It’s nice to think that even in the coldest and darkest of times, we’ve left help for ourselves everywhere. With just a little sniffing and digging, we can find something to tide us over. Just a little something to get us to the warmer, lighter times when we won’t need those nuggets. And those little nuts can choose to grow big on their own, not waiting for us to find them, but melting into life itself and demonstrating the wisdom that was woven inside.

Yesterday morning I woke up with a prayer in my mind:

“Let my mind be open and willing to the best, the most soothing, the most loving, the most high.”

I felt like my mind was a wide open field, full of sunlight. Thoughts were little rain drops, clouds, or shooting stars that could pop in and deliver a message. I imagined receiving little light drops of Thought rain, each drop filled with a new idea. I felt such inner calm, as though I was smiling inside, sitting quietly and happily in that field-available to these thoughts.

That image and the calm stayed with me the whole day. Even in the turbulence of everyday noise, I would suddenly remember the Quiet and the Availability.

In this, I saw a duality. The part of me that scrunches up her nose at life and its annoyances, and the part that smiles and awaits the Good.

I found that sometimes things feel open and flowing and sometimes closed and difficult. I tried to express this on paper and ended up writing:

“I flow when I’m up and float when it’s rough.”

I could feel my spirit smile when I wrote that line. I felt an inner “yes”.

Yes, gather yourself and make moves when the energy is there and don’t freak out when things feel tight.

There is some secret in that, I can feel it in my heart. Like I’m digging out one of those nuts of wisdom. To cover as must ground as you can when the energy is flowing and just float when it’s moving slow.

There is magic in this back and forth, with more focus on the flowing part. Bring as much consciousness forward into the flow as you can. That’s the time to “pull up”, and then exhale when that flow subsides.

In my depression, I used to not flow when it was time. I would think, “what’s the point? I’ve already tried.”

But that is the whole point! It’s the compounding of the ‘trying’ that works.

The same way having the same realization over and over means it’s becoming integrated into your field. You do want to keep “coming around” to the flow, letting it become bigger and more pervasive every time.

Today I invite you to find where breath is in your life. Where can you feel ease and flow? It’s there somewhere. Find where it is, even if it feels small. Breathe into those places.

As a meditation, try to find the origin of your breath. What causes you to inhale? Where is it, that switch that flips and says “breathe”?

Try to look behind your eyes and see where the origin of your vision resides. What is there, behind your eyes, looking out onto the world?

You are Meaning itself, trying to find itself. Never be dismayed by this quest, because you can always rest inside yourself. Turning inward leads to peace, because you are what you’re always looking for.

With Love,

Heba

Freedom on a Saturday

Warrior paint.

A full face of makeup.

Dancing in the woods around a fire.

Chanting the songs of your ancestors – or your favorite sports team.

Certain activities take us beyond our every day personality and elevate us into a different mindset. Or descend us into a primal state of expression.

You could be a suited up lawyer by day, a masked raven dancer by night.

Which of these is You?

This morning as I got ready for the day, I had such an urge to decorate my face with pretty colors, maybe some glitter, as I would at a festival or on Halloween. I felt into this urge and realized it was because I’d been dealing with something so frustrating. It was there, silently spinning in circles in the back of my mind.

I felt ugly harboring this anger, resentment, and frustration. Like there was an ogre hunched over inside of me, angrily scurrying around with no real purpose.

I imagined painting a butterfly on my forehead, maybe some glitter around the temples. And as I imagined this, another part of me came forward. The part that isn’t angry. The part that remembers running around in a field on a sunny day. The one that laughs and floats atop an alligator filled spring in the summer.

Maybe that’s why we engage in these activities. To remember the parts that aren’t so stiff and stuck and heavy.

I am more than my anger and I am more than my happiness, I am.

I am the amphitheater where anger and happiness exist in an ever-changing tide.

I support you today in your desire to dress up or dress down, paint your face with beautiful colors or with mud. I support you in however you want to free yourself for a little while from your regular programming.

I am with you on your morning run and while you hammer that tire in the gym. I’m with you while you meditate for 3 minutes in the bathroom, or spin around until you’re dizzy in the living room.

Let’s make non sense together, and remember the “I am” that we all are.

With Love,

Heba

Listen to the Silence

If I could describe the feeling in meditation when the thoughts slow and Presence colors everything in a brilliant, white light.

And there it is, the State of Being.

I’d say it’s akin to listening to silence.

Listening to the space between the sounds. And the space that’s there, holding the sound.

Can you hear the container, that holding space that allows the sound to be itself?

Listen.

Hear the rumbles of noise and then crawl to the edges of that noise, can you find its outline?

Where does the noise meet the no-noise?

And in that space, can you slip in…like slipping in between the sheets of your bed.

*slip*

Listen to the noise. Find the sounds. Lose all association with their meanings.

