To Change the World is to Embody Change
Accessing the yearning of our heart's desire is transformational work.
Yet for many of us, the struggle to say yes to our yearning is often the root of our deep suffering. Saying yes looks different for each of us, and is a constant process of evolution. Sometimes, in order to be willing to feel our yearning, we must say yes to our pain, or yes to our resistance...sometimes we have to fully say yes to our NO...or yes to our doubt, yes to our pleasure, yes to our rage, yes to our power, yes to our vulnerability, yes to that wild impulse toward Life that still tears us open. To say yes to life we must practice allowing the depth of the present moment to penetrate our hearts and open us to the pleasures of life.
When we cultivate and build the muscle of a non-shaming heart, we gain access to our deepest healing. When we are willing to open our hearts not just to our beauty and power, but to those dark and ugly corners lurking in the shadows of our goodness, if we can shine the light of curiosity instead of shame, we step into our most authentic selves. The Self beyond the veil of ego and story. If we are willing to know these parts of ourselves, we create space for true healing and begin the process of repatterning our reality.
When we do the work to consider our cultural bias, to own and acknowledge our perceptual filters and the impact they've had on our capacity to see one another, we become a catalyst for healing in a profound and humble way. To be willing to look at the parts of ourselves who may be unconsciously participating in systemic oppression, to acknowledge and understand these parts for what they are and without shame— is to disempower them from causing us to unwittingly perpetuate harm in our world.
We cannot change the world if we are not willing to change ourselves.
We cannot call the world into balance from a place of imbalance.
We cannot heal the world from within our pain.
To step up to our fullest expression of self requires a deep willingness to let go of all our false selves. This process is profound, revelatory, confrontational and messy; there is no way back to the old ways of being once we’re broken open into our deeper truth. For most of us, this work confronts us with pain and fear and many of the wounds we've built our lives avoiding.
But when we’re willing to feel those feelings—the ones we’re most afraid to feel—we emancipate all that energy we’ve kept knotted up around them. The freedom that rushes through the system when this happens is an experience of true ecstasy. On the other side of all that holding is an ocean of vitality and pleasure.