April 14, 2020
Mental Health | Wellness
We all want to leave a mark on the world, right? I have spent decades deeply inside of my head, planning, analyzing, and trying to control all the possible outcomes. Even with all of that effort and data to back me up, I still felt a block…a hesitation when I would go to take the next step forward. What I’ve uncovered throughout this journey to spirituality, is that what was blocking me for so long was lack of trust in myself. It makes sense though, how can you trust yourself if you don’t fully know yourself? If you so deeply attach yourself to the identities that you’ve made for yourself (MBA-grad, corporate marketer, mother, wife, person of service)? These identities are not bad in any way, contrarily, I’m incredibly proud of each one of those labels. But at times I’ve let one single label take over my entire being, and it’s taken a lot of work and soul searching to realize that while those labels are part of me, not one defines who I am in my deepest core. In my soul.
When I was a kid, I didn’t have any of those labels attached to me. I felt so strongly that I had a unique emotional sensitivity (empathy), and knew that I was going to spend my life trying to make a change in the world. Not only did I feel it, but I knew it so certainly…I trusted it. Simple as that. The crappy part about growing up is that you learn how to fear, you learn how to compare, you learn how to get hurt, and you learn to lose trust in yourself, despite all the people who love you cheering you on.
When I first started this blog, I planned to write about a different ‘spiritual’ endeavor for each entry. I outlined two months worth of activities and thought I’d basically review each one, and tell you that step by step I was getting closer to figuring out this whole spirituality thing. If I were actually sticking to that plan, I’d be writing about crystals right now (I have grown to love crystals, but that’s for another time).
My point is, that plan was never going to work, and was certainly a lesson in ‘going with the flow’. I have tried a lot of the items that were on my ‘spiritual to do’ list, but the way it’s worked is that everything is blending together beautifully, and it’s getting harder and harder to talk about each item on its own. Here are a couple of those experiences that came together seamlessly on this path to finding trust…
One morning I got a newsletter from Ann Sensing of Magnolia Meditation saying that she had crystal singing bowls for sale. Without pausing, I replied back that I wanted to come try them. After I hit send on the email, I couldn’t believe I did that. In a previous life, that was something that might pop into my mind, and then I’d tell myself I didn’t have time for a new hobby, I didn’t know what I was doing, it’s not for me, one excuse after the other. But, simply letting myself do what I felt, without thinking or understanding why, felt foreign yet surprisingly empowering.
Long story short, I met with Ann and tried out some of the new bowls she had in stock. Before she told me much about the bowls, she urged me to pick a couple that I was drawn to, and we would start there. She pulled them off the shelf, and without ever having picked up a mallet before, I started playing, feeling, and listening. I’m sure my technique was total crap, but it didn’t matter, and she didn’t correct me. It was all about listening, feeling, and trusting. She kindly gave me a brief tutorial on how to properly play the bowls, and then sent me on my way to explore.
What I have loved so much about this experience after having had my bowls for about a month now, is that it forces me to flow. Particularly because I am so inexperienced, all I can do is go with what my body is telling me to do. Tap the bowl to which my body and my heart are drawn. Listen to the outcome. Notice the feeling in different parts of my body. No planning, no expectation. Instead- curiosity, feeling, and trusting.
My next experience was never on my original ‘spiritual to-do’ list. Yes, I am happy to say I went off script. Talking with a psychic medium was something I always wondered about, but let my fear stop me from pursuing it for a number of reasons, “What if I didn’t like what I heard? Would the person be full of it?” It was too risky for me, and I never did it. But, I recently met a psychic medium through an unrelated project, and couldn’t get the thought of trying it out of my mind. In an effort to deeply listen to my curiosity, I decided to give it a try. The way I look at it is that what comes from these sessions is all simply information. Whatever she said to me was mine to interpret because that’s how spirituality works – what needs to come up will come up, and I’ll use that information however that best suits me. Even if it is complete hooey (which I don’t think it is, some stuff was just TOO spot on), it gave me information that would prompt me into diving deeper into my heart to work through whatever it is I need to work through.
I signed up for a medium reading, the kind where you might connect with someone who has passed. Without any real expectations of connecting with a loved one, I opened myself up to the experience.
Within minutes, the medium connected with someone who had a paramount impact on my upbringing…she knew this person’s name (almost) to a tee, and called me by the childhood nickname that this person used to call me. Lately, I have been wishing that she were here during this challenging time to indulge me with some of her wisdom and comfort. Being able to connect with her was an experience I can’t really explain because any word that I type seems too trivial and doesn’t do it justice.
Of all the pieces of wisdom that my old friend shed upon me, the key theme that came through was to trust myself. She told me to stop focusing on becoming my potential, because I’m already there. That all I need to do is take a step forward, and step in confidence because the path will be created for me. That she has been putting these steps…these opportunities and hardships and successes in front of me, and I need to trust that I’m exactly where I need to be.
Prior to this experience, the idea of trusting myself kept coming up over and over, but hearing it from my old friend’s mouth, and knowing that she has been there believing in me the whole time, and even putting my path in front of me, is exactly what I needed to hear to solidify that trust. And to be honest, it’s what I’ve been telling myself this whole time, I just didn’t fully believe it.
You might be thinking, ‘sure that could apply to anyone,’ but for the sake of the length of this blog post, I am leaving out a lot of specifics. Maybe this experience was just me using my biased thoughts to solidify my trust in myself, or maybe I truly connected with my old friend. But it doesn’t really matter how it happened because the outcome is exactly what I needed to be reinspired and restored.
My old friend embodied wisdom, protection, and kindness when she was on this earth, and without knowing much of anything about her, the medium referred to her as a “wise truth teller.” One of the last things that this wise truth teller told me in our session was to “shine your light through, Clara Beara.”
Later that day, I pulled from my affirmation jar, and the affirmation I drew that day was, “I feel the love of others who aren’t physically around me.” I trust that it was my old friend putting the exact right card into my hand, to hear exactly what I needed to hear at that moment, and I’m going to continue listening.
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