Choosing to Live My Life MY WAY

I’m struck by the thought of parenting as a primary delivery system to ensure that we become unable to act from our internal cues. I always said that I never wanted to have children because I would not to do them what was done to me.  And education is not far behind as a system to train us how we ought to be and what we ought to feel and how we ought to think.  And, when I was actively involved in education, I was the kind of teacher I had always wanted and not the teacher which, for the most part, I had.  I encouraged students to question and try new things and take chances and not worry about making the grade for someone else’s criteria.

As I watch and listen and consider the world now, I wonder if there is any hope for us or if Gaia is getting ready to hit the reboot button, clear the slate and start again. And that would only work if there was no holdover of old thought processes and beliefs, values, and attitudes – no holdover of unquestioning acceptance of the way things are.  Until then, we are held in limbo by outdated and outworn ways of thinking and seeing who we each are.

I realize now that I thought that I had to shun the amorphous, mindlessness that encumbers us. And I did not get that holding that thought has bound me to that which I’ve wanted to choose as ‘not that’.  The energy behind my actions has been other referenced and directed.  I have, in thinking that way, created my own prison – a different one than the one I was raised in and yet still a prison.  In choosing to simply ‘let go of ‘ rather than shun, I can move beyond and free myself to become more.

And then I know that I can hold two opposing ideas at the same time – mine and choosing consciously for me while a whole lot of the rest of the world accepts entrainment to the past and the dictum of outside authorities. I’m getting more and more comfortable with the sense of disconnect that creates – to be on the outside and living amidst a collective mindset that is not mine while being true to who I know mySelf to be.

As I’ve chosen to be part of conversations and courses in the last few years, both within and without WEL-Systems®, there have been times when I’ve asked myself why I couldn’t leave well enough alone? And I know now that, as I’ve questioned the world and the pronouncements of others – things I was expected to blithely accept, how others react has never been about me and has been about them and their own need to maintain their status quo.

It is still sometimes not easy for me to be okay with that and it gets easier every day and every time that I choose to honour my insistence that, for me, there is no other way to live honestly with myself than to say what I need to say in the way I need to say it and at the time I need to say it.  So, my truth is the prize that I keep my focus on. It is what I trust first.

And I’m becoming, with each day, even more comfortable that what is true for me today may not be what is true for me tomorrow. Once I’ve accepted something as true for me that doesn’t mean that it cannot ever be changed and shaped as time and circumstance happen.  I’m so aware that I no longer see ‘truth’ as an absolute which, once acknowledged, then becomes something which binds me and keeps me in stasis. And as I claim my truth, there are times when I have to be willing to live with my discomfort and not knowing. And each day, that gets easier.

I’m allowing mySelf to breathe and just let the waves of emotion move in me. I know that, on the other side of each wave, I will be different.  And in that difference is the space for me to be more and for the next wave to arrive.  That’s the process that I’ve grocked.  As one wave moves in me and my body is open to whatever is moving through me, I am changed, I am more, and I have created space for the next wave to move.  And so it goes.

I used to feel angry that I had not learned from the generations before me who were part of my life and especially my parents about the simplicity of this process and that what I had learned was not how I could come to know my truth but how I could learn to accept restrictions imposed on me by others. When I first came to know about this process, my intellect fought against it trying to rationalize it and use language to give shape to content. And, with each day and each wave, I’m so aware that I don’t do that anymore!

I’m now comfortable with choosing who I will engage with and which collectives I will be part of. I no longer seek acceptance from the many and I relish connection with the few.  I have not lived engaging this process and coming to know who I was born to be for a chronologically long time and I know that doesn’t matter.  What matters is now.

I’ve always responded to melody and lyrics. I first heard this song when I was in Nova Scotia.  For me, it resonates in such a deep place and captures what I feel so clearly:

NOW by David Carroll

When there’s no way out there’s still a way through                                                                     So don’t give up whatever you do                                                                                             Surrender to moments and things as they are                                                                          From the gaps in your catch-22’s                                                                                                      When there’s no way out there’s still a way through.

‘Cause Now’s all there is                                                                                                                      So peaceful and still                                                                                                                              In Now you don’t worry ‘bout                                                                                                       what’s happened or what will                                                                                                      ‘Cause Now never ends                                                                                                                         And Now’s never been                                                                                                                      And all of your answers                                                                                                                      are waiting for you here Now.

When your world stands tough and weighin’ you down                                                           And you’ve had enough of this merry-go-round                                                                          End your resistance to walls you won’t move                                                                               And runnin’ through old déjà vu’s                                                                                                   When there’s no way out there’s still a way through.

‘Cause Now’s all there is                                                                                                                       So peaceful and still                                                                                                                                  In Now you don’t worry ‘bout                                                                                                        what’s happened or what will                                                                                                       ‘Cause Now never ends                                                                                                                       And Now’s never been                                                                                                                      And all of your answers                                                                                                                       are waiting for you here Now.