What habits can you let go of?

What are some of the habits that you would want to let go of? 

I had some answers to this rise up in my mind and few of them being:

1. To let go overthinking and giving into imaginative fears and fantasies

2. To forgive oneself time and again for (the amount of prioritization of others and limiting one's idea of what life, living, exploring life, interests, likeable activities etc means to oneself and in short) seeking validation from others at the cost of self minimization.

3. For getting stuck overanalyzing in proving I am right in my mind and repressing my true feelings and opinions whenever I had to express and thus self invalidating as a result.

4. For believing the fears of my parent and caretakers and absorbing them as my emotional template.

5. To keep creating the need for emotional blocks (unconsciously) so that I keep getting stuck in analyzing them and not fully feeling and expressing and releasing them.

 6. To let go living in my mind and to focus on expanding consciousness and awareness (which is why I have been able to sum up all these in a list form) and just simply sit through meditations as much silently as possible without too much mind chatter.

To let go these old patterns and to be fluid with the flow of life means to release my fears in holding onto them as way of habit. Expecting great results with not so great habits is the truth of the matter and realizing all these truths about oneself is the start to recreating oneself slowly one day at a time.

Healing all these patterns without overanalyzing the stuck aspects of these habits is a start to being kind to oneself. 

Anyone can be a critic but mindful awareness, silence, and sensitivity to one's feelings, one's ways of being and habits, (no matter how redundant or toxic they may have become, but owning upto them) and releasing them to the universe and working towards healthy habits is self acceptance from a newer perspective.

The joy of being (true to) ourselves

 Being yourself is a lot easier when you have all the layers covering you and you feel you can safely hide in them. Being true to unraveling all the layers is being true to your vulnerability that made you want to hide in the first place and why. Maybe there is no straight answer why but hiding your pain, emotional (even if you are physically hurt, it's your emotions that take a lot longer to heal) mostly is to safeguard the authentic juice or essence of being oneself and stay away from acknowledging it. Numbing this acknowledgement or repressing becomes a habit owing to having to cope up with the emotional/physical abuse and not letting it out for fear of being perceived as weak. 

And so not feeling safe enough to be your natural self and even before understanding what that could be, the amount of trust we place on others opinions of us becomes our conditioning that we levy on ourselves as if we tune into proving to others from then on, even from childhood days, that others are right at the cost of feeling all messed up from inside - it's like suspending our belief in ourselves in order to enable their judgements, no matter how criticism oriented it could be or how emotionally immature or insensitive or toxic it could be, but just plainly second guessing ourselves over and over just to give the benefit of doubt because they are family and that they will not mean any harm or belittle, compare, guilt us for no real fault of ours, but they do, and make us silent empathizers by practice - by making us practice as we unconsciously start doing so from a very young age and start assuming that we will never be as good as they want us to be and so to hide this pain that it's better to be adjustable with limiting ourselves, absorbing their energies and mood swings completely and not have any room, any space within us that we can call is for ourselves and completely dishonor boundary setting for ourselves as that thought of setting boundaries doesn't even arise let alone express the need for it. The abuser's toxic becomes part of us as we take comfort in the darkness of such a misguided and lost reality - the reality that we are important as well and that our needs, wants, feelings and so on need to be prioritized and even if it happens later in later, it's still worth it because at least then we will know the real pain of not knowing ourselves enough and not being kind enough with ourselves as we individually deserve that irrespective of what others think.

The stories we tell ourselves just to make ourselves feel more accepted in the lives of others is the most emotional wounding that we continue to sustain and live with and not even feel the extent of numbness that has layered like moss on stagnant waters. 

And so to come out of this cave, this self imposed isolation owing to abandoning ourselves for the need of circumstances needs to be relooked into. Darkness can make us turn away as there's nothing much that we can discover in the absence of light, but continuing to deepen our search that we will find our true self lurking in the deep crevices of the cave is a flickering hope to hold onto. Broken we maybe upon finding pieces of our true selves scattered without a linear thread of meaning and purpose behind it, but it's the fractured pieces if we own up to and acknowledge their presence in us despite the brokenness, then we make way to return to our true self with total integrity. Because it's not the gaining what we have lost and how much we have lost ourselves that matters, it's the letting go what we cannot fix anymore or what we cannot control anymore, and simply accepting over and over until we learn to hear our own painful truths with courage and equally kindness that we are really worth all the time to self explore and go in this inner journey to reclaim the joy of being ourselves.

