On Experiencing the Loss Accompanying Our Changing Selves

Change can bring about an inherent sense of grief. It can be a result of an external force or a deliberate internal one. In both cases, it requires us to let go of who we (thought we) were and merge with the transition flow.

The sadness accompanying these shifts is inconspicuous. It feels tender, raw, and bare. It is quiet, yet throbs pain and heaviness into our being. Accepting and experiencing this is a crucial rite of passage.

Wherever there's void, there's space for creation

This sends us into a new field, a realm we have never been associated with. It requires us to unlearn what we've ever known and re-associate with our new ways of being. This kind of evolution requires us to break through all of what we've known; to deliberately shatter our hearts and the beliefs we've sworn by. 

Change is gruesome, yet necessary. It's the only way we can move forward, to live out our truest sense of purpose. It requires us to continually surrender to our deeper truths. When we witness, accept, and experience our depths, it is easy to express them outwards with a sense of self-assuredness. 

Meeting People as They Are

Our minds are wired to be perceptive and to make sense of the world around us. Our primary upbringing and our immediate surroundings play crucial roles in the qualities we embody as individuals and in the way we respond to our life circumstances. Eventually, this becomes a way of life, and we become habituated to certain perceptions.

Unless we challenge these perceptions, we run our lives basing people on our mind-made ideas of them, rather than experiencing their true selves.

When you practice experiencing people beyond the lens of any judgement, you'll see that everyone wants to be free - to live without having definitions or labels imposed upon them. In fact, considering any label better than the other creates conflicts in our (individual and collective) minds.

To keep up this illusion, we drive ourselves to receive it from external resources. It keeps us in the loop of constant striving, comparing, and competing.

We vehemently fight the labels that aren't considered ideal. And ironically, we need to accept this barrier before we evolve to the next phase. Until then, we are simply running away from what we aren't willing to face about ourselves.

When we perceive people without a lens, we allow them to be a full expression of themselves, without imposing our biased confines upon them. Our freedom emerges when we leave behind the beliefs and thought processes that hold us back. The biases we hold towards others, begin with us.

Despite everything, we're all just trying to meet the part of ourselves hidden beneath layers of conditioning, and beliefs we've embodied through our experiences. Everyone just wants to be accepted for what they truly are, even if they haven't yet figured out what it means.

Artwork by Jordan K Lancaster

None of us want to pretend to gain acceptance of others. But most of us have learned to prove ourselves before we experience any kind of acceptance.

We can be honest with others when we let them be honest about themselves. 

The Art of Observing

To observe is to notice without any conclusion. Our brains are wired to make sense of our surroundings. It is primally evolved to keep us safe. However, due to this trait, we keep living our life experiences through the past.

It keeps us bound to responding as the same person, without taking accountability to improve our ways of being. Usually when we are younger, our responses are based on our need to be seen, and loved for the way we are; and a need to survive.

As we grow through experiences we cannot use the same responses to navigate our world. Our responses enable the change we seek to create within us. As humans, we are free to change our self-concept as a response to our environment, our conditions or simply through pure will.

There's more to what meets the eye

When we consciously let go of rigid, and outdated internalized interpretations, we make space for multiple realities to exist. Observing allows us to step back and reflect on the larger picture. It reminds us of what is more important than our habituated response.

Suppressing Our Emotions vs Reigning Control of Our Emotions

When I first started being aware of my emotions, I thought ignoring my reality was the best way to go about it. This made me feel claustrophobic in my own body, as I wouldn't be honest with myself about how I was truly feeling—until a time came when I was just done pretending.

Suppressing our emotions means that we are not ready to accept what we feel about a certain circumstance. We neglect what we truly feel, and push away the energy that is trying to make its way through us. When we suppress, we aren't honest with ourselves. Living in our bodies becomes an uncomfortable experience as the internal energy stagnates. This creates a form of functional freeze in our bodies.

