Karl DireskeIn the last couple of weeks I have had the great opportunity to talk to many of our students and people in the communities I belong to. I have come away with an overwhelming reality.
There is no escape…from yourself.
In the turbulence of the past few weeks, do you understand who you really are and how you make choices? When stress is a constant, what parts of yourself do you continue to reject? The lovely thing about stress is that it brings the grain of who you really are to the surface.
Do you like what you have found or do you wish you were able to escape the reality of being with yourself? When you lack distractions, how do you create a self that you want to live with? Are you ready to finally accept yourself instead of constantly pushing away from the places you are being called to go?
Can you begin tracking who you are, and ask enough questions that bring awareness into the equations of your identity? Can you be brutally honest with yourself and use this honesty as a tool to see yourself more clearly? I am not suggesting that you will like all aspects of what you see. But can you recognize yourself through a lens of honesty? What if the places you feel the most reaction, blame, or judgment are the very places your work lies? Is there any better time than this moment to finally embrace the very person you cannot escape?
Can you silence the parts of your psychology that are no longer serving you and make choices from your vision, instead of from the traditions and beliefs that have created a false sense of stability? This introspection is a lot of work, and if you wait until a crisis hits to begin, there is no way to silence those aspects that are not useful. Once stress compounds, change is nearly impossible.
I invite you to find a path that brings you to yourself. If you don’t do it NOW, when the next crisis arises, you will find yourself once again mired in the parts of your identity that you are currently struggling with. Maybe the one you really want to escape is the old voice inside who is telling you to be someone other than yourself. The best gift you can give yourself is to surrender to the one person who has been there with you all along.
It has been my observation, over the last 30 years of doing this work, that in order to embrace yourself, you need help from others. If you could do it on your own, you would have done it already. Instead, find a community that can help you become who you want to be, step into the vulnerability, and say ‘I need help.’
It takes practice to ask for help and allow yourself to be held by a community who can reflect back to you who you really are. Most people have enough trauma in their history to have a strong relationship with distrust. Though, if you continually make the choice to step in, you will realize over time that you are not meant to be journeying the external orinternal landscapes alone. Look around. Who is living the life you desire to live? Get curious, ask questions, and reach out.
Are you ready to turn your fear of an intimate relationship with yourself into a dance, a dance with the mystery of who you are called to be and the community who desires to hold you?
Are you ready to finally hold yourself?