Focus on surrendering to God

 Focusing on lack in my life has been my primary focus and mental conditioning - by doing this I believed that I was good enough for my mother's care for me as she obsessed on taking care of me when I got sick physically, and not wanting to take responsibility for maintaining good physical health discipline which came with with a healthy mind backup and since my back up was based on lack, I just did a formality of self care while giving away all my power of self accountability and living life to my best possible levels into others hands (her hands more or less).

To let go this habit and to move away from the confines of others devised self care for me and to trust myself fully to exercise in strengthening self beliefs took a lot of effort and a lot of letting go of old loops of patterns of thinking which was so absorbed in focusing on my lack and limitations. I probably would have started on that habit wrongly assuming that by focusing overly on them and taking whatever help I got for fixing my physical health issues was somehow enough to justify self care. 

Fear got the better of me as letting go this focusing on lack was so much my second nature and to surrender this fear, and all the layers that make the fear or fears what it is was harder than just the lip service surrender to God that I would think and visualize about but had not quite gotten the feel of it.

So, is this another form of dependency on others and disguised in the name of God? The one thing that stands out in this form of surrender and not blind/numb dependency on others is the feeling of freedom that I feel and have all the awareness of my true feelings and emotions returning back to me through release of this fear of letting go and such limiting beliefs that had kept me imprisoned within myself. It feels as if I don't have to worry about what would happen in future because the feeling of being aligned to this freedom from past ruminating fears gives me more space to explore what I can really do without any limitations or lack thoughts holding me back.

I still have not figured out what to do but it does feel like a weight is lifted off my chest and that I don't have to feel like an emotional cripple who is bound to her own fears and now has found a way to come out of it through Lord Muruga's grace which helps me walk to Him with whatever strength that I have for the rest of my living days. I know there's a long way to go in terms of walking the faith each and every day but with His blessings this blessed life, my blessed life seems to have found a purpose  broadly speaking - to surrender all my worries and fears to him and to flow with ease no matter what be the waves of challenges. In His ocean of love, everything is fair and unconditional. 

I don't need to keep living my previous mental conditioning anymore and that's like a new lease of life. Because I grew so tired sustaining this adapting to limitations mindset that I had gotten away from my true self (which I am still getting to know) and from knowing Muruga from close quarters. To belong right back in my life navigation map feels like I can take control of my life and travel with awaareness ahead. With Lord Muruga by my side and within my heart, I don't quite feel so alone like I need to do all this life by myself. 

It's so crucial to get a support system, a family or family member of friends to get to trust you unconditionally and not out of sympathy or obligation, and this source of connect with my true self I draw on as I walk inwards into my inner journey with truth and courage and perseverance is the most validation that I can think of for myself, and this inner journey could not have been possible without Lord Muruga showing me the light wherever it might have been needed. 

And so surrendering to God/Lord Muruga is strengthening my inner ability to heal myself emotionally and physically taking one day at a time. It need not occur when you really need something to manifest but as a form of unearthing your core nature that has been buried under all the years of fears and worries. Therefore Muruga has helped me wake up to see all these truths and to embrace myself fully and kindly and to trust Him which I discovered through my inner journeying is much above trusting any other family member or friend. 

This path of broken expectations from myself, from my family members, friends have all come together to bind my surrender to Him not as a way to escape reality but to face reality accepting it for what it is and letting go expectations for people to be this and that and also including expecting a lot from myself which has gotten eased a bit.

Acknowledge your brokenness

I would feel lost a kid in the joint family crowd that I used to live in - it didn't feel like family but as crowd for lack of better words and people sticking it out together through sheer tolerance and adjustments, and they become our conditioning. While the younger people did that more, the elders got to live their emotional immaturity and to survive this without lashing out at elders felt more hypocritical and far from being honest. All this to just stick it out as one huge family with all the broken people coming together to live in it!!