Reigning control over our emotions begins with accepting how we feel about any circumstance. Especially when we've been trained to believe that we should only feel what is acceptable.

This unconditional acceptance begins when we meet our emotions in their raw form, without judging them for their existence. In my experience, this practice taught me to be less critical of what came naturally to me. I realized that these emotions are natural responses to my subjective experiences - the experiences that are unique to me.

When we no longer add preferences or alter our emotions to fit them into an "acceptable" category, we witness them as they are. We show compassion towards our past selves and our experiences.

Once we are comfortable experiencing these emotions as they are, we learn to take full accountability for our responses and our experiences. This means we are consciously in control of our emotions. We notice, and accept them for what they are, and respond suitably, instead through our past emotional wounds.

We no longer allow our emotions to run our lives. Rather, we are focused on navigating our nuanced experiences, honouring our subjective realities, and holding space for others' nuanced, valid, and visceral experiences without dismissing them as well.

This creates space to accommodate each other and connect with others with compassion. It also creates space for possible repair and honest communication. 

Create Peace Within, To Create Peace Without

One of today's biggest threats to the world is that we can dismiss one another's feelings. It is easy to have a say in other people's choices and experiences, without immersing ourselves completely into their circumstances. The full experience of each person's life paints a vivid story, something we can't comprehend unless we experience it first-hand.

We coerce our perceptions onto others by dismissing their experiences. We fit into certain cultures, and social circles when we check off a list of parameters. So when some don't fit into the set criteria, they are shunned for being an inconvenience. These practices deliberately negate the totality of their personal experiences.

We are born in different contexts. We can never control where we come from. The family, the culture, the region, our upbringing, our true nature, our personal experiences, and our biological make-up, mould us into the people we become. Each of our internal experiences is unique, yet interwoven with others. Maybe, this gives people a false sense of entitlement; a right to scrutinize other people's experiences. Dismissing other people's experiences causes resentment in them.

These contexts naturally create unique experiences for everyone. Comparing people based on external qualities is unfair, as many other factors shape an individual's inner experience. This includes their emotional intelligence, behaviours, past traumas, and how they engage in relationships.

Each internal experience is a cause for an external repercussion. We disrupt communal harmony when we are unaware of the behavioural and interaction patterns that create division.

It is crucial that we take accountability for our experiences and how we show up in the collective world. We must learn to tend to the wounds in our hearts, so we can hold our nuanced experiences. When we practice this, we learn to show up for others too.

The beginning of outer peace truly begins with each of us.

On Loving without Conditions

I used to think that unconditional love was simply an excuse to take our loved ones for granted. When I experienced strained relations, I believed that human connections are always conditional 

This was until I decided to love without conditions.

Loving someone unconditionally is a choice; free will. Love is free from conditions. It means we trust ourselves to uphold our integrity while following this commitment and holding our loved ones accountable.

Love also means that our loved ones can be themselves in our minds' version of them. It is an act of surrender; an unknown experience. It teaches you to leave behind all the parameters you thought you needed to love.

Love is not limited to people, and can be extended to our experiences. When we experience love as a way of life, living feels purposeful. I recently learned all of us come bearing gifts, and our purpose is to share them. Love means to ask yourself, "How can I be of service in this moment?"

Love is a state of being and a way of life. It is undefined and inexplicable. It's the goosebumps on your skin when you connect with a moment, or the safety you experience in your body when your friend is present with you through your difficult days. It's the inspiration and awe that strikes when you see something as mundane as a flight taking off, and thank the human and technological marvel. Or when you finally meet the stray cat after so many days and it just wants to cuddle you to mush.

Love is present. It's a choice. And I hope you keep choosing it.

Illusion of Personality

 We mould into varying personalities based on what our circumstances require us to. This transition is biological. It is our body's natural response to adapt to our environment. We're made of our subconscious mind, which detects the underlying emotional nature of our surroundings.

