Notes on enjoying our own being on the inward journey.
THERE’S A FREE SELF THAT EXISTS ON THE OTHER SIDE OF YOUR CONDITIONED THOUGHTS + FEELINGS
During April, I turned 41. It was obvious to me that this birthday wasn’t about fanfare, fun and frolics that last year’s fortieth world tour provided me.
Despite the attempts of several of my friends and family wanting to ‘do’ something, I was called to be alone.
As I checked out spots in the mountains via Airbnb, there were a few moments of hesitation: What if something happened to me? What if it wasn’t all ok? Like if I break down, then what?
I recall having these same thoughts when I first left for India, first arrived to the ashram, first left for Australia…in fact if I tried to remember back, there really was never a first time of anything that didn’t have the peppering of this style of thinking.
I observed it. There was a felt sense in the body. The words and lines of story in mind. I was feeling about my thinking, and thinking about my feeling. Within the realms of ‘Meta-Coaching’ (one of the styles of coaching that I qualified in and have practised for over four years now), this is known as ‘meta-stating’.
‘Meta’ means above and about. A ‘state’ is a mind-body emotional field – quite literally, a way of vibrating. So a ‘meta-state’ is a vibration above and about reality. When we meta-state, we are not WITH reality, but ABOUT reality.
Our stories in mind are never with reality. They can’t be, they are stories, impressions of something that used to be, possibilities of things in that may come to pass in the future.
Meta-coaching provided me a pathway to being objective to my own patterns of thinking, and therefore feeling. It offered me a sense of what was possible, a different way of living, by being objective and then learning how to clear. I even started to notice fear in letting go of fear, it was so wired in!
The real joy is that our styles of thinking are learnt. What is learnt, can be unlearnt. When we unlearn what isn’t serving us, we locate freedom to choose how we show up.
If I had listened to that voice in mind, believed it to be true; if I hadn’t learnt the means to clear it, there is every chance I would have missed this opportunity to be in one of the most beautiful and unspoilt lands in the world. In place of fear, there was only trust.
I spent the entire weekend with and in reality, in nature, almost entirely alone on every hike, listening to the sounds of wilderness. It was my first birthday totally alone, and it was bloomin’ marvellous. Something tells me I’ll do it again.
Freedom lives on the other side of my/our/your conditioning, past the layers of habituated thinking and feeling that we’ve believed to be the truth for way too long. Usually there is a requirement to get comfortable with discomfort as we learn to clear them.
And so my question to you is: How and where are you limiting your self, day to day, moment by moment?
With love,
X Nathan