I am thankful for this in a way because even if my emotional maturity bloomed late, but I got to learn the lesson that in order to be respected as elders you need to start young - you need to work on respecting yourself and not expect it from others - validation from others is not respect and neither is fearful obedience to elders...what's the use of such respect anyway? 

Self motivation became my gradual go to after I have given up waiting on my mother who didn't know how to read my repressed silence, my difficulties with expressing myself and just wanted to focus only on my physical/material upbringing. I wish I had gone to self motivation not because there was no other choice. And exercising that overly stressed me a lot and felt fake to want to appear as if nothing has happened beneath the cracked surface within. But I would rather seem alright than weak and just followed the ego as it made me feel better if not feeling true to myself. And this contradiction kept me limited to knowing what I truly connect to or what do I really desire and so on. 

Ego is not one's life energy but it's sad if one is driven by that more than real self love and self belief.

I can't make the past all alright but by realizing this that it was broken and it lacked the guidance and direction from an elder no matter whoever it is allows me to make peace with the imperfections of life - that life is full and complete in itself and it's what we make of it that adds meaning or pushes us to seek some sense of purpose to our life. 

That people are broken and they need a sense of family to make them feel wanted, respected and so on is an undeniable truth. It's this feeling of real family that I had wanted to belong to and not just the number of members who maybe present in a house. A feeling of being at home is when you are secure with yourself and with how many ever members there maybe with you also adds its charm. And to feel secure with yourself from an early age needs a bit of trust from those who are present in the family - that she is more than just a bunch of physical ailments and that she has a world and hope and feelings and voice of her own. 

I was like the fallen star that everyone in the house wished the best for but with an air of despair and I just kept falling quietly and crashed in my heart's darkness again and again. To rise self motivated was my pursuit for happiness and feeling so empty just accompanied me no matter what I achieved..in repressing my feelings habitually from childhood I just learnt to give up on myself as some sort of reflection of others projected on me and I was quite at the edge of the mountain time and again, as if someone's validation outside of me will keep my self belief alive. 

To feel like you are emotionally dead or dysfunctional is like committing suicide when you are still alive and people in your family hardly notice that - as long as you are physically moving around, that's enough for them. 

To experience numbness for a long time was not part of my agenda, but to become defensive about it added more pain, more numbness than what I could hold in my heart. It's this outburst of pain, of longing to be understood, to express authentically without any fear of consequences, of what others would think, of how they would judge me or validate me that makes my voice what it is - to hear what I am truly feeling and acknowledge it simply and quietly is the best form of self expression. 

I am feeling alive for the past few years now and to feel all this pain, all this numbness that I went through as if it was some sort of rite of passage to get out from all the self imposed walls and ignorance makes me feel more sad but grateful that I am blessed with this life to experience all this as part of my life and not an entire life gone in vain if I were to realize all this at a later stage.

Ego vs Self prioritization

 Inner journey and self prioritization are two important aspects of spiritual growth. It's a process to give permission to your spirit to be free to express itself no matter what the individual ego, illusion, and struggles through ignorance maybe. Fear of letting go all these is what makes one's surrender to a higher energy or God harder - the amount of pressure or stress that the old conditioning(s) can ruminate within the body and create layers of blocks that make focusing on one's reality a big effort is self negation, self harm in unconscious ways. 

Ego weighs heavily from within as if its importance needs to be felt no matter what be the changes in reality and demands to meet them from time to time. Surrendering to ego then becomes an easier option as if there's nothing better expected from us and so ego then gains control of one's life inching its manipulative ways through early mental conditioning and family culture. Whether when one is alone or within the presence of family or friends, ego needs to be present there too, almost all the time. 

Individuation is a critical aspect to evolution but whether we survive as real humans or stay stuck in egoistic personality designs is the question. If it is the latter, then that pattern wants to stay embedded and suck the life energy into growing its maladaptive and shape shifting structures which unfortunately is what becomes of the creator given life - we keep creating more space for allowing ego to control our lives and become more and more blind to God within us while searching for God outside to fulfill this imbalance from within that we are responsible for. 