Our brains cannot fathom the totality of the universe. It uses experiences, labels, perceptions, opinions and the spirit of exploration to limit the scope of the vast experience. This allows us to make sense of the unknown.

At some point, this adaptation becomes a means to identify ourselves. However, this personality can hold us back once a certain self is achieved. We can only be, and not be the subconscious ideals- those that we allow ourselves to.

Growing up, we learn to perceive ourselves with different qualities - based on what others reflect off us. Our sense of self emerges from the outside response of our experiences.

Eventually, when we become aware of day-to-day emotional patterns and behaviours, we realize that this personality is simply an unconscious adaptation of our circumstances. We merely became who we needed to be. Later on, we can start seeing these adaptations as a conscious choice.

Once we understand this, we can learn, and unlearn what we need to be, a conscious practice and an active choice. Our sense of self or personality always changing.

We can be whoever we want to be 

Harbouring Curiosity over Judgements

Judgements serve no purpose. They are a core form of resistance. They are not constructive and keep us bound to the illusion of our righteousness. It keeps us from fully experiencing the wild and the vast unknown.

A judgement is a thought process in motion. A thought arises from the state of the nervous system. Our judgements reveal our internal biases. This practice is cruel as it dismisses and contains the other person's multi-dimensional experiences, limiting them to meet the external understanding of our experience of them.

Judgements can only contribute towards a divisive world. To create a harmonious world outside, we need to remove the labels that keep us from experiencing our infinite selves.

The first step is to remove our guards of righteousness. This is our step into experiencing humility - that there's so much more we don't know, than what we do. This allows us to be vulnerable and honest about our subjective experience, without imposing labels or excuses. When we start being honest about our experiences, we learn to extend compassion towards others.

A compassionate world looks like individuals making space for each others' experiences. We are here to provide one another with our presence, our empathy and our curiosity; to know each other, and belong.

Curiosity, however, allows us to genuinely want to know more about the other person's experience. This is empathy and compassion in action. Instead of snap judgements, curiosity encourages us to explore the experiences we seek to understand.

Curiosity is a kind teacher. It allows us to go beyond the levels of appearances, and delve into the essence of all that exists. In a world that is communally crumbling with the weight of so many labels, conflicts, and expectations, curiosity seeks to understand the roots of the forces that drive divisive behaviours. It seeks to connect, communicate and understand. 

Evolving Through Labels

Labels are exhausting. They limit us psychologically. They reduce the bounds through which we can explore ourselves. It also minimizes the extent to which we can fully, openly and freely experience ourselves, and our relation to the world outside us.

At each moment our behaviours, responses or actions reveal what we unconsciously feel about ourselves regarding any circumstance. When we give ourselves a label, psychologically, we can only behave within the bounds of its abstract definition.

Ideating ourselves at each level can get exhausting. However, this ideation is a natural response to adapt to our circumstances. When we unlearn the labels that we might unconsciously provide for ourselves, we create space to transition towards new possibilities.

We not only unburden our minds, but we also get to tread the next step lightly. This allows us to pursue anything new with the least expectations - simply, to experience it.

We may burden ourselves when we identify ourselves with certain personality traits. We also tend to project this perception onto others. This expectation is burdensome because we try to control others' perceptions of us. This may further add strain to our relationships.

Of course, labelling ourselves with certain characteristic traits can encourage us to become the person we are inspired to be. However, we need to keep moving through these labels often. This makes space for us to evolve into a more present, refined, updated and necessary version of ourselves. 

What it Means to Create Space Within You

Space is an expansive area in your body that helps you to contain your ever-expanding experiences - emotionally, energetically, psychologically, and intellectually. It originates in the space where the heart is located. This space can expand or contract based on the body's interpretation of your experiences.

In a way, this space can be comparable to that of garden soil. The more you tend to its environment, we can grow healthier plants. Similarly, reaching within and tending to this space, brings clarity to our chaos. This teaches us to connect with our intuition.

