I am a British Canadian which means that I am usually either repressing some deeply rooted emotion or apologizing for it. The thing is, I am actually a highly sensitive, overly expressive human. This combination of nature, nurture and my truth as an individual soul apart from where I come from and what I’ve been taught, has led to some pretty confusing times. Add into the mix that I can be extremely intellectual and analytical, wanting to understand everything that is happening all at once in real time, and you have for some very interesting dark nights of the soul!
How on earth do you find your truth? It is a line of universal wisdom “Find your truth, find your truth, find your truth”, a mantra that resonates deep inside but cannot be comprehended or explained. Seekers, if determined enough, will embrace the inward journey and maybe, if this lifetime is meant for it, find some sense of it all eventually on the other side of infinite personal mountains and canyons. Most people will pretend they never heard the words at all, feeling a kind of dread at the thought of unravelling all their personal demons and being laid bare at the sight of their own imperfection. Because we all intuitively know that the process of finding one’s truth is a rocky, scary, lonely, weird one and if fully committed to WILL lead to some very revealing, vulnerable moments and probably some uncomfortable changes both at the core and periphery of one’s worldly life.
Well, that sounds hard.
It is. It sucks a lot of the time, especially at the beginning. I know this because for some glorious and extremely annoying reason, I apparently have no choice in the matter; my entire life, I am learning, is and always has been propelled by this unravelling, this innate need to understand through a process of exploration. Every major choice I have made in my adult life has been driven by this burning desire to expand. I need it to keep on living. It’s completely exhausting.
It has also led me to some pretty incredible places, people, and experiences. I have stood on literal mountain tops and smiled at the cloudy face of God, boarded many a plane with a heavy heart or smiling heart or nervous heart, I have had many a homecoming hang out with friends feeling safe and cradled after a particularly ragged soul stretching city stint, I have lived in the bottom less pit of depression and then found the light, felt my molecules shift in the slow stretch of my favourite yoga class, I have spontaneously sung reggae on the London Underground with an illegally busking Rastaman amassing a crowd of commuters willingly missing trains to stay and hear our version of “Natural Mystic”, been ignited in a fury of creative fervor and written a song in a matter of minutes, then burned my brain trying to remember it months later! I have done all these things and much much more; the things I have experienced as a result of my willingness to journey past artifice and really put my guts into it are my greatest accomplishments.
Something came to me last night as I lay in floods of joyful tears and raw feeling... even though I know that this kind of behavior is usually reserved for the insane, it is in these moments of expressive emotional ecstasy, when I am feeling to the fullest reaches of my capacity to unite my spirit and humanness in an epic unravelling, that I feel the most true. I have tried for a lot of my life to keep my bubbling emotions in check with the pointy stick of a sharp mind. But, in those moments of unrestrained in the moment experience, I can't understand how I can ever move through a day or minute WITHOUT constantly choking on huge emotions in response to my very existence! The majesty of it all, the sheer dumb luck that I am even here in the first place... my life is magnificent in every small and luminous way. Some mornings I shake and groan in response to my first delicious sip of tea, or before that even - languor in bed for an indulgent moment (or 60) because my face and the pillow are making some sweet sweet comfort love, or when I am relaxed enough to actually hear the music I am listening to and cannot do anything else but exclaim or gyrate wildly in response, this is when I know that I am LIVING, that I have cleared out enough mental and emotional cobwebs to actually get to FEEL. But, these magical moments are most usually experienced alone... especially that last one...
I cannot reserve them for only my private moments any longer. It is simply not possible. It is busting, bursting out of me and I can’t care what anyone thinks. The sensorial expression of experience makes people uncomfortable... especially the British! I love my family more than anything, but they all think I’m completely nuts. They love it, and embrace my crazy, they actually love it the most when I am so beyond overboard: putting on a show either on stage or in the kitchen being overly dramatic or silly or singing Frank Sinatra into a ladle. But folks, it ain’t just pretend. The life we are actually living is always infinitely more amazing... because... it is REALLY happening! Dress-up and Story time, elaborate Opera’s, massive graffiti tags, free-jazz, fantasy, Monet’s enormous three paneled “Water Lilies” (went to the Museum of Modern Art in NYC last week... had NO IDEA it was that big!!!!!), it is all this... the need to expand. And we LOVE it! But we just don’t all want to do it all the time. Which is totally fair, I get it. If I had any choice in the matter I might not do it all the time either.
We now have arrived at the definition of what it means to be a star-shine. Everyone HAS star-shine, it is our birth right... but having star-shine and BEING a star-shine are two very different things. Being a star-shine is the willingness to try and live your star-shine. The truth. For you. Whatever that is. Star-shine, it is something ineffable, something magical at the heart of creation. You could call it many things, but I guess for these purposes we can call it truth, there is nothing more magical than truth.
I am a star-shine. There. I said it. And the people I am aligned with are almost all star-shines. They either, like me, have no choice in the matters of unravelling and discovery or have uncovered this option to live out their wildest dreams, going to great lengths (sometimes purely within themselves, clearing out old pattens and beliefs that are blocking them) in order to experience their life fully. Then there are those who resonate deeply with the meaning of star-shine, who have been given a shit-load of it (pardon me) but are afraid to love themselves enough to use it. There are a lot of these people in my life too and I try and keep my big mouth shut about it because I know how freaking hard it is... but you know who you are!
Life is crazy and beautiful. But for the star-shine its double time (that should totally be a bumper sticker and if you’re a star-shine you’ll get the joke). I pray for the support of the star-shine. Not just the artist. But those who are willing to go on this journey and make the world better one heart and mind at at time. We are at some points suffering from the weariness of the journey and at others want to open ourselves and rejoice. Let us support those who are willing to feel everything, who are working to make the insides match the outsides and be a clear and experiential contribution to the network of energy we are all connected to.
That saying: “Do something today that scares you”, is not wisdom because its healthy to give yourself heart palpitations everyday, it is true because we are afraid to expand but breaking through that barrier of fear feels FUCKING AWESOME.
Again, the Canadian in me apologizes.
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