Shadows need to dance with light,
"Step up and make a move," the light whispered, "or you can't enjoy this beautiful sight."
Fear, guilt, sadness, anger, laziness, had seemed to weave a tight knit layered carpet,
Hiding in the designs of life and projecting their mirage, a hustling market.
The light waited and waited long to embrace her darker self,
They were both one and met half way to face each other, dancing to the tunes of love thyself.
The inner child has been in hiding for long,
Too shy to come out to play with the world and make connections strong.
Her parents traumas bound her to be enclosed in layers within,
But things got harder to hide as her suppressed feelings came out true and seething.
She had to wear various masks to not reveal her true self,
Some she was made to wear while some she fit herself into, piling lies in her heart's corner shelf.
Shadows of self doubts, fears, anxieties cast on them, reality blurring in true sight,
Projections are not for real, the inner child grew up to see,
No need of masks or others approvals to witness her inner light, her heart rejoiced, finally free.
I don't have to keep up being a victim. My body is not a storehouse of others projections of their criticisms, worries and patterns. I allow myself to be free from this vicious cycle of wanting to fix some aspect of my health or the other with medicines because self care, self love and resilience goes a long way in helping myself. I understand that my sensitivity in overall body might have also triggered various health conditions sometimes one after the other or in quick succession or whatever is the pattern that my body has behaved so far. But overdosing my body with medicines has been a self sabotaging practice that I have done by picking up this pattern from my mother who feels like a victim and who tries to fix whatever part of her that's ailing through medicines(owing to lot of emotional neglect from her family) and has passed it on to me as a pattern as I unconsciously had absorbed it from her.
It's like I don't have enough trust in my body's ability to heal itself and so have to give that power over to someone else like my mother or the doctor who may know better and feel like even small issues that could have gotten fixed through certain awareness and mindfulness, cannot be taken up by me as I felt completely powerless in body, in mind, in spirit while manifesting this unconsciously right from an early age.
Now that this pattern has come to my light, I feel like what my mother feeds me is what I am trying to feed her back - as in how she had raised me on medicines is how she wants to be tended to that is via medicines.
I lost trust in my body and its ability to heal itself not because I was sensitive, but because I thought as I was told that I am a victim and so labeled myself a victim for life as I had assumed myself to be until today, and so will keep needing medicines one way or another as if I had signed up for this for all of my life.
When medicines and money are my mother's only cure, then there's only THAT I had gotten to receive from her and not acceptance of for who I am as I am as I had always deeply yearned to receive. And so this validation or rather invalidation (owing to her medicines) from her had deeply hurt me and had created a huge block in my head as if my body is some sort of unfixable, defective product that has to be constantly fixed and "pampered" with her standard of care which weakened my inner strength and resilience a lot and weakened my will to live to my standards whatever they be.
K dramas and now J dramas are what I am crushing on currently. It's such a teenagy feeling to watch young couples fight and find their contradicting personality differences and yet iron the creases with empathy, understanding, and typical mills and boon formula love. It's like you live in the clouds when you see stories gushing with making love possible despite mental health challenges and difficult parent/background issues which seem to be the flavor of how two people, hero and the heroine, meet each other half way through and find common pathways despite these conflicts to fall in love.
These dramas are like mild sweetened desserts which never go over the top sweet and yet make the viewers feel like they have been served the best recipe for happily ever after.
I live in such a fantasy myself and even if I am well past my 40's, the simple appeal of idealistic plots, honest communication, and simple yet layered characters who do their job well in the roles they play is a "I want to believe" vision to my sore eyes.
I wish our everyday lives were that beautiful, that sweet, or plain heartwarmingly simple and not be bothered by the burdens of the past. It's like I seem to live in a never ending tale of pleasant today when I am binging on specially romcom, or doctor/office romances, and the festive season magic adding its own year end charm in the kind of films other than shows the viewers gets to watch on.
2 eyes are not enough it seems!!
I am sick and tired of being told that others have it worse and that we are in a much better space because there's only space for just me singularly in my life and any shift in my perspectives in my mind is my responsibility and until then gearing this statement that others have it worse feels like people wish to cut short their listening of our problems and give a generic blanket statement for their lack of time and empathy.
In truth we are all equals as we are given a human life and no matter what be our sex, time on earth, religion, beliefs, goals and so on, we are here as souls in a human body and try and make do with what's given to us to our best knowledge and awareness and respond to life given to us to the best as we can.
Since we expect that our struggles should matter and that by comparing with others and sometimes devaluing their problems and putting ourselves up as the perfect martyrs, perfect victims and turning all obsessive, moody, judgy, cynical, critical and so on, we just buy ourselves the "gift" of staying immune to real growth which lies in acceptance of your problems as much as of others in equal spirit and not putting oneself down and minimizing one's struggles just to go along with the perfect martyr or victim, one way or another.
So, the projections don't work and neither does hiding oneself in shadows.
You owe yourself the right to hear your problems, your pain, your sadness out and give it all the space and processing and healing that it needs and do not wait on anyone to unburden it out for you and make you feel heard and reassured.
There's nothing worse not knowing the value of your struggles, your deeper reasons for putting up with others control and mood swings and your lack of awareness of where do you stand in your life, and your conjured images and dialogues about how valid you think you are in voicing your opinions, your assertiveness and staying in a loop of fake consciousness. And I am glad I have begun to understand the tip of this iceberg and as so many realizations melt away the blocks, it's a whole new sense of flow of my energy and perspectives.
My shadows have resisted my inner light and I have allowed for my real self to stay in darkness of my unconsciousness. I have waited for my darkness to go away as if I don't wish to take any responsibility for it and it's on others to understand or empathize and since I was "supposed to" empathize with my mother's mood swings, criticisms, frustrations, I got too tired to take responsibility for my own. Others taking control, involving themselves overly with my life and making me believe that I am powerless like the way my mother did has left a deep impact of self devaluation on me.
I am recovering from that "over protected" exhaustion and lack of motivation to get involved with my life and learning to embrace life with its unique challenges and also blessings. Because understanding the balance between our inner darkness and light is a beautiful and important step to make deeper connections with ourselves and there's no better or worse sense of connections that others make with themselves as honoring yourself, your journey, your life experiences matters a lot.
To want to stay involved in my life putting myself first and not seeking validation from anyone is my goal. Life has been really kind in giving me many an opportunity to get to do that but it truly came after not knowing how to do so and slowly finding a way through through my inner truth and a supreme energy's protection to see my journey through safely in every step of the way.
I used to think that by scoring better grades, being more beautiful, having better health, getting words of support from my mother, and being encouraged by my peers, landing the right job, having a kid and so on are all it takes to be on my life journey, but those were expectations too many and were not fully met with as it felt I could not meet my life half way through without all these coming to me to meet me the other half way. But the fact is that I am complete in myself as a creation of the supreme no matter what be my age, color, sex, caste, physical strength, mental health, material status and so on. I had stayed away from stepping on to the dais of my life waiting for the curtain to lift up from all these heavy, idealistic asks from others and kept living life by the sidelines as if I had deemed myself to do so.
What is truly within me shaping my life and giving me a core reason reason to live is not what I have gotten or how much I have lost, but how well connected am I with my honesty and sovereignty and that's been work in progress but something I have not lost sight of.
It's how closer I inch towards this all preserving, all pervading supreme energy, it's that fulfilling - as if my brokenness has meaning, my inner strength to survive through the old getting wiped off from my heart, and a newfound energy to embrace moment to moment and hopefully will reflect in future as the future is nothing but a beautifully connected set of todays happening and it's not a predictable loop like we make it to be, but a wave of highs and lows that we bring ourselves together to navigate and go with the flow.
Our ability to trust ourselves and our inner truths is a courageous act and holding on securely is the source of our roots and self growth.
