I Am So Done
© Robin Easton - All Rights Reserved
We can always ask for help along the way, but we must never stop thinking for ourselves, never stop listening to our own heart's cry and the deep hungers of our soul. -© REaston In a variety of ways, we are taught to bypass our deepest, most important emotions, our messy, confused, outraged, wailing, and shame-filled emotions…our most holy and sacred emotions. At best, we are pressured to think and talk-about our emotions, rather than being allowed to deeply feel and experience them. We are coerced to tame feelings that make others uncomfortable, feelings that hold powerful, untouched truth, feelings that appear to contradict the sanctity of enlightenment, feelings that might not yet make sense, feelings that are begging to be new-born.
Like a baby learning to walk, new-born emotions are desperately trying to FEEL, EXPERIENCE, and UNDERSTAND themselves until they viscerally know their perfect place in our own lives, and we know our perfect place in the greater, infinite scheme of life. This is how the soul claims itself, claims its already inherent wisdom and boundaries. This is how the soul is solidly birthed into Existence.
When a baby is learning to walk, we can gently assist. But if the baby is never allowed to flounder, appear messy, confused, frustrated, outraged, helpless, or crying, and if the adult never lets the child learn to walk life’s path, the child will never experience its tipping point, or find its own center of balance in a total way, with its feet and body, and all of its senses and emotions…its entire Being. The child will never know that ‘falling’ often is part of any learning process. It will never know the merit of determination and rising again and again…if needed. It will never know the joy of resiliency and self-accomplishment. The child will never get to experience who it is and what it is made of.
Life must experience itself, feel itself to be deeply known.
When allowed, our emotions often function in much the same way as a child learning to walk. Emotions need space to actively FEEL themselves, and be messy, floundering, and confused, and NOT be pressured to instantly appear enlightened, ‘together,’ positive, or even spiritual and adult.
Emotions are eons old and born of the soul. They are highly intelligent, and often have little use for reason and theory. They hunger to FEEL themselves. It is what they were designed to do.
Sadly, we treat our feelings as if they were some separate part of our humanity, some disease we picked up along the way, and must now ‘overcome.’
In many cases, our emotions have been shamed into silence for so long that they now need a lot of compassionate room to be messy floundering, exploring, and expressing before they find their way Home. Our emotions want to remember their true, strong Place and purpose. Given the opportunity, they know how to do this.
I have learned to walk this life with chosen awareness, letting my bare feet feel the way. Sometimes it is rough, and sometimes it is smooth, but I choose to embrace the entirety of my path...with love and compassion. Nothing is bypassed, excluded, or shamed into lonely dark corners. All parts are meaningful and integral to the whole of my ancient soul. -© REaston Our feelings will not be denied; one way or another they inevitably express themselves…they hunger to do so. They live best when consciously explored, felt, and honored…no matter how messy and unenlightened they might appear.
My own emotions are not about ‘fixing’ and enlightenment. They are about experience, observation, and understanding my own beautiful soul and the soul of the world. My feelings are about honesty, self-love, and compassion for the totality of who I am, including my deep, dark, shame-filled shadows.
When we try to rapidly shift our messy emotions into enlightenment, positive thinking, reason, and theory, we dangerously bypass the very emotions and experiences that allow our souls to finally reach fulfillment and peace. These emotions are integral to who we are. They are filled with solid boundaries and our deepest wisdom.
I fear there is a deeper pain than feeling our emotions and trauma. The greatest and most tragic pain of all is having to hold our feelings inside in the absence of a compassionate and empathetic listener. Often the pain of holding it all inside is such a heavy burden that many beautiful souls take their own lives.
When forced to hold inside our deepest pain and shame, we are left grievously alone, and tragically living dual lives. In the life we present to the world, we desperately attempt to appear as ‘normal’ and enlightened as possible. We batten down our emotional hatches, and don our brightest smiles. In our other, secret life we are very alone with our heavy burden of shame, guilt, longing, and despair.
In either case, our souls cry out like a child in the dark of night…begging for someone to come and love us…just as we are.
And…all of this suffering is due to our apparent inability to listen to each other without judgment, shaming, or tender compassion. I feel we can do better than this, much better.
People who are capable of Deep Listening, or Deep Presence, are a rare and stunningly beautiful breed of humans. These precious souls are so comfortable with their own emotions that they effortlessly listen to others without any need to attach ANYTHING to the other person's emotional experience, no judgments, drama, fixing, theories, labels, crisis, analysis, pathologizing, and so on. Being with another human in Deep Presence, offers the healing gift of simple connection, one vulnerable human in the presence of another, soul-to-soul.
We might simply ask, “How can I help?”
There can be wisdom in certain theories, some types of analysis, mysticism, enlightenment, and so on. However, theories, analysis, and enlightenment of any kind must never overreach their power at the devastating exclusion of our ancient souls, and our already-existing sovereign intelligence, our sovereign selves. Nor must they ever override or bypass our sacred human-to-human connection, and the yearning of our souls to feel and share our deepest, darkest experiences and feelings.
