There's only so many self-help videos that you can watch and changing your life type of content that you can really get into.
But it's really not.
Until you start to like yourself, until you start to sit with yourself, until you start to apply all these lessons or words of advice to yourself, you're addicted to finding that answer through that substance, through that relationship, through that sort of negative cycle of thinking.
What lives beyond that?
Who are you outside of all of those things?
How can you grow that relationship with feeling safe with yourself?
The biggest healing secret that I've learned is we can't suppress these things.
We can't shoo them away and run away from them, outrun our emotions and our fears.
They will catch up.
They will catch up.
And what do you do when they catch up?
I'm not my emotions.
At the end of the day, we're not all of the things that we try running from.
We are us like.
Of course, we have all these beautiful things about us, personalities and relationships and ways we like to express ourselves, but at the end of the day, who are you sitting with?
It's like I can hear the rattling of cicadas in my brain.
The way they start with a strong swell that fades into the hot air.
I've been processing a lot of change recently.
In that I've found myself unsure of the answers to questions that seem to swim inside me about what it is that I want.
I'm not always sure what it is that I want, but I feel closest to those conclusions in silence.
Even if they're not conclusions that I wish to come to.
I feel a sense of acceptance, especially when I notice the summer singing around me.
The summer, solstice and June in general was heavy with heat and crepe myrtles on the trees pink, juicy blossoms, so proud against the bright blue above them.
Bold blooms of the orange and yellow pride of Barbados manicure the gardens and almost every neighborhood and landscape throughout the city.
It's funny how these plants that thrive in the heat seem to teach me how to take in the silence, how to come closer to acceptance.
I've noticed that the quiet that sits in the corners of my first apartment or floats through the forest behind it blankets me in a state of being that I don't need to make sense of.
I take in mouthfuls of silence like a remedy that lets me back in on who I really am.
And sometimes, I wish not to swallow that remedy.
Most of the time, I'd rather submerge myself, my voice, my thoughts in distraction, or perhaps even numb what lives within me, or redirect my focus elsewhere, often in an imaginative interpretation of the future.
Being a lone moor, it's hard to ignore the circles that I seem to run myself in searching for satisfaction that can only really be tasted through pure acceptance.
Specifically, the summer flora teaches me how to begin this process.
As it soaks in its silence, alongside the swell of cicadas, crickets and the sweltering sun.
It not only accepts the heat, but it embraces it, just existing within all of it, reminding me that I can too.
So if there feels like there are a million little problems that you can't seem to sort out, things you're overcoming or becoming, I know it can be hard to return to that silence, let alone accepting what sits within it.
But I've found that the more that I continue to sit in that silence, the more things sort themselves out and the more clarity I gain.
I wanted to read you guys that journal entry because it sums up what I have been reflecting on just how important silence really is.
I had a very tumultuous spring, I will say that.
I went through a lot this spring.
It felt like a test of character in a lot of ways, a test of strength and a need for redirection in my life.
Breakdowns or bad things, tumultuous times.
They always lead back towards some sort of breakthrough, some sort of realization, some sort of clarity.
These things that I went through in the spring and the conclusions that they led me to.
In the early summer, I realized that I needed to be alone.
And, as scary as that was, it was something that my body and my mind was telling me for a very long time that I needed to sit with myself and that i needed to be alone and that i needed to almost i don't want to say isolate myself, but really call my attention and power back to my heart and me and what was going on within my mind and my life.
I felt like i was just always running and searching for the answers outside of myself, and it wasn't until that came to a breaking point of so much unhappiness that I realized okay, know what, maybe these answers that i'm searching for and running to find are actually within me.
What if everything that i'm searching for, what if all the answers that i've been desperately trying to find within everybody else or within this practice or belief system or this and that?
What if these answers are sitting with me?
What if the things that i fear most, what if i can cultivate the sense of safety and reassurance and confidence that can get me through life?
That's something the past few years that I've been so passionate about is building discipline and better habits for myself and confidence, because I know that there is a peaceful, fulfilled version of me on the other side of that, because I've met her before in that silence, when I sit with myself and I sit with all those unpleasant emotions and the things that I've been running from and avoiding.
I'm not my emotions at the end of the day.
We're not all of the things that we try running from.
We are us.
Like.
Of course, we have all these beautiful things about us, personalities and relationships and ways we like to express ourselves.
But at the end of the day, who are you sitting with?
Are you running from sitting with yourself?