We all have access to this inner sanctuary. However, connecting to it is a conscious choice and consistent practice. When we learn to trust our inner messages, it's easier to express our authentic selves.

Until our minds are trained to focus towards what's most important, we get distracted easily. This space nudges us to re-align to the truth of our transient selves.

The internal space is an area in our consciousness, that allows everything to exist as it is. It is a space of unconditional acceptance, love, grace and mercy. It allows us to be truthful of ourselves and embraces us through our grief-filled process. Usually, this practice can be carried in the presence of a community (your loved ones), where your grief is witnessed; and experienced as a truth.

Just like nature and wildlife, we can learn to retract into ourselves - for the quiet, solitude and inner work, before we transform out into the world anew. 

However, when we learn to do this for ourselves, it is easier to access the darker parts of us. These parts may not necessarily be accepted by our peers. But learning to be open about our truth with others, requires us to be open about it initially, with ourselves.

Many practices allow us to access, meet, experience and nurture this space. These include journalling, talking to a trusted person, yoga, and meditation. Our biggest practice is when we learn to retract back into ourselves during uncontrollable, external chaos. At these times, this retraction allows us to center ourselves, and make a trusted, intuitive decision. 

The Art of Noticing the Emotions that Show Up in Our Awareness

Our internal experiences help us understand and navigate our external world. As we move through our days, our internal world naturally produces our subjective response through external experiences.

Our automatic, subjective perceptions are usually tainted with responses from our past experiences, socio-cultural, and familial conditioning. This conditioning teaches us to behave in ways aligned with these external requirements.

The responses formed in our internal experience are due to externalities. With practice, we get to choose how we respond to these sensations

Sometimes, these responses are not aligned with our truth. We could be so habituated with our conditioned response, that we can't see our truth beneath the layers.

When we become aware of our internal experiences, we can notice the conditioned responses. When our responses align with the conditioned response, our action or behaviour arises from a past belief. This is a continued pattern.

The idea is to practice noticing the response that is evoked within us. This is the unconscious story of our self-perception, lying beneath our levels of comprehension. When we want to shift our narratives from a victim mindset (blaming the external world), this practice allows us to reign in autonomy. This means from here on, we take full control of our experiences. We can use the emotions evoked within us to guide us towards our decisions and the next step.

When we learn to be present with the onslaught of our past experiences, we learn to make peace with it. We learn that these past emotions just want to be experienced, for we have locked them away from showing up. When we make space for them to experienced, we allow these emotions to exist and be validated for their existence. For each of our emotions plays a role in developing us emotionally, and authentically.

We only feel helpless when we are tethered to the stories we unconsciously keep telling ourselves. This practice allows us to break free from this thought process. 

When we learn to be present with the truth of our subjective experiences, we make space to hold others too. We also learn that none of our emotions are too much to be experienced. We eventually learn to hold and soothe the contradictory nature of their existence.

For we exist in multitudes. 

Untangling Our Minds during a Psychological Freeze

Today I was inspired to write about the times we feel stuck. You know that feeling when you psychologically freeze and don't understand what's to be done next? Too many emotions are overcome, and you're drawing a blank, not knowing what to do next.

This era of human existence has brought forth too many opinions on everything. Such as the opinions on how we're supposed to live, what we're supposed to think, the ideas of success, the glorification of ambition, and above all hyper-independence.

Not to mention the impact of social media, which encourages overconsumption, and nothing about being or having enough, or resourceful. This means right now, society is conditioned to glorify materialism, and the power of their status in the community to validate their journey towards success.

The first step to untangling our psychological freeze requires us to take a step back from this overwhelm. It means that all you need right now is to take a momentary breath from this thought process, and chaos. It can even be "I am not going to think for 5 min". For just 5 minutes, stepping away from the expectations, the should-be's, and all that you've been told you are, but you're really not. This encourages the mind to pause.

