Permission

What happens if we surrender to our current situation, giving ourselves permission to be and feel, unconstrained by societal expectations of succeeding, healing or even coping. What if we stop striving and permit ourselves to feel sad, overwhelmed or ill, heeding the body's call to acknowledge legitimate feelings as a means to process them.

What if we radically accept ourselves in whatever form we take in whichever moment. Even if that is old, tired or grey. What if society and economics has it wrong and we are still valid, vibrant and beautiful in all of our states, young, old, unemployed, infertile.

What if we reframe? 

Illness as an opportunity to rest and reassess lifestyle choices.

Tiredness as a call to stop.

Grief as a time to process.

Age as a blessing, one of wisdom and beauty. Wrinkles finely woven into the tapestries of the skin as visible etchings of emotions well explored: a life experienced in all of it's forms. 

What if everything is OK. All feelings are OK. Understanding that it is appropriate to feel and express anger or sorrow. And what if we teach the next generation not to swallow their pride, dry their tears and curb their anger. What if we encourage healthy expression and acknowledgement of the full range of human emotion?

These feelings serve us - and yet we have compartmentalised them into categories of acceptable and unacceptable, good and bad. If we want to suppress, succumbing to the body's internalised rage later, then this is surely the way to go. If however we are prepared to sit in the fury, the disappointment, the gut wrenching pain as well as the joy, the relief, the vibrancy, then what? We begin to process life as it happens, experience it in technicolour. Our sentient bandwidths, our capacities, grow. The lows may be lower but the highs are higher. We become blessed to feel EVERYTHING. We stop numbing, suppressing and repressing feelings which we have named as unhelpful, impolite, ugly and painful. What a gift this is to access and express the full range of emotion - of energy in motion. And we have a CHOICE. We can CHOOSE to feel but it takes courage. To sit in the uncomfortable. To weep, shake, rock, and wail. To feel humbled and brought to our knees. To face the fear of loss or abandonment. Brandon bays teaches, as do many others, that if we sit with our feelings for long enough we will come always to a place of love; a blinding, all-encompassing love which holds us and releases us from fear. Which brings faith, strength and calm. And what if we can only access this place of bliss on Earth by allowing and exploring ALL of those other emotions?

I have become acutely aware of my knee-jerk response to deny certain feelings, the overwhelm they bring, the desire to numb them out, drown them out, suppress them, shut them down, shut them up, turn to alcohol, loud music, mindless television in an effort to shhhhh, quieten, ignore these angry and hurt children that reside within and want nothing more than to be seen, heard and comforted. I am starting to sit quietly and listen. Awareness is everything and when we truly tune in, we begin to understand the damaging stories we tell ourselves when an uncomfortable emotion tears through the rolodex, pulling up filed beliefs which we have created to protect us from trauma. Quietly and without judgment I am becoming able to tell myself it's OK. It's OK to feel this way, to challenge my belief system and to let go of limiting ideas about what this emotion is teaching me. Choosing not to sink into those comfortable, subconscious grooves of association is where liberation lies. Instead, healing comes from quietly trusting, surrendering, allowing, listening, believing and loving the self unconditionally. Without doubt it is one of the most challenging life lessons I have invited. But change is coming fast; within and without. 

This form of healing is every bit as important as juicing, daily coffee enemas, healthy eating and exercise. I would go as far as to say that this is the real healing. Lately when I meditate I can actually feel my cells cleansing; my microbiome shifting; my energy field growing. It's exciting and a not a little scary - a new me, a transition, shedding old, redundant beliefs about who I am. 

We are here to experience not achieve. Let's immerse ourselves fully into the opportunity of life.