What is it that you're avoiding?
And what is it that you believe that you can find within others and external circumstances that you aren't providing yourself?
There's so many aspects to us that exist.
And there was a part of me that I just needed to sit with.
I was avoiding sitting with her for so long.
I kept running and running, only to realize that the answers I was searching for, They existed within me, and it was just about being intentional and patient and present with myself.
It sounds all simple, right?
Just sitting here and telling you that, to just sit with yourself and to just be patient like it's easy.
But
It takes years sometimes.
It takes trial and error over and over again, humbling scenarios breakdowns everything, to sometimes actually to just sit with ourselves.
And I think that's why a lot of people avoid meditation or think that it's kind of useless is because it's a practice of learning to sit with yourself and to be comfortable within your own silence and your own presence, and It can create miracles when you allow it.
And I'll be honest with you.
I preach all of these things, but I do not seriously meditate every day.
When I do, you'll know when I do.
You will know.
But I don't because of the very reason that I have been running from myself.
Sometimes it sounds excruciating and agonizing to sit with myself in silence and to sit with these thoughts that are constantly running through my mind, and the negativity and the doubt and the insecurity and the Okay, what are you doing?
This is a waste of time.
Like, I don't want to sit with myself.
I would rather be on the run.
I would rather be on the hunt for answers within everybody else.
I've easily attached my worth to certain things that just don't really matter.
But I just wanted to find those answers of feeling worthy or satisfied within things that will ultimately always run out and we will stay running.
It's not until we come back to ourselves and sit with those unpleasant emotions or the things that we have kept down and just to warn you like it's not always pretty when they come up and we do bring ourselves to sit down and be in that silence with ourselves, It can be depressing and ugly.
Like, I just felt very numb to everything in my life.
Like, I just didn't feel safe to allow myself to sink into my reality or what was happening.
I just felt like I'd been numbing myself and on the run and not really taking things in.
And it wasn't until finally that just got so upsetting and I felt so empty inside that...
I sat in my stairwell and just allowed silence to wash over me, no distractions, nothing.
And I sat there for God knows how long.
I think it was like half an hour to 45 minutes, just in that numb silence.
I had to sit with that numbness.
I had to sit with myself and where I was currently at, even if it wasn't pretty.
I asked myself okay, what's going on?
Like, let's just sit with this, let's sit with this emotion of numbness and kind of see if we can melt this away.
Like what is underneath this numbness?
What is underneath this constant need to distract myself or keep going like what is there?
Who am i?
Let's sit here.
And so I sat there and I allowed sort of that numbness to melt.
Attention really allows things to unfurl and reveal themselves.
Sometimes I just get frustrated and confused or wrapped up in my own thoughts and mind.
I think people give up enjoying the silent moments or sitting with themselves or meditation because there's not some sort of immediate gratification.
I kind of want to present the idea to you like melting.
Sometimes it's like when you are sitting there and you're sitting with yourself, your attention just to the present moment, to your breath, to how you're feeling, that attention will melt away your resistance or your racing brain eventually, right like ice doesn't melt on the spot, it takes the sun beating down on it to truly melt, and it takes a bit of time.
So i think, with sitting with yourself and meditation and seeking clarity within ourselves, it takes patience, it takes time, it takes sitting with ourselves again and again.
We can do it, we can keep coming back to it, even if it's not comfortable.
See, this is why i use the word uncomfortable so much and talk about how sometimes the things that are best for us don't always feel good.
But i just really want to emphasize that because people think oh, because this doesn't feel good, it's not worth it, or i shouldn't keep trying, and it just couldn't be farther from the truth.
Sometimes those things that do require that extra patience, that do provide that long-term gratification not instant.
It takes time to build that muscle, to start to feel safe and comfortable within ourselves again.
And the reason why I want to bring attention to this topic of sitting with yourself and to stop running from yourself is the answers that do sit in that silence and that do exist.
There are truths that we need to hear.
The truth and what we need to do lives there.
I believe that, if you want to call it your intuition, if you have a specific relationship to god, whatever it is,
It brings you there, sitting in that silence.
It brings you back to that guidance, that inner knowing that shows you which way is next or what it is that you must do next.
We get out of touch with that.
We fall out of touch with that and we believe that we can find the answers within our own ego, within our own everyday lives and relationships, and this and that.
But to be honest with you, all of that stuff should just be an add-on to the comfortability that we feel within ourselves and our own presence.
