freedom templates: keep showing up
Let everythingāwhich is asking to breakāfall apart. I once asked to be broken open so that I could be built together again. Here I am, in the aftermath, alive, free, and loving.
Courage is the most important of all virtues because, without courage, you can't practice any other virtue consistently
~ Dr Maya Angelou
Something clicked for me when I realized the power of words. Perhaps it was my encounter with books and speeches of the late Dr Maya Angelou in which she said, āWords are thingsā. This statement flew by me the first time. However, I found myself regularly returning to the archive of her wisdom hoping that I would understand what she meant. Frequently, I mulled over those three words and also repeatedly quoted one of her other well-known sayings, āLove liberatesā. In 2020, I had an inkling that the meaning of these statements would become clear to me. So I prayed. I meditated. I asked to be present and receptive to the gift of discernment and clarity.Ā
Three years since saying my prayers, I get it. But I only āget itā because I lived it. It has now become clear and vivid to me that one of the most potent ways to learn the meaning of something is to live it (and sometimes more than once). I have come to observe how messages begin to decrypt themselves the moment I say āyesā to embodying an experience.
Showing up for the life class is how I continue to master the lesson(s).
While each book, podcast, conversation, energy medicine practice, and therapy/journaling session has had its purpose, there is nothing that quite simply matches the intensity of embodiment; the experience of the lesson coming through this body, for this life. There is no tone that matches the tactile and sensory nature of engaging with all of life as it presents and unfolds before and through me.
Coming to this insight was also the moment I stopped running, numbing or attempting to be in control of any/all aspects of my life. This is the point where I admittedāout loudāthat I was so tired of trying to control the circumstances around me. All I had left was nothing but the strength to surrender to the uncertain and nebulous process of transformation.Ā
And now, in this current season of my life, I feel a new lesson beginning to emerge. This is the type of lesson that complicates the narrative of meaning-making and battles face-to-face with worn-out narratives of āstruggleā. For a long time, I believed that to inherit the richness of my lifeās lessons, I first needed to experience struggle. I was disposed to the program that only rubbing against lifeās rough patches could reveal the gems underneath the surface. I thought that only by encountering great storms and gushing winds would I truly appreciate the clear and sunny skies ahead.Ā
Indeed, the most difficult circumstances of my life thus far have beenāand continue to beāpivotal and significant in teaching me invaluable wisdom and incredible insights. In hindsight, I would not want to live through them again, but I definitely want to keep all the lessons I have gathered along the way.
What is different is that I now recognize how my beliefs have played a huge role in keeping me stuck in patterns of recreating my own pain as an attempt to prove that I am worthy of receiving something good. This is so hard to admit. But I must be honest if I am to commune with freedom.
I am learning that liberation without truth-telling is at best chimeric, and at worst delusionary.Ā
My beliefs, for one part, were informed by models and templates of seeing and hearing those around me and in media proudly tell their tales of āconquering struggleā to āprove their worthā or āearn their keepā. Rooted in stories and lineages longer than this page, this belief system meant that I considered everything good as something that must be earned and paid for with incredible struggle and back-bending sacrifice. That pleasure, joy, peace, and comfort are the by-products of a tumultuous struggle and near martyrdom. That ānothing good comes easyā.Ā
This is not to admonish my dedication (and attraction) to ambition, discipline, and skillful challenge. Rather, I am reflecting here on the ways that I failed to give my-self and my soul the capacity to learn through a vast, unrestricted, āotherwiseā range of experiences beyond the walls of what I thought was possible. I am bringing light to the ways that I closed doors to the possibility of receiving lessons through laughter, dreams, graceful challenges, and healthy stretches. I am sharing with you how, regardless of the numerous ways that life wanted to generously pour wisdom and insight into me, I only followed directions towards paths that required me to hurt my heels, graze my soles, or stumble in the process.Ā
My mode of learning was glued to the image of having to fight my way through lifeāfight to deserve life. I relied on my bruised knuckles as evidence of my grit and proof that I was due for my reward. I willingly and, with good intentions, led myself into wildernesses that sometimes felt like a dense and unending maze of tangled undergrowth just to show that I could navigate my way out. I looked down into dark canyons and perceived them as trampolines that would level me up into the next phase of my growth. I broke a few bones fighting with versions of myself that tried to turn my attention to different beliefsā¦Ā
Until I learned that I was, in the first place, never meant to embody a single story.Ā
I broke apart when I understood that multiple truths can co-exist within and without. And similarly, multiple paths to these multiple truths are present and available. There was no āgoodā or ābadā way to learn lifeās lessons. The cause, quality, and pace of my heroās journey was not and has never been in competition or in comparison to anyone else's.
This life journey is breathtakingly short and paradoxically long. It calls us to take a posture of awe, bewilderment, and humility. Simultaneously, it crafts us into becoming mentors, teachers and guides for one another while we are still students. There is a quality of newness, and at the same time, a quality of familiarity with all that we are living through. We are Brand New Ancients.
So these days, I write letters to myself in case I wander off into dense wildernesses whose trails are spiral labyrinths. I leave crumbs and markings on paths to help me remember the way out of old spinning tales. I write my dreams down everywhereābut I always leave big bold spaces for miracles to write themselves into my pages.Ā
I say to myself out loud, in whispers, through dance, and in prayer:Ā
Your heart does not have to keep breaking for you to know that you are strong. Good and lasting love does not have to be a struggle. Your softness is your superpower. And you, my dear, have never needed to prove that you are deserving of true, generous, unconditional love. You simply need to keep showing up for lifeās masterclasses with everything laid bare. Come as you are.
Your surrender, your disciplined practice, and your open heart are the currencies required for liberation.
Freedom is already in your name. I hope you keep choosing to tend lovingly to all parts of you first and always.
But we are still mythical.
We are still permanently trapped,
somewhere between the heroic and
the pitiful.
We are still godly.
Thatās what's made us so monstrous, but it feels
like we've forgotten that we are much
more than the sum of the things that
belong to us.
~ Kae Tempest