Let the sound be itself. Like squawks and rumbles and squeeks of a distant, unknown forest.

Just, sounds.

Let the chaos of unknown sound free you of your mind. Dive in.

Deep inside the bellow of this sound is the hum of peace.

*hum*

Humming peace inside the roar of sound.

And you’ll find.

You’ll find.

What will you find?

You’ll find that you’ve become

The Silence.

Integrating the Shadow

I used to be afraid of my short comings. I didn’t know I was afraid of them. I had an elaborate system of hiding them from myself: they’re “no big deal”. Just don’t look over there (where they are) and all will be well.

Until a time came when I had to look, I wanted to look. To see all of myself, in sorrow and in ecstasy.

It’s terrifying and liberating to see your limitations, your addictions, the points at which you turn off your awareness and coast in that quiet, destructive place of non-awareness.

I found there everything I’d been hiding. I was hiding because I knew I couldn’t feign wellness in those areas, they were the areas where I was weak. They were the areas where I COULDN’T. No matter how hard I tried, I would collapse in the areas of my short comings. Most accurately, my ego would collapse. I could not hold on to doing the “right things” and since I couldn’t fully face doing the “wrong things” I would disappear from myself.

The first few times I stayed with myself as I was doing an unconscious activity, it was very uncomfortable. Even more uncomfortable was trying to stop or shift the behavior while it was happening. I couldn’t. I could only observe, just barely. As the pull to remain “unconscious” was so strong. By unconscious I mean awake and operating, but “no one is home”.

I found I was doing this all the time. I knew I was an expert at dissociating, but I didn’t realize how often I wasn’t really present. It wasn’t just at times when I was stressed or overwhelmed, I had become accustomed to being only partially present consistently.

Reapplying consciousness (awakeness) to those moments shook up my entire life like a snow globe. I began to see my avoidance, my fear, my hatred of life and the present moment. I hated the present moment. “Anywhere but here.”

That’s what I found, sprinkled everywhere in my life. “Anywhere but here.” A fairly consistent, thin layer of hatred and avoidance overlaid with joy, over indulgence, distraction, and fantasy.

As I kept being with myself in as many moments as I could, I felt an anger quaking within me. Like the rumbles of an earthquake. The more I tried to be aware and present, the angrier I became.

Had I been angry all my life? I hated this anger. It was so inconvenient. It kept interrupting my persona. I needed to be nice and pleasant. I needed to pretend to enjoy my environment and what I was doing.

And here something beautiful started emerging. Why was I pretending? Why was I lying to myself? I discovered what I felt deep down, that I would never be happy. That my environment would always be uncomfortable. That the reality of being comfortable somewhere didn’t exist.

So everywhere I went, I quietly and internally prepared to be uncomfortable. I had been doing this for so long that I didn’t know I was doing it. I was constantly bracing myself, hiding myself because I had long ago concluded that the external world mostly sucked. The only safe and happy place was inside my own private world. So I became practiced in creating this part of me that could live in the outside world long enough to survive, until I could run back to myself in my solitude.

It’s strange to suddenly discover these operating systems you’re running, without realizing it. That there’s a whole quiet, emotional landscape reacting to the environment without your awareness.

I saw myself in the present moment in my relationships, in my work, in how I relate to food, body, and money. In those quiet moments where I don’t pay attention, where I was used to acting and thinking in the same ways. And I pressed pause and LOOKED.

I was feeling things I never acknowledged. Making judgment calls without awareness. Living in old, irrelevant patterns and reacting based on fear and avoidance.

The terror I felt shifted to absolute liberation. (A bone rattling shift.)

I loved this hateful, angry, fearful Me. She existed all along, I just never accepted it. I had no idea how to integrate these aspects of me. I didn’t know how to live with them and be successful and happy in ways I had come to understand success and happiness.

I had to accept that sometimes I wanted to destroy myself. That sometimes I couldn’t stop eating until all the food ran out. That I couldn’t shake myself into enough awareness to help myself, but that I could at least be with myself.

I had to accept that sometimes I would make terrible decisions for the chance to feel full and seen.

I had to accept that sometimes I would be absolutely powerless to help myself. And after the shame of that lifted, I felt such beautiful relief.

There is no love greater than being with yourself in the moments of your greatest shame and powerlessness and not shutting yourself out. Saying, ‘well, I’m here and I’m not going anywhere. I accept my ugly as much as my beautiful.’

That all the parts of you are colors with which you create the painting that is You, ever dynamic, flawed, and perfect in its spontaneous expression of Living.

It’s a blessing to experience life from this fullness of experience. To reclaim what was left behind long ago, and to understand yourself from a richer perspective.

“These are my limitations, bless them. This is where I fall, so let me rest here. This is where I Rise, watch me soar.”