We should feel as though our relationships are adding to that joy that we feel within ourselves.
That our environment is a product of that.
We're only going to start living the life that we wish to live once we're able to find some answers within ourselves as to where that lives.
What must I do next?
How can I embody, How can I practice being the person i wish to be?
What is she about?
Where can i find those answers and that clarity as to what i need to do next, as to who i am, as to what makes me feel safe in my body and my mind?
Once we become familiar with these things, we become familiar with who we are.
We're no longer running from ourselves.
We attract things that match that.
People kind of blow off the law of attraction and everything, but think about it.
Think about it from a logical perspective.
What you are is what you're gonna bring more of into your life.
So if you are miserable and hate yourself, then I'm sorry, but who is going to love you?
No one's going to do that for you.
No one can love you into loving yourself.
I mean, they can try, but it's not going to feel as good as sourcing that from within.
And sometimes it can get overwhelming because, like I said, there's so many aspects and parts of ourselves that serve these different functions and are trying to keep us safe and maybe are playing a loop or a belief system or we have these thought patterns that just continue to go, go and fire and fire in a certain direction.
But maybe we need to strip it back down to the basics and learn who we are again.
What is it that makes us feel safe?
What is it that is keeping us from sitting with ourselves?
It's like a dirty faucet.
You turn on a faucet or a sink and you see all that dirty water and then eventually the water will run clear.
I really find meditation and sitting with yourself and accepting yourself to be that way.
That clear water, that clarity and those answers and that peace.
It is so worth watching that dirty water come out first and going through those experiences and coming to terms with yeah, I have hated myself, or yeah, I have let this insecure belief take over my life, or yeah, I have been viewing things in this way.
I know there's only so many self-help videos that you can watch and changing your life type of content that you can really get into, but it's really not until you start to like yourself, until you start to sit with yourself, until you start to apply all these lessons or words of advice to yourself.
Doing that work, it's work.
I know that there are parts of me that are anxious or that don't feel good and I just, instead of letting myself run with that and going down that path, it's my responsibility to be aware of those feelings and to sit with them and to hold them and to allow myself to feel safe.
I don't feel like doing that a lot of the time.
I don't even i can't even tell you.
It was probably a few days ago when i last really really did that intentionally and it was hard.
I keep the tv on a lot of the time to avoid the silence that we're talking about.
I was feeling really anxious and i felt like there was a part of me that just wanted to self-sabotage, being very hard on myself, and Usually I would just let that run and allow it to just kind of take over my day or my mood or my thoughts or my narrative of myself.
But because I've been really adamant on changing this narrative and coming back to a sense of peace with myself, I didn't want to pause the TV.
I didn't want to sit in silence.
It felt scary or uncomfortable to do that, but i did.
I paused the tv.
It was dark outside.
I sat with myself alone in the living room, put my hand on my chest and my stomach.
Instead of trying to suppress the anxiety or the insecurity or the doubts, i just allowed them to exist and i allowed them to speak what they were afraid of.
I listened and i validated those feelings and was able to recognize them as feelings.
Recognize them as fears, not me.
They are beliefs that exist within me to serve a purpose that they ultimately believe is worth fulfilling, but they're not me.
I am me.
And getting to come back to that silence.
Be aware of that.
Hold those feelings, validate them, let them know that they're safe with me, that I can hold these emotions and that we can keep going, that we are safe to live our best life.
We are safe to live a life of peace and fulfillment.
We are safe to keep going.
We are safe to, we are worthy enough to do hard things or to do those more disciplinary acts for ourself that bring that long-term gratification.
You know, i get so antsy when i try to sit down and meditate and those thoughts start to take me away and i'm like oh, this is a waste of time.
And it's in those moments that i kind of have to hold that antsy part of me and say, you know what, like i, i see you and i hear you, but we're safe here.
Okay, we are safe in the silence, we're safe to sit with ourselves, And I know it's kind of boring at first.
I know it's boring.
I know it's just like, okay, why are we sitting in silence and listening to the cicadas?
It's not all that interesting for everybody, right?
But it is worth it if you find yourself on the run.
You're addicted to finding that answer through that substance, through that relationship, through that sort of negative cycle of thinking that comes to you every day.
What lives beyond that?
Who are you outside of all of those things?
How can you grow that relationship with Feeling safe with yourself, with that pure consciousness that you are?
How can you hold these emotions within you and validate them and make them feel seen and heard and be able to move forward with your life?
