BE PATIENT WITH YOUR MIND
Working on yourself to heal and do better is like taking inventory. You first work with what you already know. Layers like onions, peeling back one at a time in a non attached, curious, patient way. Because when you meet a layer you didn’t know about, you treat it with kindness, investigate it, figure out the best way to unravel, how to set that part free.
As I’m finding, the more you get in touch with what’s happening in your internal body, when you notice itchy hot uncomfortable feelings, they can be signs. Scavenger hunt clues to the next direction, the next layer.
The careful thing is to follow the heart clues, not the mind tricks. Our mind is not who we are. And if we can move breath into the heart space, time and time again, it loosens up the mind.
A deep desire to change is like going into battle with yourself. Because when you heal you, it spreads outwards, spokes radiating on a wheel.
Maybe the onion is like a video game- you redo a level a few times, but then you master it, know what it takes to peel off the layer in one slow piece. Maybe it comes in the form of speaking up when you previously would have kept quiet, or maybe it's taking a pause, strength in listening. This may be uncomfortable, training new untravelled pathways, but it can be the path of reclaimment.
If we imagine it like spokes on a bike wheel. The center is your heart-mind space, where you’re working from. When we make changes from the center, moving from one spoke to the next, it doesn’t feel like progress or look like much distance has been covered. But the effects of these small incremental changes are what's at the end of each spoke. So if you master a few spokes at the center internally, when you follow them out, test what you’ve been working on, it can have really big external movement. The circumference distance is significant, it just doesn’t look like it from the center mind-heart space.
Looking at emotional triggers as clues, to follow them like waves, show us what still needs breath. I think this is one of the most powerful ways to change. Getting curious, an investigation, learning to unwrap with patience, kindness and affection.
Image from Melody Hansen @THEMELODYH