We repeatedly are taught that our natural, human emotions have to be fixed, healed, managed, enlightened, pathologized, labeled, theorized into ‘early childhood,’ and a one-size-fits-all psychology. Often at grave loss to the yearning soul, we are ‘cleansed, made presentable and normal.’ In this, we diminish our highly unique individuality. We are far more than theories, pathologies, early childhood, and even enlightenment. We are wondrously complex, vast, and utterly simple beings…beautiful experiences of life….even with all of our pain and shame.
There are many paths and ways of being in this life. Bypassing our deeper selves might look tidier and more 'together' on the surface. Yet, often beneath this glamorous facade is a deeply grieving soul longing to wail tears of praise for the person, place, or experience…lost. Even the loss of self. Or, possibly beneath the ‘oh-so-smooth’ facade is a wonderfully outraged warrior desperately seeking to claim his or her boundaries and power.
We are far vaster than we often are taught. We must always remember that we are born of a Great Mystery, one as infinite as the Cosmos itself. -© REastonEvery soul holds within it the entire cosmos. Are you willing to judge an entire cosmos? I prefer to explore all of its mysteries and wonders, whether that is my own soul or another soul that sits in my presence.
Tragically, my culture pathologizes its own born-with humanity, as if being wonderfully human is an illness, especially our beautiful soul shadows.
I am so done with my culture diminishing, shaming, sanitizing, and pathologizing the rich, fertile Soul of our shadows, vitally important shadows laden with primordial wisdom. I am madly in love with my shadows and so comfortable with them that sadly my openness often makes others uneasy. Some might feel a need to fix me, enlighten me, reign me in, and domesticate me back into something safe and familiar….to them. I am way too free-thinking and wild for that.
We do not have to live in the wild to BE Wild. ‘Wild’ is a state of being, not always a place.
Embracing and protecting my beautifully wild shadows saved me from cultural violence, and showed me fierce boundaries and powerful irrefutable truth, a reality so in-my-face that I was set free…thrust back into the ageless truth of my own Infinite Existence. I let go to a force far vaster than my own.
With total letting go, no energy is expended in keeping emotional rivers at bay. All dams are blown to smithereens, and the great rivers of my life are set free…flowing naturally, just as they were born to flow. Nothing is held back. With nothing to hang onto, nothing left to lose, I stand bare, exposed before the Great Emptiness…and there within the silence, I hear the tender voice of God. Infinite Love.
In this, I know who I am…and, I am not afraid.
Take time away from all busyness--even a few minutes--to remember how vast you really are. If you forget, climb to the top of a hill, a steep mountain, a tall building, and look out over the vastness...of your own soul. You will gasp in awe. -© REastonAncient wisdom is vividly brought to life and made visceral and real...in the experience of actually FEELING who we are. Tragically, we are driving our emotions...and the very soul of us...into extinction. Like all Wild Things, I fight for my very Existence…my Sovereign Soul. And, I will not be stopped.
Like the Living Earth, I will go on, no matter what…for I am merged with all things.
I wish for you empathetic, non-judging listeners, other humans who do not fear or shame your darkest shadows, humans who are able to see the Courageous Beauty in ALL that you feel. In the absence of such a listener, it is all the more important to listen to the powerful wisdom of your own ancient soul. Therein, may you find your own self-governing voice, your own sovereign truth, a truth free of social and psychological edict. A truth so intimate and personal that it forever remains….between you and the Great Mystery.
May you honor ALL that you feel with love and tender compassion, and always remember, just because you cannot find someone able to listen without judgment, this does not mean there is anything ‘wrong’ with what you feel. It simply means that we live in a human-world that is very, very frightened of its own emotional shadows.
If you cannot find a single soul of grace, spend as much time as you can with Nature. Trust the truth in star-filled nights, towering trees, clear flowing waters, mysterious moon, tiny children, playful puppies, wild animals, beautiful flowers, and the continued beating of your own heart. Most of all…..trust yourself.
Try not to compare yourself to the world of humans around you. This might not be a very realistic or healthy comparison. To seek something healthy and loving, we do not turn to an unhealthy and violent culture for truth. We must dig deeper, further back into our Ancient Roots sunk deep into the Earth and the Great Mystery of Life….eons-old truth imprinted on our own ancient souls.
Trust yourself. Take a stand and decide for yourself how it is going to be for you. Give to yourself what you cannot find in the world….and yet you KNOW should be there. Or, seek until you find the person, the animal, the tree, the place, the experience that reflects your own inner longing, your own inner desire for forgiveness, compassion, and Love.
You will know this truth when you find it. It will feel right…to you. It might come from a source you least expect, but truth and empathic compassion DO exist in this world. And, that compassion extends to even your deepest, darkest, most shame-filled shadows, as it should, and always has…in the eyes of Infinite Love.
Be gentle with yourself.
Trust yourself.
All my love,
Roby
© Robin Easton – All Rights Reserved