The biggest healing secret that I've learned is we can't suppress these things.
We can't shoo them away and run away from them, outrun our emotions and our fears.
They will catch up.
They will catch up.
And what do you do when they catch up?
We have to accept them and love them instead of letting them eat us alive, because ultimately, even if it doesn't feel like it, those negative beliefs that we have, they are trying to serve a purpose.
They are trying to keep us safe and we can thank them for that and move on with our lives instead of constantly trying to outrun them.
I don't know.
I guess I try to speak from my own healing journey here, because I know that we're all on this journey together and I know how scary it can be to actually sit with ourselves in silence and how often we actually avoid that.
Literally, we could be avoiding that for our whole lives.
I think most people do.
I just, I guess I just want to be another voice of encouragement alongside you, to say that I know it's not easy.
I know what it feels like to just have a lot of crippling self-doubt and those feelings.
The reason why I put so much emphasis on destruction that those feelings really can cause is when we try to outrun them, is if we don't really sit with those feelings and we don't really accept the fact that we feel that way and that it derived from somewhere and that we can sit with this and process this and heal this.
If we don't do that and we're continuously just outrunning this hate for ourselves or this insecurity, that's the type of person we become.
That bleeds into our relationships.
How we hold ourselves in relationships, what we expect from other people, job positions that we might find ourselves in, just how we feel about ourselves plays into our part in the world.
It's how we show up in the world.
So I think it's important to not continue to try to outrun these emotions, but to understand them and understand where they may be showing up in our lives and why we might be accepting certain behaviors, why we might be allowing certain friendships in our lives or continuing to attract the same type of relationship or person over and over again, like what we're feeling within here it shows up on the outside.
If we want to do good in this world we want to do good by others and be of service to others we need to make sure that we are okay.
Because if we're not, that's going to show up.
And it can be harmful to not only ourselves, but to others too.
That dream, that you have that dream version of you, your dream self, the things that you truly desire and wish to achieve, and know that you can, they exist on the other side of these blockages.
These things that have served as blockages because we've been running from them, right?
They don't have to be blockages.
And I know it's a lot of work, man.
I know it's a lot of coming back to silence over and over again and sitting with yourself.
But things that I have discovered in that silence I can't even begin to explain, but I've turned my life into trying to explain it.
So I'll do my best, but I just like I can't even.
I can't even tell you um, learning to just sit with that part of myself that wants to self-sabotage, that tells me i'm not good enough or keeps me from taking opportunities or risks or starting conversations, or just robbing me of my experience, because sometimes those parts of us have a lot of things to say and a lot of beliefs to unpack.
Right, there's a lot of unpacking that is done in these silent moments, but let them unpack.
Let them unpack, let it out on some paper, let it out through some tears, let it out with a therapist if accessible, but if not, then anyone who maybe is willing to be a listening ear or to support us.
If our brain has a certain way of thinking or believing in things or seeing ourselves, then that's what we're used to and sometimes sitting with ourselves.
It requires Change, it requires us to change, it requires our way of thinking and seeing ourselves to change.
I've realized that there are these little young parts of me that have felt the need to be this like surveillance of Panic and worry all the time.
They actually just want to have fun.
They actually just want to watch their favorite game, cartoon and they want to relax that inner child in me, the part of me that doesn't feel safe.
It can learn to be a child again.
And i give myself permission to do that.
When i come back to the moments of sitting with myself in the silence, sitting with those emotions, accepting them and how they feel, and you don't come to those conclusions, you don't do that work with those parts of yourself until you decide to sit down and sit with yourself and that the silence that can be daunting is necessary for that.
It takes patience and time and intention.
But if we don't wish to be people who act out of envy and pain and anger and, you know, harm others and ourselves and are living a life of dissatisfaction destruction, it's just we don't have to do that.
We don't have to.
We don't have to be a victim to our feelings and our emotions.
But there's such a misconception that ignoring our feelings is the strong way of going about our life and, like ignoring how we feel and pushing it down and outrunning it, equates to strength.
But I don't think that could be farther from the truth.
I think we will constantly be On the run.
Wouldn't it be the strong, brave thing to do to sit with it instead and to understand it and to allow yourself to be free from it?
I thank you very much for sitting and chatting with me here today.
I can't wait to talk to you again very, very soon.
Thank you so much for everything always.
And remember that we are on this journey together.
I'll talk to you guys very, very soon.
Bye.