We are here on earth for a short while. Our learnings are the real deal and not the drama we think we need in order to bypass the truths within us. Do we need this body in order to remember how hard this journey has been so far? I bet so many of us would agree that others too need to be reminded that we had tough lives and that it's our "responsibility" to make others aware of it. And this is where our loop of drama and stagnation starts - a cocoon of sorts protected by our ego in order to justify that this loop is our belief system and the self righteousness is means to stay stuck in it.
All the struggles that make us grow up in life are needed but if we are going to be "me, my pain" all the time, then we are bound to get stuck and even bored with having come all the way despite our hardships. Do we think to release these knots so that we can lighten up and create a newer space for growing or outgrowing our old beliefs? What old patterns collapse while our physical lives exist is in fact real manure to help our newer, evolved and updated modes of thought patterns to arise and navigate through our lives from a different perspective.
I thought being devalued by my mother was the only means to coexist with my mother as she is justified to throw her criticisms and anger out at me for being too sensitive in health. I let her walk all over my space hampering my space for individual growth. That amount of trespassing is injurious to one's emotional and mental health and there's no better way out than honoring and protecting my space for what it is.
Emotional abuse is not okay. Trespassing another's space is not okay and calling it protection is completely not okay. I needed protection from overprotection and giving up of my self confidence, self worth and believing in self doubts so much so as if I need that in order to adapt to my mother's criticisms.
You are enough by yourself. You don't need any validation of any kind from others to determine your self worth. My actual healing doesn't come from medicines, doctor visits, or regular checkups, but healthy, wholesome self belief that I am alright despite whatever comes my way and I am responsible for being alive and present to challenges in whatever shape or form that maybe. It's not over yet fully until you give up and also when life shuts down on you on your time of death. But until then life exists not just as a routine and compulsive habits to keep boredom at bay, but understanding through various seasons of time that we can give ourselves second chances for real and lasting change. And our ability to be kind through our efforts, falls, picking ourselves up slowly and learning to ask for help wherever needed are some means to manifest the second chances time and again.
And if you treat your life as seen through the eyes of others, then you won't be able to meet yourself in the eye. Your vision, your opinion, your beliefs, your need for changes, they all matter. You are worth it.
It's really important to acknowledge how far you have come post your traumatic phase so that you can acknowledge for yourself what's real at present and what's the past and not allow the past to intrude and have a say on your life now. It's a continuity of learning - your past, present, and future - it's just for linear understanding and boxing in our life experiences in terms of ego that we tend to want to get stuck with the victim mode and empower it with self pity and egoistically proclaim that our struggles during trauma is all there is.
It's the constant learning that counts and not how long we get stuck to our past. Because the past gets defined to our willing and liking in a narrative which suits our image and personality and projection on others as our truths, which maybe so, but reliving and criticizing others and devaluing others struggles or their traumas is not a takeaway to learn to grow to be a better human but an adapting to staying rigid and self righteous.
My learning is that I haven't acknowledged how far I have come in life and have played small and thought small about my efforts and staying "humble." Self confidence does not just appear because you read books or gain information from outside but the real efforts you take to know yourself and be kind and considerate while being at it. Because no one is perfect and life is simply life, not some "perfect" version of how we want to see it and keep complaining on how it isn't. Having realistic expectations from your life is key and this is an another real takeaway for me owing to the impatience I had harbored for long on my sensitive body, health, and conflicted mind and simply thought that the more I tolerate others criticisms on me and suppress my hurts, the more easier it is for me to process my life which was anything but that.
I need to set aside time for my health, for processing my feelings, for acknowledging my hurts and trauma, and also to release them as and when I will for to work through them and free myself off past set definitions and inner criticizing narratives which keeps me in the loop as a habit.
Trusting yourself with an open heart is a beautiful habit. Giving yourself second chances to learn from your mistakes, your blocks, and releasing the rigidities that you had walled them in habitually as hardened, suppressed feelings and emotions adds energy and path to your life flow.
Because the lessons we take home under our wings is how far we will get to go in the aftermath of our physical, breathing lives. This karmic mileage is the predecessor for our upcoming life experiences in whatever shape or form that be. Our past karmas in previous births are why we are here, but the choices, decisions, and thought process behind why we do and become what we become in this current stream of life determines if we could get to shift gears and steer a different course of life experiences, and need not wait on our physical death in order to get to nudge towards holistic change for our higher good (in whatever form or shape that is).
The putting our efforts backed up by good intentions is a huge green flag in order to do good by ourselves and irrespective of previous births and the consequences of the current one into the next, we can know only so much and do so much. And so, let's try our best to live our lives to the fullest and be in sync with our true essence as a human being irrespective of where we come from and what color, race, sex, religion and so on that may define us but not limit our scope as evolving humans.
My inner child wanted to believe that all the efforts it took to be liked, accepted is worth it, and when the whole premise of "adapt to your limitations" was manifested by the older me over and over just so that I can be validated for being the weak, invisible, too sensitive person who needs to be liked and understood for who she is, it just seemed like I was left alone by myself with no space of my own to adapt to.
How much dried up my personal or me space had become over the years of daily self doubt, not regulating my feelings and voicing my emotions and thoughts, I had no clue back then. I thought I had no choice since I was nothing but a trauma coated, self devalued person who lacked the will to step up to be her real self no matter what that is, that's when I realized that I had nothing left in me to adapt to as I had emptied my possibilities out of my living experience.
Being limited is all I knew and all I could be and it got to be an immersive experience as if I have absorbed my mother's constant criticisms on me, and my other family member's complete emotional neglect, and this is what I had become after absorbing these limitations for so long that I became one - inner critiquing myself, self gaslighting, projecting through inner dialoguing how right and how wrong others are and just tired of being so stuck and wrapped up in my own world as that was my only way to cope up back then to survive in the family where I lived.
And when I started to believe this to be true, to take this aspect with me even when I had gotten married and lived away from my parents, I just stuck to living in my own head. I just simply got tired of adapting to limitations, and what my in-laws viewed as their biggest struggles through their conflicting times, I viewed them as their limitation and was worn out hearing them go on and on about their life narratives without taking any true responsibility I felt for who they were being, and instead expect the whole world to take a broader purview to look at their life arc and be all nice and sweet always to them. I chose to neglect them, tried in vain to create boundaries and many a time things started to backfire as if to indicate that I had broken their trust and their immense emotional involvement with me seemingly, which was again suffocating for me.
In hindsight I think the factors that put me in the backseat of my own life has been self doubt, absorbing other people's energies a lot and trying to behave according to their mood swings to seek validation from them, and not being loving enough and accepting enough of my self, my body, mind, mood, emotions etc.
I have lived the "other" person perspective all my life that I really didn't know until few years ago that what it takes to be me. And it feels super to just be me without having to give excuse, act small, stay invisible or anything like that in order to gain approval from others because it truly doesn't matter anymore. I owe responsibility to myself first and then to others and no the other way round.
The sugarcane juice stall on the road corner reminded me of how grueling it must be for the sugarcanes to go through this process of getting to its essence in juice. Not far from how tired and exhausted we each are like the lifeless sugarcane that falls off the machine after each turn of squeeze through the rolling machine for some more juice.
Life's like that machine I felt - extracting our essence to more and more finer forms until our physical form, our age, beauty, charm, height, weight, looks, health and everything just withers away while just leaving behind our essence as humans no matter what be the gender, race, religion and so on. Every ounce of willing ourselves to go through the grind and coming out as best as we can only to go back to the grind gradually is how we keep going and living in circles.
Our nature as a human, whether sweet, caring, kind, funny, sarcastic, rigid, criticizing, selfish, compulsive, obsessive, neurotic, short tempered and so much more is what makes us who we are. No amount of make up or clothes can glorify who we really are from within. Just being real, realizing our essence, and letting go the gunk that clutters the juice is how much we can respond to life putting us through our destined karmic cycles over and over again until we learn our lessons.