Allow this pause to catch you a break. Let it assist you to refocus. Ask yourself - "What is most important right now?" Focus on the vision. Let the clarity amplify your priority. Let this vision now guide you towards your next plan of action.

Each aspect of our life includes a range of requirements, decisions and consequences. When I note down the things to do numerically, it allows me to channel my thoughts externally, instead of in my abstract mind, allowing the imperceptible on paper. 

Sometimes we just need to take a while to prepare our minds for our next course of action. It feels detrimental when we're always on chasing the next item on our list. This is one of the few reasons causing the functional freeze. Never connected to the present. Never acknowledging or embracing the past wins.

Giving yourself the time and space to acknowledge, and witness this freeze helps you move through it. 

Being an Observer of Thoughts > Consumer of Thoughts

Our thoughts are non-verbal, electric associations in our bodies. These get converted to intelligible communication, as language, so our mind understands. Our thoughts are a product of our life experiences and biological makeup. These are generally repetitive. We can create conscious attempts to shift their narratives through regular practice.

It's essential to reflect on, and shift our thought process as it is detrimental to harbour and pursue repetitive thoughts. At our core, humans are wired to evolve our ways of being. If not, the stagnation threatens our existence - of how we each show up to the collective world. Humans are created to coexist and progress in the presence of one another, in safe communities.

Being a consumer of our thoughts insinuates that we expend our energy immersed in our thoughts. It means that we experience our thoughts as a first-hand experience. When we choose any thought, we become a part of its full experience.

Being a consumer of our thoughts is a ruminatory process. It keeps us bound to our subjective experience as if it is righteous. It dismisses the other factors that play a part in the totality of the experience or the circumstance. It is devoid of compassion, empathy and curiosity. It emanates superficiality.

The point is to engage in conscious consumption of thoughts. 

Being an observer of thoughts means we take a step back and notice the psychological quality of the stream of thoughts. The narratives behind each thought allow us to reflect on the present nature of our nervous system. Are we playing a victim card by blaming the outside world, or are we threatened by everyone and everything outside of us? Are we being curious to know the experience behind the other person's feelings, or have we set to perceive them in a way that dismisses the totality of their experience?

Observing our thoughts allows us to reflect on our emotional mindset. It allows us to take charge of the narrative that we want to consciously lead with. Choosing familiar thoughts means that we continue the cycle of similar experiences. Choosing a new thought means we are daring to challenge our outdated beliefs, that we care to change - for ourselves, and to connect with others.

When we view our thoughts objectively, we learn to make choices honouring our subjective experiences. We learn to be assertive, we learn to communicate directly, and we care enough to address the root of disconnection with others. It honours the many factors, and experiences that come together to form a unified experience. 

What it Means to Show Up for Yourself

Showing up for yourself is an active practice. It is a form of self-love. It is an act of follow-through. It means that by now, you know what's important to you and keep the discipline to pursue it.

Our present circumstances are often not aligned with the life we want to create. In most cases, they are at odds with where we want to be, the person we want to be, and the life we want to create for ourselves and others.

Our circumstances are our best teachers. When we work with them, we are ready to face the many obstacles that show up unexpectedly. We are willing to face them because, for us, our vision is more important than the obstacle in front of us.

Showing up is an act of devotion, a practice of revering our divine vision, our purpose. The greatest creation is often a compounded result of moving many small steps forward, consistently. It is a practice to create trust, perseverance and, a leap of faith.

What this means is that you trust yourself to get where you want to be. Irrespective of your environment being at odds with the place you want to be. You're more concerned about showing up for your purpose than for the outcome you've anticipated.

Showing up for yourself also means that you've cared enough to practise discernment - the intuitive skill of separating the wisdom you receive from your internal source, from the voice, opinions and objections of the external world. Including doubts (internalized voice of the external world).

This means that you care enough to pursue your purpose, to create a world that can lovingly accommodate our differences. To show us that we all really do belong with one another.