In some ways I feel like I am learning to fly, perhaps really for the first time in my life. I have been releasing what has been encumbering me for years…the roots of so much wounding that begins in different sources, and the roots of many long-held belief systems that have informed all of my life decisions.
Even this morning when trying to meditate I felt in my body a heavy weight. With so much going on in the content of my life this past week, it has been difficult to reach for the air of context at times. Yet the feeling in my body and heart this morning was palpable. It feels to me like another piece of my process with Kathleen…a part of me that holds my birth name and has done life as me until recently. It has been difficult at times to feel anything other than her, which is understandable since I am asking her to let go of so much in a very short window of time. In a way it has been a years-long process of letting go, or at least getting ready to…but there is another level of existence that I want to inhabit in my life now that is more positive and as done with self-punishment as it can be. I am getting ready to let in more love and actually, I am letting in more love every day, despite Kathleen’s filters. There is only so much that can go in when I have defences up in the form of doubts and negative thought patterns about myself.
Over the last few months I have been working intensely on noticing my negative thought patterns. This, in a way, seems like it is Spiritual Kindergarten to do so, but until now I just never felt so driven to go in and notice these patterns the way I am now, despite years of seeking. I feel this has to do with my level of self-love rising and that my desire for more self-love is at the wheel. I feel Kathleen can feel that and is learning how to lean into that more as we live out each moment of our life together. She has so many questions about who she is without these ingrained habits and ways of being. I get that and I hold with her the tension of it. At times it is like birth pains as I hold her hand and she aches with the tremors of letting go. She doesn’t want to run life anymore yet she has an attachment to doing so. This is what I am working on with her now.
When I talk about my roots and letting go of them, what I mean is I am letting go (and helping Kathleen let go) of the ways in which she has been in life. This includes all conditioning from birth family and the culture I grew up in, as well as all of the self-made rules of “how to be”. So much conditioning begins when we are children and a lot of it is subconscious while only a percentage of it is conscious – we learn directly and indirectly through punishments, energetic responses/reactions, rewards, and how our traumas are treated by those with authority over us. It is clear to me that even though my family may not have consciously intended to teach me how to find a flaw in even the brightest day, they still managed over countless instances to ingrain such programming inside me. The culture I grew up in in Canada had its own way of teaching me how to live life and what success meant. Some of these pieces were reiterated by family and others were negated. Pieces like how a woman’s body should look, for instance, has been a painful one for me to process and work through and now I am finally learning how to love my body through changes and not punish myself into losing weight. I am learning quickly that there is always a more self-loving way in which to do things and make positive life changes without having to walk through chaos or self-punishment.
And so my uprooting continues. The swings of feeling good and feeling down or heavy are moving through me as I embrace life in a new way. I am reaching a new stratum of my own sense of spirituality and what it means to be a vessel for love. I am enjoying giving and receiving love in a new way, starting with myself and overflowing to my relationship with the Divine and with those closest to me. I am even enjoying giving and receiving love with people I have met only over Facebook via the SoulFullHeart Circle group that was started about a week or two ago. It is amazing what has moved for Kathleen and I, just to feel my heart open up to let in more love and care that way. I am floored by even my own capacity to give love, let alone receive it.
I am continuing to walk out this new chapter with holding and feeling Kathleen and experiencing my expanding capacity to be with myself and others in this new way. Maybe you will meet me there? 🙂
Leena Colibri is an apprentice facilitator of the SoulFullHeart Way Of Life. Visit soulfullheartwayoflife.com for more.
Divine Self Embodiment Blog (Formerly SoulFullHeart) 