Maybe the purpose of being here is to learn just that and give back to this creation, this universe and its creator something, a subtle spillover from the grind of our lives across lifetimes - whether its sweet, bitter, acidic, tasteless and so on is upto the creator to decide.
Nothing can crush us more than our lack of willpower which is not to go through with the grind because we will nevertheless but to accept and go through the grind because we have signed up for it.
I truly feel sorry for my inner child for having made her get stuck on "shoulds," "should nots," as expected from us children by the elders in an emotionally chaotic joint family comprising 20 or more members.
My inner child learnt earlier on that in order to survive in this family I have to comply with the unspoken laws, rigid and controlling behaviours of my uncles and somehow keep proving to my mother that all the money, time, and energy is worth it on me as she kept criticizing me for every migraine attack which started right from my childhood and as early as when I was 6 years or so.
My heart and mind feels heavy as I look back at the confusion that I suppressed myself down with and looked up at my mother, my uncles and aunts, and cousins for some sense of understanding, acceptance, genuine support but all that I had gotten was sympathy, criticism, body shaming, and insensitive remarks and comments on my health. I really don't know how I managed to navigate through all this and still stayed alive and going forward with the next day and the next.
I am bad at so many things I admit like goal setting, decision making, self discipline, and creating boundaries but all that I didn't realize, release, process, regulate and clearly speak out to ask for help which in all have made me an alien to my own mind and feelings, emotions, highs and lows, and so much more. It's like I habituated myself to self neglect so much so that I didn't realize I had insulated myself from living fully well connected and true to my life, my inner world.
All the stagnation that it created is a lot of undoing to release and sweeps my feet off the floor sometimes in overwhelm and deep sadness. I am truly sorry to my inner child for not allowing her to grow up with these experiences and staying stagnant with confusion, overwhelm, anxiety, and stubbornness.
So much so that I had lost all or any joy for living. What's there in it to be hopeful, joyful about? Is it possible for me to be feeling joy while living with my body? It's God's creation, all of it and all of us in our own ways, but to refrain from stagnation in confusion and releasing fears, or whatever that I am feeling from time to time is an important takeaway for me.
I am lost and at least I know why.
The privilege to become aware of your power (not materially, academically or from any acquired status whatsoever), your true inner essence is the unearthing of the diamond from the dust. It's a long haul of an effort and not something that you can just wish for to manifest, but your real presence under pressure of situations is the pathway through which you break free from being the old you - the power to discover who you can be is a fascinating trip that leads all the way back to your past and collects in its flow the raw, dense parts that you keep invisible in order to project your 'perfected' parts, and opens through the filtering an unlocking to who you are at present, and who you might become is never linear or logically bound but a collapsing of timeframes for transformation to a newer you.
So, the spirit of a life journey lies in being present to life, to its challenges, to its twists and turns, and just find your innate courage to travel through this flow as who you are and not get swept by life's challenges in whatever shape or form. Your ego doesn't provide the needed harness to align you to carry through with the flow, but your intention to stay true to this life changing process where your spirit is the flow and you become one with the spirit and just travel beyond the confines of time.
Your creativity in expressing yourself is who you are and as you unleash that creative energy no matter what be the distractive forces that make you get distracted, but working towards your goals, purifying your intentions, and decluttering your mind are the tools to discover the diamond in you. And this is not a mental process alone but a deep dive in your imaginary world, a space of safety and freedom, and not corrupted by the disconnecting shields which create nothing but stagnation -allow your inner child to playfully lead the way to this safe space within you and bring out your hidden colors, no matter what be your real age, to the centerstage. Overanalyzing how you can bring your creative expressions will kill the spell before it begins - the magic is in the becoming and not rigidly adapting to who you think you were or are as seen from your eyes or from others perspectives.
Give yourself permission to know your power to create, not just in writing, drawing, singing or any particular set of activities you might be familiar with, but entering the space of the unknown, the new, newer, if need be to align with your spirit, body, and mind.
The peacock dances to the call of the clouds arching in rainbow like the train of feathers in loud vibrant colors. It playfully dances in the sudden showers of cloud burst without a care in the world, it's feet pecking the slush and the damp grass, one beat a time. It carries a whole world of joy in its one swirling move, the rainbow on its back shining in fresh rain drops, hopping and playing and responding to the coos of the cuckoo sitting atop a nearby tree.
This transient yet ethereal moment stood frozen in time as Lord Muruga smiled at his pet vehicle, the peacock, which had taken off at the sight of fresh rain, leaving behind His Master on trail.
He was fond of his peacock as it pecked away at the hardened grime of karma in the hearts of Muruga devotees. It was the peacock's way of saying to not carry a heavy heart and just let go being pulled down by past, by difficult people, and by troublesome circumstances as it flew circling Muruga in the heavenly skies.
The spear and peacock are Lord Muruga's weapon and vehicle to vanquish the inner or outer demons in this universe through the slicing open of the veil of ignorance, separation, and past life karmas of that of His devotees and clearing their path towards oneness and love and surrender for Muruga. The human heart is caught in the want for belonging and being loved and assumes that earth is the place to be in order to get that. Earth is a stopgap and not a permanent place of stay as the human soul learns and forgets this over and over - the silver lining can never be the cloud as human life teaches this lesson over and over and yet like raindrops that never satiates the full thirst of those on earth but yet brings moments of hope, joy, and childlike playfulness like the peacock, are the moments that humans want to be more alive for.
To not abandon my life, my reason for wanting to be inspired towards living with passion, with purpose, with good intent, and mindfulness are my goals
I have abandoned my life for far too long that I have lost sight of what keeps me connected to it anymore. Is it the fears, the anxiety that drew a blinding cover over my eyes that I need to be perfect in playing out the role I think I need to play in reality, and if not overthink my way through my mind overanalyzing the outcome of situations over and over again as if I need to and have to get the results right for each of the situations I interact or connect to. It's like I have unforgiving standards set for myself and for others that I expect they need to stick up for or just judge them away as if they belong in my judgements and not outside of it as simply humans like any of us.
The reality of life is simply accepting it for what life gives us - be it challenges, clarity, chaos, tears, pain, and a rush of so many emotions. Numb it as much as we want to, but life simply assumes form because of the way we project our emotions, feelings, experiences into it - it comes alive because we are still breathing life through all these forms and not only because we are living, functioning physical beings. Emotions won't take care of itself by itself as we need to process, regulate, and channel it for our good discerning, choosing, and deciding what feels best for us at that point in time.
This call for living, for not fearing to live no matter how painful, physically and emotionally it has been for me for a long time in the past is my main concern now. Not that the pains have magically vanished, but the compulsion to hold onto them, to try and see meaning in them, to imaginatively roleplay myself being more assertive, vocal, self confident, and resilient are few of the loops that made me feel placated but didn't help me move on and just made me feel stuck and stagnant for being me.
I didn't want to let others see that - to see how less inviting, dull, monotonous my life is and it has been that way for ages as if these aspects are enough to age me and keep me complacent and the grey hairs can just show up as random proof of this "being inside my mind almost always" aging.
To say the right thing, to be the right person, to do by others right, to also prove I am right were few of the unnatural things I boxed myself into as if I can't afford to be anything outside of this. And the extent of inner criticism is anything but normal - no enemy would ever get this kind of treatment the way I treat myself - it's never been right to do this with me but in order to be good for others, for seeking their validation, acceptance and support, I had trained myself unconsciously as a survival habit.
It was a mistake to be anything but perfect, always normal, calm, sorted, and everything in between - the huge gap of filling it by simply being natural, having mood swings, good days, bad days, and just having enough personal space to call it my own and learn to live in it and expand and grow in my own time were unknown things - the fog that made me more overwhelmed than the programmed ignorance I had put myself into just so that I would be accepted for who I am.