Being true to our ego is what we learn and relearn and letting go ego or releasing clamped emotional responses and mental conditionings becomes anti nature or it feels like something is shifting in us and we want to go back to feeling what we felt before letting go holding onto ego so much.

This anxiety, this self made stress is again a crucial stage in spiritual growth and is a slight maturation from the dense feeling of mind fog. This movement, this jangling of our nerves continues until we release all those fearful feelings and letting ourselves out from the darkness that we put ourselves into - it's a new birthing of sorts as baby steps, slowly and steadily, and picking oneself up over and over is the basic effort from our end. It's here that we need to open ourselves up and let out all the stuck stuff to God and truly surrender to the peace and calm of non thinking, non analyzing and just stay as a quiet observer as we become tools to God's handiwork when He takes over and when as humans we think we have tried our level best and simply give the power over to His grace and time through which he threads our life's knots out from the dark karmic holes. We don't become lifeless, instead we are reminded about our core energy and life purpose from every breath which gets woven through His design for our transformative lives. In essence we are both the damaged goods and also the recreated ones.

It's difficult to hear anything except our thoughts (we all know) but our thoughts don't run our lives but it's us who run behind our ceaseless, restless thoughts and feel drained out of energy. After all thoughts need energy to thrive within us and the more we feed them that, the more they colonize our awareness and consciousness. And what is awareness? It's a realization to be aware that we don't need so many thoughts to bridge our ideas with our reality and all those intermediary worries, anxieties to get our ideas or self expression out is just that - just simply anxiety and worry for not being our highest selves at a given time and personalizing this as my worry and my anxiety makes it egoistic and complicated and layered. 

We owe ourselves this much mindfulness that we become slowly aware of what we are thinking and why we think the way we think. The best part about this stage is that typical responses, typical emotional reactions from others don't get stuck on us anymore as this slight detachment from ego makes us loosen up even in the way we have perceived all these reactions all along and we begin to observe more deeply our own responses and ruminations and all the shelf life that we have given for so long.

Self forgiveness truly is a hard thing to do but it's much better than lack of self prioritization.

This calm after the storm is an empty space - something has gotten cleaned up from within and there feels no need to go back to reliving the hurts and anger and fear - this power to be free, to express my true voice from within is an acknowledgement of this state of life. I do feel tired but it was worth it as this insidious battle with myself within myself had to end some time. 

I don't know about new beginnings but it's better late than never and inner journeying is the way to enjoy this travel.

Goddess Bala - the heart of the inner child

Goddess Bala Tripurasundari is an embodiment of one's inner child. The deeper the emotional wounds coming from the inner child, the more harder it is for the person to grow up from within. Goddess Bala as she is fondly called by her devotees teaches one to go to these places in one's heart and open up the numbed feelings, neglected hurts, blocked up tears and nudges us playfully to release them and invites herself in going by how pure, how sincere is the seeker's heart to bear it all to allow her to wipe them clean. She strengthens the root in us, the root that makes the person who he/she is, and for that she needs the complete truth, even at the cost of feeling fully naked and really vulnerable like a child from deep within - no filters, no superficialities, just plain innocent truth is all she wants and to simply surrender without any doubts just like how a child instantly trusts his/her parent/caretaker to guide or take care when in fear, pain, or hurt.

It's this childlike trust that she connects to as she can easily see through the many layers that prevents one from admitting to one's flawed conditioning and unhealthy patterns of thinking and behaving that starts from quite an early stage of one's life. She begins from the start and when she does, she becomes a playmate, a reminder to not get bogged down by life's current situations and past dense emotional wounds and hurts, but to accept the present for what it is. Goddess Bala teaches you, if you allow her to, to actually grow up once again.

She is radiant divinity and endearing smile and purity clothed in beautiful clothes and adornments that befit a girl child. She is the deepest yearning come true for the childless, she is the gentle mother for an emotionally hurt inner child, and she is a joy to grow old with.

In a sense, Goddess Bala adopts us irrespective of whether we have a child or otherwise and is truly the 'Child is the father/mother of the man.'