You know you are growing, but it feels so shit.
You are calling in transformation, and yet you feel lazy, flat and possibly fat…
Not motivated and ready to curl up in front of a movie with a massive tub of coconut ice cream.
Positive affirmations are not going to touch the edge of this.
We could label it depression. But yet another label rarely helped anyone, especially those of us with a less-than-joyous-outlook to begin with.
Know the feeling?
Over the past few months I’ve been in a massive cycle of transformation and growth. Making big shifts in my inner world to align me with more soul and less ego. It’s not been the easiest period…
But no one ever said this spiritual stuff was easy.
And to put it into context there is a whole lot in my life to be grateful for (like food, shelter, clean water…)
In this state of surrender all the usual go-to happiness solutions – like my favorite foods, and chai, and facials, and yoga studios – are not quite cutting it in the same way they used too.
Everything is in a dynamic state of flux.
- The body’s sensitivity to food is heightened (even the coconut ice cream is not sitting as well as it used to…)
- Hormones are re-calibrating
- I find myself saying NO more – cutting down and cutting out events and commitments and expectations
If you too are in the depths of transformation, you know that something is definitely shifting through all of our collective dimensions.
As the re-calibration takes place, I find the happiness associated with DOING the stuff I used to DO isn’t working quite as well as it used too.
My soul is asking me to BE my desires (not to ‘do’ my desires).
And there is a big difference. Because when my desires are outside me, in the doing of something, my desires becomes external. Happiness becomes dependent on conditions that surround me.
When my desire is outside me, it’s controlled by accomplishment and ego.
As I surrender I am being called to BE my desires. To BE more soul.
Yet at this point I was feeling, frustrated, heavy, yuck, ready to snap at my man, unfulfilled, sad. Mostly I felt sad.
By this stage I was thinking if I could take it all back and un-choose this path I might.
But I can’t.
Because once we start consciously journeying into our soul there is no turning back. Although we can’t always see it – the light ahead is too bright, too brightly beautiful for us to ignore. Something within compels us to move forward, towards it.
“I can’t go back to yesterday because I was a different person then”
— Alice in Wonderland
THE PROCESS OF TRANSFORMATION
I’ve come to see the process of transformation doesn’t happen overnight. It’s a journey.
My transformation was, and is, asking me to surrender – To hand it all over to my soul. He can make the calls.
He can steer this ship.
My ego has had the rains for far too long and she’s got me exactly here. Half way between Ego + Soul.
In the middle of nothing.
And this is why it feels so crap, why I’m lazy, and flat.
I am OPENING into an EXPANDED way of being.
I am OPENING to more soul. And more. And more.
And it’s almost like jumping off a cliff. We take the leap, we are ready to fall, and for a few moments – we are suspended – without momentum, as we leap OFF and we are IN IT. Neither here nor there.
Neither in the old, or arrived at the new.
It’s like our body goes through this stage of laying it all out. Everything becomes amplified. The habits. The pain. The sadness.
Everything is amplified so that we are FORCED to breathe through it.
BREATHE.
BREATHE.
BREATHE. That is all it takes to move through.
Always I want some complicated solution. Some deep and meaningful spiritual explanation. But the answer is breath. So simple my ego cannot grab hold of it.
In this half-way-state-of-transformation my ego whispers get a new job, change jobs, escape to another location, blame your man, hide, spend, eat. Anything. I want to do anything to make this pain, this pain of expansion, dissipate. I want to run.
But breathe.
Come back into my self.
It hurts to hold on.
I’d never surrendered like this before – completely to transformation.
And I found myself holding on for dear life instead of letting go.
I know the holding on makes no sense.
I don’t consciously want to do it.
But it’s not a conscious choice. Anxiety, fear, limitations, doubt. Consciously I don’t choose any of these things. Yet they are within me. Deep within my nervous system.
And until this point, right now, these programs served me well.
They kept my species safe, they helped me make sense of my world. They created who I am today, for which I am so grateful.
Yet as I ask myself to soften deeper and deeper in a soul-led life. Handing over my business decisions, my decision in love, and finance, and friendship – I was asking my ego to surrender in a way She had never known before.
She, my ego, was scared. She was frustrated. She was holding on for dear life.
Because her life was on the line. She was right to be scared. My journey into soul will cause her many small deaths.
This space between surrendering from Ego to Soul is THE VOID.
What I knew is no longer true. What I welcome in has not yet arrived.
This is where my devotion is put to the test. Will I recommit to the surrender over and over again? Will I allow my nervous system to settle and re-calibrate to this new expansive possibility? Will I lose myself in the process?
My inner desire to get ‘there’ (inner achiever – ego) had to let go too.
So I find myself withdrawing and creating space in my life.
Stuff drops away – part of me feels guilt, part of me feels fat.
Part of me knows that if deep real life transformation is to happen the SPACE for that transformation needs to be created in my physical world.
And so my yoga becomes less active and more passive. I rest in the poses, I open. I gain a kilo or two.
I see so many new projects I could start – a workshop, this friendship, travel, writing. There is so much that pops up for me to get busy with.
And yet at each point I calibrate to my soul.
What does She say about this project? She says STAY. Don’t move forward.
Not yet. There is more here to unfold.
From the outside it looks lazy. My partner tells me perhaps you need to ‘get real’. But I don’t know anything MORE REAL than softening into this void right now.
I desire it so strongly.
It feels like crap.
I detest it beyond words.
I know something amazing is happening…
Otherwise I wouldn’t feel simultaneously so lost and so safe.
So what do we do? How do we surrender?
There is nothing for it but to BE in it. This too is part of the soul, and it asks us again and again just to BE.
Breath. Keep devoting to you soul – keep asking – what would you have me do?
Stay. Stay.
I’ll be here staying with you sister.
PS. A few tips for things that do work:
- Connect with women going through the same – The Embodied Woman Facebook group is a private, free + supportive space for exactly that.
- Gratitude
- Nature
- Give generously to others where you can
- Don’t start anything new, don’t commit (if it’s not a fuck yes it’s a hell no)