I have mourned it, this gap, this space filled with broken opportunities to be simply a human in other words and not a wooden robot who is stubborn and stuck in her own programming and needs to reboot to a connecting human frequency or frequencies from time to time.
Self expression is a privilege for me, someone who is socially selective, an introvert mostly, and loves to read people and not open up to talk and share about my life so much unless the audience is receptive. The quiet of my mind is a rare occurrence as what doesn't get spoken out, the right words, the right things to say gets replayed in various versions in my mind and so I naturally tend to listen a lot as if trying to find a voice in the midst of all my mental chatter.
I crave peace, stability, and strength of mind which is not a reflection of my physical health as I had assumed it to be but a time to time fill (of mindful content and not unwanted dump) with enough appetite left for self love, kindness, and acceptance nevertheless of what my mind is for what it is. This acceptance has been a work in progress activity of awareness as they are the spots of clear light in tunnels of thoughts and triggers.
To be still alive to clear thinking is a blessing and staying awake to it however possible is all that mattes now.
What is love really? Is it the avoidance of fear of abandonment? Is it allowing your most vulnerable insecurities come up and finding the voice to actually share it with your partner? The moments, yeah, they matter - the romance phase, honeymoon phase, and so on, but what matters more is are you still able to love yourself despite your truths showing up? It's not the inner truths or outer projections that matter, but how good you feel about being yourself.
For starters, I had grown up is a severely emotionally neglectful family and since love was never expressed in any way that met my expectations, I believed that I just had to behave, say, act in ways that made me adaptable to what others thought or expected. In other words, I just became a sponged in version of my family and as a result learnt to neglect myself and what I truly felt about my life.
I had made so much space for someone better, or powerful, or more controlling, and so much so that I gave up on taking control of steering being in the driver's seat of my life.
Love is truly what makes you grow, not fit in with a picture of what others think is right. And you can never be right for others all the time or prove others wrong enough in order to be right. Love is hard since it's honest. It strips the need you think you need in order to warm up to being in someone's good books and just speaks volumes without having to prove you are right over others and just slip into quiet confidence which is distinct and unique to being you without guilt, shame, excuses or lies.
Love is not how we wish to stage so that others see us in ideal light but it's a flicker of hope, a small but significant spark to lead us to our inner darkness and back to meet our true self again - a life spanning discovery in short where we keep rediscovering ways to honor and respect ourselves first and give the gift of kindness, truth, and service wherever needed in others lives.
Love is the ability to see ourselves even if we are incomplete, flawed, fragile, and so much more and not criticize away these unique aspects that make us who we are. Our life narratives need not be perfect but it can be one of learning to love, forgive, accept, and move on without having the need to prove to anyone anything about why we are the way we are - just simply letting ourselves be and having the courage to fall, to rise, to endure pain, to seek support, to create space for rest, recreation, creative connections with your hobbies or creative pursuits, and to develop your own language for authentic self expression through your thoughts, words, and actions is all there is to it.
Each to their own but this is my slice of love actually.
There are so many places to hide that I don't wish to let myself out the door,
Locked in the twisted pathways of the tunnel, in and out of many pit stops there, as if a lure.
I felt the world outside the door to be too real,
And looking for my shadow in the darkness, a cold appeal.
I stepped out to prove many a point,
That I am no ghost and as painfully alive as a disconnected joint.
The single step to embrace my truths and everyday realities was not an exercise in emotional numbing,
But a journey of a thousand miles, an echo towards the future, and a call to heed to the cosmic power's drumming.
To feel real in my head, in my thoughts, in my day dreaming is alright. By imaging, fantasizing, I do not become weak. I just have a rich imaginative inner world and it's been a companion for filling up my thoughts and I had gotten so compulsive about staying in it that what could have been my strength in terms of expressing through imaginations and dreams on writing, through coloring, singing, and so many other creative pursuits became a suppressed way of "normalizing" my sensitivities, my physical health included. It's completely alright. As I think in hindsight, it was a placebo that became my comfort zone, my distracting space for lack of emotional regulation for frequent health sensitivities.
In fact my lack of accessing my emotions was the core reason for falling sick often. It's like making myself unavailable for my feelings, for what they wish to truly express, and what do my emotions want me to hear were all thrown out of the window as I kept looking for the door to be visible so that I can get out of this comfort zone.
Since my mother emotionally neglected me, I did the same with myself, and could not come out to express and ask anyone else for support as I was so loyally bound to her trauma and it didn't occur to me that I had and have the choice to seek support for some empathy and understanding from others. I felt like an emotional orphan growing in a physical body which is not letting go her mother's trauma for fear of coping up with anything new other than the trauma I had been already exposed to.
When her trauma became my reality and when my sensitivity seemed a lot to take for me, I just shut myself down and the more I acted out in my imaginations and fantasies, the more I felt seen, atleast by me. It provided as the best accomplice for trying to stay invisible in a huge, emotionally chaotic family.
Nothing is more real than my imaginations and the more that I started to live through them, the more I felt that I had a routine. It still is my routine and I do dislike switching back to actual reality to focus, but I think it's best if I learn to use my inherent imaginations and put it to good use through some form of creative outlet. And so expressing my imaginations will not be defense shield from trauma but a seamless outlet to self acceptance from within and out.
I never thought of imagination as a bridge between two worlds, but it sure seems like a beautiful way to bring myself together to offer the world my slice and view of life without trying to shy away, shrink or devalue myself for what comes out in offering through writing most likely, but there can be more to creativity than just one form of expression.
Self acceptance is the real key,
Don't go seeking approval from one branch to another, as you need to discern the forest from the tree.
You stand out tall and authentic from the rest for who you are,
It's clear, your stance on your life, even from afar.
Don't stay stuck on how others see you and chop your self expression to half,
You are not the herd, you can sometimes choose to follow, just like the trusting calf.
Stay in your own line while allowing for others to pass,
Don't stand too long as you need to move on and be your own kind of class.
It's a lot of tears for a love hardened so dry,
Nothing to gain but everything to lose if I don't grieve or cry.
Just how much suppression is enough to be all good for others?
Like a pile of sticks, stones, and dried leaves that wrap up my inner shell, my loneliness, in dusty feathers.
To embrace my true self now is to come clean with all the hidden pain,
And let it sweep the old for the new, nothing to lose, but a life put together to gain.
I had given up on hope and courage and faith on a power higher than my fears,
It took me decades to accept that I am sensitive but not kind to myself, a truth that shifted my life's gears.
Letting go all my inner criticism, an echo of my mother's projections, a long standing wound,
To heal is feeling fearful sometimes as the criticisms will stop to hound.
Self love is not trying to be good enough for anyone except you,
A mindful habit to hold your brokenness together and show some daily love and not just out of the blue.
Give something that you love but don't have time for, a try,
It's better to know how things might fail rather than play safe and say goodbye.
The lost opportunities hurt the most, not the number of victories won,
To let go expecting things to turn out perfect is real and not something to shun.
So, keep up the efforts, keep up the spirit to express your life,
What you decide and how you keep up with it is a path to befriend and not block with strife.
Fight for yourself and stand up for what you believe and value,
Nothing is a waste, everything happens for a reason as you put aside self devalue.
The kid hidden in the dim space in the garage was looking for safety - safety from her outer world, controlling voices, and expectations to having to fit in to her family. All these didn't feel safe. At all. It was safe when she could hear her emotions but that felt like searching for a safety pin in the dim garage - there but not visible, can be felt but hidden somewhere, and just another dusted under the carpet.
Trusting herself because of not being in touch with her emotions felt like she was a stranger to her world, her mind, her desires, her goals and just plain disconnected with her truths. Her emotions were the needle in the haystack for sure and something that could hold her together, no matter how varied her emotions, in oneness with her life.
