My Decloaking Journey — One Year Later and Counting

It’s now 20 days and forward…

I’m still intrigued by how things have changed for me since beginning to decloak.  My home seems different, my city, my work, my friends, and mostly me.  I don’t wonder at how simple this seems to be – I really do get that my body has always known what to do.  My brain just got in the way.  I find myself laughing at things that used to annoy and anger me.  I sit in silence and that is absolutely wonderful.  I don’t have conversations in my head anymore – or at least so many fewer.  I don’t talk to myself, especially while driving.  I find myself not planning for the day.  I still write things down to remind myself of appointments, but the things that seemed of paramount importance to me before just don’t anymore.

I’m working with a former student right now on her Master’s Research Paper.  It’s been cognitively tiring and challenging.  When she first asked me to help her, I didn’t know if I would be able to help.  Boy was I wrong!  I’m absolutely phenomenal at it.  I went in to a gym club last week to help a gymnast I used to coach to work with one of her gymnasts.  While I don’t have the coach’s technical knowledge, it’s only because I never did the moves she’s teaching.  I left smiling because I knew that I understood, not only the move, but how to help the gymnast accomplish what her coach was working with her on.  I knew what to say and how to say it and it worked.  I’m a phenomenal teacher.  I worked with my church choir and found myself asking them to believe that they are good singers [and they really are] and to trust that their body knows what to do.  And it worked.

I’m reminded of Lisa saying that she doesn’t plan what she is going to say when she is speaking – that she has no idea what she will say and where it will go.  I remember saying that I was looking forward to getting lost and having some weird conversations.  Well, I do sometimes get lost but I know that I say what’s important when I speak. I find that I listen better because I’m not planning what I will say while someone else is speaking.  I’m present to the person I’m speaking with.  I may start with the idea of what I might say when they finish but I follow what they say.  So what I do end up saying may not be what I thought it would be.  It’s like I have no idea where things are going and that feels so right.  How rare that, by giving up my need to control what will come out of my mouth, I’m more in control that I have ever been.  I’m here and present to everyone I speak to – including myself.

I hear myself speaking to a friend about what’s going on in her life.  And I’m reminded that everyone is really an aspect of me.  We are so alike.  And I can almost hear Naomi [and feel her beside me] saying “Yes!”   and “You go, girl!”

Life seems so much gentler to me.  I feel so much gentler, especially with myself.  It’s as easy as reminding myself to check in – are my shoulders down, is my belly soft, am I breathing in and remembering to exhale.  That and reminding myself that silence is truly golden.  I can hear Lisa saying “Shut up”.

I was talking to a colleague last night and told her that Decloaking has been the best thing I’ve ever done for myself.  I commented that I have not taken myself to task for not doing Decloaking two years ago when my sister suggested that I do it.  I know that I needed to be the person I was those two years later and before I went toNova Scotiaso that I can be the person I am right now.   It was the right time for me and yes, it was genius!

Who knew it could be that simple and that compelling?  Now I do!

…

I wrote this just about one year ago.  And it still rings true.  I’ve been rereading my journals and notes from Decloaking and Engaging and Manifesting and ACES.  I find myself celebrating how things have changed in me.  The conscious presence of myself in my life is marvellous to experience.  And I’m all too aware of when I default to the left side of the line.  I know how that feels in me.  Amazing how cluttered that left side seems to be.  It’s full of booby traps and potholes.

Being awake to living on the right side of the line is truly both simpler and harder at the same time.  It’s harder because it is easy to fall back into old patterns and ways of being and thinking, especially about myself.  But it is also simpler in that there is, on the right side of the line, nothing more to do that be myself – the self and signal I have always known that I am, and tell my truth.

The journey which started, consciously, for me, just about one year ago has been the best thing I’ve ever done for myself.  As I write this, I can hear Louise say that once anyone begins this process – this journey to Self, they can never go back.  She is so right.