Do What You Love

.....Whatever satisfies the soul is truth.....

So what satisfies my soul? What do I need to re-examine? What is my truth? I've been struggling with these internal questions for months, evaluating each nuance of every possible answer. And I've been trying to do more listening than talking throughout the entire process. What I keep hearing is: eliminate the chaos & embrace the obvious. Random, right? But meditation after meditation has resulted in this message.

While my life, in comparison to previous years, is by no means chaotic, there are things (and people) that I have been holding on to for no particular reason other than sometimes it is harder to let them go than it is to keep them with you. This month has been an emotional cleanse of sorts for me, coinciding to a series of eclipses this spring. Normally I don’t pay much attention to astrological things like eclipses, but with the flood of emotion that I have been experiencing this month, reading things like “eclipses inspire looking at soul sickness, toxic people and atmospheres, and negative controls of all kinds” one is really forced to sit up and take notice.

Sadly, this process has included eliminating more people than things and it has weighed heavily on my heart. Realizing that you don't mean as much to someone as they do to you can really do that to a person. But by definition, doesn't that make the very relationship toxic? It feels toxic when you're in the trenches experiencing it. It even looks toxic now that I'm on the outside looking in. And because I feel attached to someone/something that doesn't reciprocate the same feelings, it acts as a negative control in my life, making me feel guilt where there is no need for guilt.

So right now, I am really putting faith in the idea that what appears to be lost or leaving your life is really just the Universe's way of creating a path for something new to emerge. Sometimes things have to fall apart so they can fall into place.

Since this process has forced me to look at the things in which I invest the most amounts of time and energy, I feel as though there will be some major changes that will be happening for me over the next few months. The answers that have been surfacing lately remind me of my 3 year-old nephew's response when I gave him chicken nuggets for dinner instead of his absolute favorite food - cheese sandwiches.

"This isn't my favorite thing."

Leave it to a 3 year old to school a 33 year old on how to live their life. The things that I invest the most amount of my time or energy in are simply not my favorite things to do. I think this is where the Embrace the Obvious part of my meditations comes into play. Do what you love. So what do I love to do?

Travel: This answer is easy. When I was little, my sister and I spent almost every day during the summer "exploring" - which really just meant packing a lunch and wandering around my Great-Grandfather's farm. We had our favorite spots that we always visited (like the railroad tracks and the well on Ruth Clarke's property - we were country kids in every sense of the word) but we were always looking for new destinations, which required a certain amount of bravery since there was always the risk of running into a badger. Our motto for that scenario was to 'run like hell.' Now that I am older, my approach to travel is the same. I have spots that I absolutely love travelling to whether it is because I love the area or people who live in the area. But I also enjoy traveling to places that I have never been and exploring things that I am not familiar with. The motto about the badger encounter also still applies.

Write: This is one of my greatest passions, despite the fact that it is something that I have only recently embraced. I have journal after journal from my younger years full of meandering thoughts and reckless rants. They have been hidden in boxes that I have dragged through every move of my adult life. A few months ago, while rearranging my living room, I opened the boxes and found the journals, like little treasures from my past. That's when it hit me that I have always been a writer. Not a novelist or anything official like that, but I have always turned to writing to help me through experiences in my life - good or bad. So, that day, I chose to embrace my passion for writing. I have displayed my journals on the bookshelves in my living room amongst the great authors that I enjoy so much. I have also recently purchased a typewriter and have been in absolute, utter bliss listening to the plunking of the keys as I type away all my random thoughts. There's a solitude that is required when I write that I enjoy very much. It's the part of writing that involves sharing your work where I struggle. Like the badgers in my explorations, I have run like hell from that important step. But it's becoming something that I continue to push. This blog is helping to do that.

The obvious answer is that I should write a travel blog which would combine my love of travel and writing into one amazing dream job. Yes, please. How does one get into that? Because I will promptly quit my job, reduce my belongings into what will fit into a suitcase and start living the dream. For real.

Namaste

My horoscopes for the past few days have warned me to "react with kindness", "don't make any accusations", and "immerse yourself in the moment of growth and progress". All of them have been spot on in preparation for this week.

In the past, I have pre-selected the way I would react to certain people or certain situations. My ex, for example. If she attempted to contact me, my mind went to the script labeled "go to hell" and began reciting the dialogue without much thought about if my feelings now corresponded to what I was saying. In general, what was coming out of my mouth never really matched how I felt inside at that moment. It reflected something that happened years ago that I internalized and couldn't communicate until now.

When I started using "namaste" (meaning the divine light in me honors the divine light in you) as my initial internal greeting for people or my reaction to someone's attempt to interact with me, including non-face-to-face communications, I noticed that my pre-selected reactions to people were immediately thrown out the window and I began an organic conversation with that person based on how I really felt in the moment. This is a huge development for me. And because what I'm feeling on the inside is being accurately reflected on the outside, there's no longer any internal confusion for me about where I really stand on certain issues or with certain people. My reaction is now the purest reflection of who I really am.

So I took the advice of a daily horoscope app on my phone, and reacted with kindness when I received another round of emails from my ex this weekend. I didn't fall into that routine of ignoring her completely or responding with "I hate your stinking guts" or "you're dead to me" or "remember that one time you did that one thing and it ruined my entire life and now I'm so bitter about it even after 10 years?" - all of which are versions of the "go to hell" scripts I mentioned earlier. None of which reflect how I feel about her today. The truth is that while I'm not really that fond of how she treated me while we were together, I don't really hate her either. If I had never met her, I would have also never met Michele, Jeannie, Joe or Danielle - 4 of my very best friends in the whole world. And I would have never had the need to come back home to Utah and repair my relationships with my family, namely my sister Amber, and I would have never become close friends with my new family members, Kim & Ryan. Did those relationships come at a very high price for me personally? Sure. It broke me to the core. But I think that even knowing how the relationship with my ex would have ended in advance, I still would have chose to endure it for the simple fact that I would also be blessed with those friendships/family in the end.

I'm not the same person I was then. And I've acknowledged those emotions associated with my relationship with her, and then subsequently let them go. Not bitterly, but gently - giving respect to a significant chunk of my life. So why set myself back all that hard work I have done all these years by choosing to react with pre-selected emotions towards someone that is not relevant to my life now? It is counter-productive to what I'm trying to accomplish. And it's not an accurate reflection of the person I have worked so hard to become.

So, namaste, Holly. I honor the light in you and thank you for what you brought into my life. I acknowledge what our relationship taught me and how it has helped me to become a better person today. And I thank you for what your presence has brought into my life in the form of my friends/family. Because without them, I wouldn't be where I am today. I also acknowledge the choices I have made to change my internal belief system and the decisions I have made to promote my own growth.

And, to all of you friends who have become family and family who have become friends, I thank you for standing by me on this incredible journey. You have been my rock when I needed to be grounded and at the same time my wings when I needed to fly. You reflect the best in me. And I love each of you dearly.

Namaste.

-Mande