Compassion without self love is a garment that's loose all over the edges and simply won't fit the person. Mindful compassion is made to fit and creates the flow and the shape that is distinct to the person's psyche. All along the kid grew in dresses bigger than her fit and assumed that that was enough as long as it didn't restrict her movements. Little did she know that bigger sizes didn't make her more mature and that she can't fit in with other people's expectations for being something or someone to them, even if she tries to stretch farther than what's truly comfortable to her in order to wear what others want as if it were her own.
She understood gradually that the attitude she chose to embody was her authentic fit and that it can change from time to time. What's not her or hers she would be shed anyway.
Her life lessons were like the colorful pins that come in varied sizes and shapes which don't limit the garment in any way, but help create a distinct flow and pattern in a seamless way.
Life is a trial room and not a dim garage space to hide your real self. You can always know how you respond to your emotions when you listen to them, see them, and wear them if you feel they are true to you. Don't shrink yourself in order to fit in with others emotional manipulations and control and don't settle for others exaggerated emotional dramas which come off your shoulders like rags - when it's not yours to wear, no matter how loose the fit, don't try to snuggle your way in to fake assure yourself that it's all okay.
Embrace your whole personality - your body, your mind, your emotions and your expectations, everything put together as one because they all come together for your one and only one lifetime as of today.
Vel Maaral has been my saviour in more ways than one. It has been the knowledge tool that has kept me protected in the dark of ignorance, pain, distress, and blocks. The Vel or the spear is known to be the breaker of barriers, be it psychological, physical, or any other level possible. So, it's safe to say in short that my life is an answered prayer even if my mind creates doubts, anxiety, fear and so on.
My soul has been placated like how a cranky kid's nerves are calmed down, and that's how I feel when I read it and each day feels like a new interpretation of revelations close to my life.
So, it's not just a loop of Tamizh mantras, but a medicine that cuts through the thick of layers that live entwined within us, and Vel Maaral liberates us from the karmic imprints as we absorb its essence in depth over a period of time. The Vel is the object and the essence in it all that has many functions depending upon the nature of inner demons - it can find its way through to the root of evil within us and bind us to faith and not fear, freeing us thereby to stay afloat and not sink under the weight of our unconsciousness.
The repeat nature of our everyday thoughts, imaginations, assumptions, and external influences makes it look as if we are caught in the web of the mind as it spins so many stories around our life experiences. But to weave a narrative which is free off the stickiness of past programming is a step in the right direction as our lives are woven in the direction that we project today. And I have at many a time looked at external sources of help to help reconcile my past with the present reality and my tendency to stay lost adds challenges of its own. But Vel Maaral has been the awareness creator as it helps me become aware of how far I stray(staying distracted) away from my current situation and how much are my fantasies and day dreaming feeding off off my straying in one topic of interest or another.
So, the focus is not to artificially create a velcro sticky faith to stay stuck on Lord Muruga or his weapon, Vel, but to detach myself from the loops of patterns which don't serve me any good today.
The enemy for me is not some strange looking person or thing on the outside, but the foggy, mystical, fantasizing, free flow of imaginations of my mind which is centered on projecting myself as a strong individual who is almost always trying to be right in her dialogues with others. An inner critic who is strong and simply unrelenting in the many forms it takes up in my mind as if to emphasize my mother's umpteen versions of her disappointments and criticisms on my health no matter how many doctors or how much care she thinks she gave - I could not shut her down then, but through these imaginations and my having the last say in each of those dialogues with her or with others, it's like I am finally getting to do that, but the damage is only on me, through me, like a self inflicting injury to cover the deeper wound within.
I am yet to put to action the reparenting towards gentle self love that I so need to do, but my inner critic is so stuck on proving others wrong that I have truly negated my self growth even if I am painfully aware of the severely limiting aspect of adapting my beautiful, creative imaginations to the loops of criticisms, be it projecting on others or on myself.
It's almost like a judgement, all this inner chatter every day, and drains me off my life energy. I am thankful though for the Vel Maaral has made me straighten my mind out atleast this much with discretion and awareness of my own mind for now because I am not as alone and lost as I used to think I was.
I can choose to better use my imagination and that is to create a new and maybe better reality.
Imagination, intuition, perception, and sensing, deep conversations are all me (my inner strengths) for all along, but since I had so much of my repressed emotions and unexpressed feelings, and walking on egg shells in an emotionally dysfunctional family dominate my reality and my sense of self so much that I could not use my inner strengths in a way that would help manifest my external reality and be authentic to it to the fullest. The goal to be my actualized true self is something that's manifesting gradually as the supportive and assuring Vel Maaral is the weapon that breaks through and slays even invisible enemies as they surface to my reality and makes me better aware of the extent of my distress and helps to release them slowly and be in sync with the now.
All along I have lived like a deer in the headlights losing sight of my self priorities. It's a lot of confusion for who I was because I was made to feel guilty for who I was by my mother for whatever sensitivity I had in health as her frustrations, her fears over my health were superimposed by her and so I found myself constantly caught in the loop to appease her at the cost of prioritizing myself. My emotional sensitivity is something I was myself in the dark and the truth of that crept up making it impossible for me to ignore my emotions and feelings which was at a much later stage. But still, the knowing that I was made to feel a certain way about myself and the painful realization that I had chosen to disconnect from myself in order to stay blindly tuned to my mother's expectations was self sabotaging to say the least.
Now I don't go out of my way to be flexible for her. I just try not to get too rigid either in my stubbornness about embracing real change within me. Just giving in to her "love" a bit no matter how much of a bait she uses her love and care for me as, but she does that to wield her control over me as she is used to controlling me either through her frustrated yet helpless way of caretaking me as if I am a terminally ill patient back then. She made me believe that I am too weak and that affected my sense of self a lot.
My will to want to fight back, to take a stand for myself, to take responsibility for my physical and mental health were all so limited by my mother's way of seeing me and that was me, the deer, getting blinded by the projected headlights of an external source, my mother, as I lost sight of my goals, my visions for my life and what lies ahead.
Life does not happen when you stay stuck in the comfort of who you think you were (no matter how weak, negative, ill willed it might be) but in the discomfort of who you want to become (as opposed to the expectations of others if needed) being fully centered on your true wants and needs.
I have been a survivor living off my mother's projected toxic love for me and wanted to assume that that's really true and good for me, but it isn't. She has steadily dampened my fire for exercising my will and I was so caught up seeking validation from her that I repeatedly self doubted myself and exercised limitations mindset on myself that I can easily adapt to and created ill will within myself for who I am and kept being in a confused space for who I wanted to be.
Her trauma of losing my father during her pregnancy seeded trauma in her womb and deep within me and I birthed trauma at each and every stage of my life being fearful, overwhelmed, confused for who I am and thereby numbed myself so much so that I stay sunk in deep unconsciousness of my self.
Her image of a sympathy gained from others victor (at the cost of projecting a negative image of her daughter) is who she has always been, and making me feel responsible for her state, whether physical or emotional, is who she maintains herself to be. And to that effect, no matter how much is done feels not enough, specially when she steps out and it becomes mandatory to look out for her comfort at each and every step of the way which is exhausting to say the least.
My creativity feels stifled as my inner thoughts circle around the times of the past and the present which hovers around my mother and how much I have been taken for a ride.
Life is a journey but when you become other people's ride, then you need to get back to being driven so that you can take charge of your travel and your experiences fully.
I am tired of being other people's ride and I am not so altruistic as well, but just made to feel guilty constantly and hence had given in to prioritizing others, courtesy my conditioning embedded deeply by my mother's behaviors as mentioned above. And so I became a dumped site, thanks to few friends who assumed that my space, my calm is something that they can exploit and just validated for my being all so idealistic and giving and generous with my listening and time as I too let them believe and was never being true to myself while being with them. I thought I had to stretch in terms of empathy and understanding and that was energetically draining which I didn't realize back then but kept giving away my power, my space to accommodate others.
My heart flutters like tender wings,
And gets stuck in the pull of weighing down things.
