"Every missed step is a step closer...there are no mistakes"
Moving cross country has humbled and challenged me in a way I never would have imagined. Being in a place where you have nothing to relate to strips you to your rawest core. In the absence of the aspects of life that once gave me comfort I am forced to confront everything that I feel about myself. I am beginning to witness that as I seek to see things about my old environment in my new environment what I am actually doing is seeking some sort of comfort or security tied the past. Thus, to some degree, I am rejecting the present moment.When I lived in New York everything was familiar to me. Every street, every skyline, every person seemed familiar to me, even if I did not know them. I was apart of the community. For heavens sakes I had grown up there, my family and friends were there. I felt rooted in the knowing of familiarity. Yet here now, in the absence of everything I know I am forced to deal with myself in the absence of all of those psychological comforts. It is humbling to witness how engrained thoughts, thoughts that I believed supported me and gave me a sense of self-worth, are actually debilitating me in this new experience.
My ego is scrambling to find some sense of familiarity. It is producing all these sorts of automatic thoughts within me in attempts to create the situation it was used to. In a way my ego wants me to be miserable here so that the ego can find itself back in New York where it believes all is familiar and comfortable. But oh, how little does my ego want to remember how unsatisfied I was in New York. And how short sighted is my ego when it feels it wants to recreate the past, something that is known and familiar, to satiate its desire for comfort.
The ego wants so much, but what it wants more than anything is a re-creation of the past. It knows that in the past it existed, and in my case I existed without much trouble. It seems as if the ego has created this sort of addiction within me to make sure that I know that "everything will be fine." Yet, in the present moment, the only one true moment, "fine" becomes an experience, not something to psychologically hold onto. Maybe if I can get out of my head I can realize that everything is fine no matter where I am or what is going on. My higher self knows that it does not need any re-creation of the past in order to feel safe. Peace and contentment are here now...if I can only get out of my way and fully surrender to this moment without hoping for something contrary to what is happening all around me.
I now know that I came to a new place to confront everything within me that has been hidden from me. In moving here it was not my conscious intention to go through this process, but I believe the universe and my higher self knew this all along. This is my faith talking. And although it may feel as if I have taken steps backward, because not everything is all peaches and happiness, I know that I have taken the right steps. Because from here I am forced to deal with myself in a way that I never would have been able to in New York, where everything was "known."
In actuality nothing was ever "known" in New York. That was the illusion that temporality placated the ego while a deepening sense of dissatisfaction was brewing with me. This deep sense of dissatisfaction arouse out of the sense that my immersion into the known, into the familiar, and into the perception of what I thought I was all about actually pushed me further and further away from my real self.
I still know I have a lot to experience and learn here. A lot to witness within myself and a lot to shed...but one thing that is helping me deal with uneasy emotions is to ask myself ..."does this feeling arise from spirit...the aspect of self that will propel me to contentment and self-knowledge, or does this feeling arise from the ego...the sense of self that wants what is actually not present? This is a very humbling question for me because I realize that I am not as "evolved" as I thought I may have been. In this relative world I then praise myself for being humble and for feeling what may not feel so good.
The more I reject this present moment the more misery I create within myself. The more I step into the now the more liberated and content I become. So I must choose...and remind myself...that no matter where I am, all is in right order...
So the next step is simple...yet not so easy... How will I create this moment of now? Will I choose to live in faith and know that all that is before me is in perfect order, blessing me with the experiences that will enhance my growth as a person...
OR
Will I live in fear in the debilitating effort to defend myself from a life that I feel has not been fair to me...
The latter has us chasing the illusion we create in our minds while the former grounds us in the only thing that is real...the divine beauty of the now...
The power to choose is mine [as well as yours]...