It had to find its strength, the flaps continued to beat against odds,
To open my trust in believing myself and not stay enmeshed in others lives like peas in a pod.
Strength is when you stop saying you are weak,
But give yourself reason to trust that life ahead is not so bleak.
Wings without ascension is not freedom,
It's being authentic without fanning the fires in the belly out of boredom.
Mother wound was my cocoon and my comfort nest,
Walking on egg shells to not anger or sadden my mother, a daily test.
This is emotional abuse, I was not aware,
Didn't call out my mother out of shame, guilt and confrontational fear.
I revisit this wound scratching the inner surface which isn't my core,
The need to let go the old and connect to my flow is releasing my hardened heart from the mossy shore.
Cutting loose from the compulsion to go round and round without finding a way out is a clear sign,
That the footprints don't follow you as much as you ruminate or whine.
The memories of feeling isolated and abandoned without support haunts me in silence,
I find comfort in the truths of my soul which speak softly to assure deep guidance.
My soul reminds me to speak to the repressed voices within,
To accept plainly their pain, their unspoken fears, sadness and anger without triggered spins.
To believe that I deserve calm and love and support is entry into my core,
The silence after this storm held me in its arms as I paddle my way to a new shore.
Self doubt is one of the worst diseases of the mind. It devalues a person's potential, her ability to look past her fears, blocks, negative thoughts and so on as one's self doubt keeps all these aspects alive as they all compound to self doubt.
It's a meaningless wandering where there is a never ending dead end and yet no way out of this loop of feeling stuck. How easily, how effortlessly is the submitting oneself to this dark void where the possibility of light is shut out by the individual herself.
I have gone through 5, 6 years of submitting myself to the fires of truth, inner reflection, journaling, releasing, and so on, and yet have not gotten through the test of such times? The severe pain of emotional numbness is something I have realized over and over again and it leaves me feeling sad, tired at times, and in order to distract myself from this pain I binge watch some series or the other which is again another way to keep being emotionally numb but with a bit of awareness that I can't get too lost in that and need to find my way back home to my heart.
I need some goals to translate my inner realizations into actionable activities and be true to my energies through the process.
I have the courage to face my pains repressed through emotional numbing and have been blessed with beautiful divine guidance and intuitions, but now when it comes to holding myself as a sovereign being who's a culmination of all her experiences, good, bad, and everything in between, then why does the impulse, the desperation to get a job for my financial independence become a pressing factor in my mind.
I take pride for my efforts, sincerity, and perseverance, to work towards self realizations of my inner world as much as possible, but without Lord Muruga's protection, Ramani's support, Amma's support in her own way as well, this wouldn't have been possible.
I need to stand by this becoming of a new self as the shedding and letting go of the old has happened and is also a work in progress. I can't keep criticizing my past life with the awareness, realizations of today. Looking back at the past was/has been a compulsion, but the more I feel connected is when I stick to the present and be open towards future with hope and not anxiety.
I am okay today for who I am and the meltdown of the past has given way to acknowledging my inner wounds, but to keep ruminating on it or have doubts on how will I go further in life with self doubts, anxiety and so on is not going to help either. Just keep walking until I find a path that would help me stay grounded and also flowing in my consciousness and I believe that path has already opened and I am on it, but with triggers now and then about what will happen in future, how will I manage without this support, and how much can I rely on myself are something that comes and goes. It's ego at play probably, but as much as I learnt to trust myself through my own brokenness while bearing open my emotional wounds and feeling them, grieving them, and slowly finding the strength to let go of them, it's these that I need to remind myself as I have withstood the utter distress, depression, sadness, anger, and so much more of emotional numbing, and it's through the healing of these inner emotional wounds that has given me inner strength gradually, that the same inner strength will help me cross over and be the bridge to a mindful present and a promising future.
Procrastination has been my placebo so that I can avoid getting sick as being out in the sun has for many a time caused headaches and nausea. But the underlying stress of getting criticized, emotionally abused has weighed far more and made me withdraw so much so that just procrastinating felt like the only way to sustain this want to explore life and come out of my addiction to comfort and getting caught in the need to seek validation from others if they find my health alright enough so that I can proceed with full confidence in working on a job.
In this way I had adapted to loneliness so much that whatever creative energies that could possibly flow on a regular basis got all stuck and stagnant owing to my old habit of procrastinating and self doubts.
It's so boring and so much a dead end when I am being supported nevertheless but there's nothing at this time left for me to stay inspired and dig deep into what I can offer creatively.
I feel so exhausted for lack of goals, lack of vitality to want to seek out goals if possible, and simply submit to binging tv shows or Netflix series, as if I need to just spend time and not invest wisely on some healthy pursuit of a hobby or an activity that's enriching my mind. I feel equally sorry and sad and also angry and helpless as if the direction that I had set my sails for was so very seeking the shade of safety and not the risk of trying being under the sun.
I tend to give in to my mind's negative chatter without learning to shut it down from time to time. Staying absorbed in tv shows is not going to help silence my inner chatter, but it's just another way of unconsciously interacting with the dialogues, script, and flow of the content on tv or computer. It's absolutely exhausting even if I stay stuck in a spot for a bit longer than needed and not restful. It just gives me another distraction, another excuse to stay away from consciously interacting and creating and getting involved with creative pursuits possibly.
What skill, potential or creative outlet that was unnoticed, and completely neglected almost by my mother, my uncles/aunts and hardly appreciated is the very weakness that I have nurtured negatively in my heart for a long time and the weight of not being validated cannot capsize my creative strengths, no matter how oblivious my parents might have been.
To see myself truly, fully, with warmth and empathy as I had wanted to just be spontaneous, give my opinions, be vocal about my confusions, fears, health challenges, and so much more has been so silenced by me out of lack of trust, lack of security at the house that I grew up in with so many people that my chest can't hold the overflowing pain and emotional hurts from numbing anymore. A big price to pay in trying to want to fit in with the crowd that I lost my voice, my confidence, and just kept being "nice" and quiet, and easily understanding, flexible, and everything that I maybe not.
What's painfully real is how much I couldn't live for myself and self prioritize owing to getting caught up in all these programming. As much as it's on them, my parents. their emotional dysfunctionalities and in whose presence I tried to survive, but it's my choice finally to self sacrifice without any reason. For whose sake did I do that? And what did I gain by doing that? Just more trauma to bear, to repress, and stay entangled in them as if I can be as equally invisible as these insidious patterns. I am a product of such patterns anyway and I can't feign ignorance on the level of self sabotage that it has done unconsciously.
To put living to another day is the most disservice I can do to myself and no matter how much I can attribute to my past and getting so warped and deluded by them, the fact that I have let my life go a lot and have managed to live, if at all, is through my impulses, sudden flashes of ideas to cook a dish this way or that, sing thirupugazh, draw sometimes, but it's only when I do some job, some service for another that it feels meaningful. I do try to place others first since I am used to living through the collective conscious way and going with the others flow is what I do best. But the more I try to justify that it's working towards others and putting others before me first is all very ideal but it doesn't always sit well with me. I do this just to escape taking personal responsibility for my individual actions towards building my life and most often than not end up feeling scattered.
Procrastination is not some safe keep deposit that will yield better results tomorrow - it's just a delayed way to come to terms that nothing will change even then unless some movement, some initiative is taken today. I can offer all the excuses I want, but staying stagnant without much excitement towards my life is pretty pathetic, and I can never expect support from others when I don't brace myself to support and work on self belief as a strong foundation to do so.
My mother put me through a lot of emotional abuse and emotional neglect as if I deserved them for being physically sensitive. Her trauma for being emotionally wounded for her expectations of wanting to stay with her partner, my father, got cut short so suddenly in 2 years time from her marriage and specially when they were pregnant with me, it was a sudden tragedy of losing my father to a massive cardiac arrest while she was 3 months pregnant.
Her trauma seemed to fill me up from the womb that even if I got separated from her physically as an individual, my inner voice, my mind, my sense of self had gotten so saturated with her repeated outbursts of her trauma at her at each and every episode of my health problems, no matter how small and not so terminal it might be, but she enacted my getting sick as a way of lashing out her frustration at my absent father and being left all by herself to deal with me, that her technical way of taking me to doctors at each and every instance of my health problem was the only glue for me towards her as there was no sense of real love or acceptance from her for me.
She thrived on sympathy from her brothers and their families and left me all by myself to deal with my repetitive ruminations about my past health issues no matter what be the circumstance for today - whether I do well at a job, whether I decide to change jobs, whether I think of stretching myself more for a particular goal/project etc, it felt like my past trauma of being shouted at by my mother, my emotional numbing at that time, and my unspoken and conflicted emotions had all been so bottled up that I kept repeating them in my head as means to stay stuck in trauma myself which has been so severely self limiting and has robbed me off of my precious self trust and belief in my self. And when my relationship with myself has been compromised, so convoluted with the frustrations of my mother's emotional projections from her tragic past, I internalized the same pattern of staying stuck in trauma as a way of criticizing my self and learning over and over again to adapt to my "limitations" - adapting here in this case means trying to fit into my mother's super narrow perspectives of me and my life to the point that I got disconnected from my real sense of reality.
I was feeding off off her trauma so much so that I preferred punishing myself with negative inner talks, repetitive ruminative of past illness, and unfavorably bringing them up in my present day as if more and more loneliness, and such dismal inner darkness, and not knowing how to reach out for help and just staying stuck with self neglect, self doubt, abandonment, and continuing to adapt to my mother's sense of power over me which was not physical assault but giving into her emotionally abusing me over and over and shaming me for having weak health and making me feel guilty for the same at each and every health episode even if it be small one. She made my life a tragic reliving of her past and which I believed was true for me which just severely restricted me from knowing what my true sense of reality, choices, facing challenges, and learning to grow.
My mother may have been a recipient of severe emotional neglect and abandonment herself from her parents, her siblings and so on, but what she did to me cannot be taken in casual light, but is not the centre point of my life's concern either. I have healed better and grown better from within to realize that my life completely exists outside of hers and that I am not a subject of her emotional projections, no matter how tragic or sudden it might have been - it's her trauma and hers to handle. She is half foot in the grave now and has lived off my life by absorbing my ideas, objectivity, and even concerns. All that I am not is because of my withdrawing from taking personal responsibility for my life and expecting others to fix it for me. My mother assumed she was fixing it but all she did was break me further from my core. She only knew so much and I was not ready to outgrow my expectations at that time.
Being toxically interconnected through trauma which is mostly projected on me by her is not my moral obligation anymore and it's been made explicitly clear in my own ways. She has asked for a meek sorry for the same but that doesn't change the fact that she's still completely oblivious to the damage she has to me and to my mind.
Now as I have worked on myself and with my God/Guru's blessings as well that I have realized so much of my inner pain and trauma that it feels like I am on the path of healing but through the suppressed and blocked road of pain which has now been opened and released for ease of navigation and flow of energy for over a few years now.
I may or may not get completely healed, I don't know, but trauma is never more important than one's truth and the truth is that it's never easy to let go pain, to be free from trauma and self doubts, but the more I embrace this truth that self love and genuine kindness towards my self changes my inner landscape as it has already begun to change, my relationship with myself feels different. All the unreleased understanding and blocked love from myself has slowly begun to open up and it makes me want to believe that I too can feel well from inside, I too can really heal, just one day at a time.
Lord Muruga is a fierce protector and a kind guardian who makes you feel seen completely under His all encompassing eyes. He knows you better than you do yourself. Knowing Him can be your blessing if you allow your heart and mind open wide and embrace His wisdom to navigate through your pain and attain peace and reconciliation with your life, struggles, sufferings in it is what makes Him the true alchemist of your life experiences. Your willingness to submit your ego and persevere through your life's highs and lows with this newfound equanimity and acceptance is what Lord Muruga's grace feels like.
There's so much beauty in His compassion that it would melt the hardened walls of your heart and make you open to being truly kind to yourself and soften it so that His tests, His ways of letting you get closer to Him or vice versa makes it life changing to say the least. His kindness and acceptance of who we are just as ourselves is what moves us to try to work more towards letting our hurts, fears, anger, judgements, criticisms, revenge and so on go. This release is what is beautiful, unpretentious, raw, and simply authentic to each of our life experiences.
For lost and lonely souls who can do with a bit of support to get through the pains of their past and whose human lives in their human bodies feels unbearably heavy, dense, numb, and dark, His guidance, His different ways of loving and supporting you is like a soothing balm on insidious wounds - His mighty weapon, the victorious Vel, His spear cuts through the chords of all those layers knotted as roots of those wounds.
My life in all entirety has been His blessing and His many miracles have kept me alive o matter how sudden the health issues. He has been my silent support even if my mind was ridden with so many voices, each dialoguing between one another and making me crave for living outside of this noisy space. Muruga's grace silences even the harshest critics in one's mind and it's a redemption of who you are, just as you are, and that's simply good enough to love Him, to be grateful for His myriad ways of being there for you.
He is the father that I never had, He is the friend I had always wished I had, He is the confidante who holds multi universes within His cosmic domain, He is the answer to many a prayer, and truly unconditional love in all His forms and names.
Distractions are needed to cope up with the stressors of one's life but getting so lost in distractions is leading oneself to the dead end of one's consciousness and mindfulness of reality.
To experience self denial of one's true awareness of one's reality which is inclusive of goals, challenges, hurdles, and some joyful, healthy detractors that helps not get stuck in the trials of disappointments, delays of manifesting of one's goals and aspirations is in short to say denying the opportunity of opening oneself up fully to living.
Living is how well you experience, endure, learn, let go, and move on in response to life. This learn and play ground has room for all of us students to explore, create, have fun, and just keep trusting ourselves for how best we can do what we can and release what we cannot to get through to the end of our lives exploration as an all inclusive experience.
To continue to lighten up through the myriad dense layers of our past, of what can be changed and what cannot, and true acceptance of being a human through it all is what makes this journey a work in progress. Only when we are okay within ourselves to let go our heavy attachments to our toxic habits, hurtful memories, old habits which all put together are consistently and yet unproductively repeated and which acts itself out in our ways of being, behaviors, life choices is the start to our real transformation.
Distractions then as means to cope up with the pain of real, deep change from within does not reduce the pain of letting go but to stay under the make believe fear and stickiness to our used to living from the past has to be addressed. Loosening up on the intensity of life transformative changes is important but not to the extent of losing focus of who we are in this process.
We still continue to remain the core subject of our lives and no amount of objectification of people, places, things and so on as priority over ourselves helps. Therefore discernment with distraction is the need of the hour and the ask ourselves how we feel, what we think about changing situations maybe day to day or periodically is a huge way to bank on ourselves without losing trust in our inner strength, our efforts, and how far we have come so that self prioritization remains the core subject of our lives.
To be absorbed by the other and not have enough space for self is severely limiting and hence adapting to such a self defeating and unproductive habit is something I have been personally working on to let go. Many a distraction takes precedence whether it's social media, the neighbours, friends, family and so on, but to keep reminding myself that I am worth all the inner work in progress puts the distractions in its place.
When you don't see your pain the way it needs to be seen and you expect for another's empathy to see your pain face to face, then it's most likely a way of blinding yourself to your own conditioning and trade pity or sympathy from others for acknowledging your pain as it is.
And there's no better person than you to see and feel your pain with kindness and acceptance possibly and treat it with some level of personalized and truthful commitment. Stop expecting apology from others specially those who hurt you as a quick fix to heal your inner wounds which might have festered and become numb for long.
To bring yourself to humbly accept your own level of ignorance, innocence, or even arrogance, stubbornness, and denying what's truly painful within yourself is to give away the opportunity to live life to the fullest whereby it's not just the joys and happiness which make memories but those mentioned above as well create some unforgettable memories which leave behind scars.
We tend to express how traumatized, lonely, and sad, not understood we feel when we tend to focus on the scars which is nothing but the shadow side of pain or pains in our heart. Staying stuck on the inner scars wounds us even further and disconnects us from our core inner wounds which we may not have addressed accurately for lack of articulate emotional expressions. But still it's a wound not tended or cared for and the more the wounds, the more the numbness, the more the depression that envelops the clarity of our thinking, feeling side.
The inner wounds need to come into light, into the truth of our awareness and what's repressed, stifled, shoved under the carpet has to come clean and plain without the drama of stagnant ruminations.
Truth of who we were when we stopped choosing authenticity over collective consciousness needs to come in front of our naked eyes without the influence of rose tinted glasses of our preconceived notions, programming, and habitual perceptions of our reality on a day to day basis. Because reality of how deeply we have been hurt and how harder it is to process, regulate, release, forgive (oneself and the others) is exhausting from a soul level, but the fear of getting hurt by such truthful contemplations either by oneself or as guided by spiritual interventions, therapies and so on is what makes the rising of this unique and spiritually transforming aspect of the self so challenging and yet incredibly rewarding, and not to forget life changing.
To bear the dead weight of who we are not when alive is a bigger block and self sabotaging at the least and hence to resolve to commit to being true to this profound and deep healing within oneself is the most liberating and cleansing.
The fragile interwovenness between one human to another within a family, community, country and so on are held together by truth which stays unbreakable no matter what the age, era, timeline - truth does not change, but the way we are held together by it as a human and living consciousness in this given time does matter.
Our souls speak and listen in the language of our inner truths and that home is where the heart is. No shouting from the rooftops needed here, just a warm, simple, honest space where the soul can thrive and speak freely.
I give myself permission to:
Be true to my feelings whatever it be
Be true to my emotions, highs and lows, and take personal responsibility for how I connect to my life
Let go patterns, habits, heavy energies that bring me down.
To stay away from people and maintain healthy boundaries whenever the "holier than thou", "smarter than thou", more of this and that than thou" attitudes are implied in conversations.
Be kind to myself as I deserve to be in the limelight of attention I give to my body, mind, and soul.
Not ask for another's validation regarding my pain, conflicts, trauma, and inner landscape, whatever it be.
Be an individual who also learns to ask for support wherever required and not expect too much perfection from myself and refrain from staying in inner critic mode.
Be goofy, childlike, naïve, innocent, sincere, unassuming, moody, crazy, witty, adventurous, spiritual, simple, honest, and be a human finally.
Be playful and creative with my imaginations, creativity, and spontaneity.
Be more forgiving, less harsh towards myself and give myself time, space to heal, grieve, release, rest, and connect with my life not as a numb duty but as a mindful and aware alignment with my mood, feelings, and emotions as a human on a day to day basis.
To snap out of patient mode and healthily embrace being highly sensitive, energy absorbing, intuiting, spiritual, observant, emotional, blocks releasing person.
To believe that my present is healthy and well and that my future would be healthy and well as well.
To snap out of self doubts and stay true to what I sense, feel, and think about a given situation with openness.
To prioritize my life, my emotional, physical needs, my wellbeing, peace, balance and calm, and to stop making others, be it anyone my priority just to feel "more" useful, productive, and satisfy their expectations and so on.
To not focus on missed opportunities to become the individual that I could have been but put together all the efforts, struggles, brokenness, perseverance, courage, sadness, anxiety, creativity, spirituality, faith in a higher power and finally faith in myself to be the individual that I am today is all that matters.
Move past the pains of who I could have been and focus on who I am and what I need from time to time.
Remind myself every now and then that I am not a mechanical, impersonal, coldly objective, and self neglectful person that I had gotten used to be habitually and that doesn't serve its purpose anymore and that this way of my being has to CHANGE and change is for good, and that I am a beautiful work in progress.
I was never seen as a child who would grow up eventually but had to be the mature one as my mother simply treated me as an infant who refused to give up the trauma and the overwhelm of delivering a baby without her husband by her side (and her having to bear the weight of pregnancy all by herself with my father's sudden demise during her first trimester) was something I could get to experience long after that episode had occurred and if I had grown up much more than the infant she still wanted me to be - all easily manageable and pretty perfect when she used to go to office while the caretaker took care of me as an infant. But as I grew up and had a and still have high sensitivity as in bodily and also emotionally, she found that to come in the way of her functioning as an office goer smoothly and without any stress, and she made it a point to complain before everyone (her brothers wives with whom we both lived in a joint family) and made it a point to get sympathy for the situation she was in whether I had migraines, fevers, abdominal pains during pains and so on, her constant whining and feeling frustrated that she had to take care of me all by herself made it hurtful, confusing, and I started to feel more and more abandoned and wanted to remain invisible as a way to cope up the way my existence, my life was being projected as if I was a constantly repaired toy that she was really fond of but was irritated that it gave her lot of stress for being the way it is.
I could relate to myself as an 'it', as if an object which needed ultra high protection, but was treated like scrap whenever ironically I was feeling well and didn't have health problems as she would never bother talking to me any more than few lines of formal, courtesy questions just to check on me.
The how's of learning to love myself was something I looked upto from my mother and felt more disappointed, drained, confused, sad and so on as she could like me if not truly love me for who I was without any health issues, and this hardly happened even if I tried to suppress how I genuinely felt about anything in my life as I thought by suppressing any health problems, I would be better accepted.
She made me feel stressed for being who I am in whatever form of health that be and this truth I could not understand as I was not that aware back then and just tried my best to cope up with the circumstances.
She was in fact inadequate emotionally with her (im)maturity as she was not working on preparing herself to grow along with me and I had this unspoken sense of not able to be a child but to have to step to be grateful, obedient, and physically healthy in order to try to fit in into the shoes of my growing up years. I got stuck in those shoes and that affected my steps forward as it deeply affected the relationship with me and how much love and support I could provide to myself through organic self love.
Self love would only manifest if I give up the need to feel small, believe I am wrong and responsible for other people's mindsets, and genuinely let go the many layers that I had surrounded and engulfed myself in which is a constant state of disbelief for loving myself for who I am as I believed all my life that I would be loved only if I am so and so.
And so self love is such an ignored, abandoned concept that I had disconnected from that I didn't realize that I would self sabotage my health, mental wellbeing further with one foot ready to move forward with the next steps towards my life advancement and another holding me back that it's too effort consuming, energy consuming, and that I am already sensitive and somewhat weak and so removed myself from investing myself into anything constructive for my life and wellbeing.
The intuitive nudge came in 2019 when a voice from within said that I was not true to myself and from there on my efforts started to come together but without genuine self belief and kindness towards myself, I just did the inner work of actualizing my suppressed feelings and blocks but had a lot of anger and sadness attached to it.
It was only gradually and some 4,5 years into truth seeking that I could get a sense of how far I had moved away from myself and how important it was to move closer to myself and no amount of closeness to divine energies and gurus was enough until I felt deep down good enough about myself and had more strength in my faith.
Faith is your true and open love to your inner self and the God who lives in it and the more I started looking inward, the more it made sense that truth helped me bridge all those parts that I was disconnected with and also helped me reconcile truthfully that there's only so much I can mind and that I am not some repaired toy to be frustrated and criticize about the way my mother behaved with me.
I am a separate self, an individual who has her personal space, her energy boundaries, and there's no better way than to tend to it, take care of it, and be there for it more than trying to adapt to being there for others in order to perform as a daughter, as a niece, as a cousin, as a granddaughter, as a friend and so on which I was doing and living this way in a loop until recently.
I do feel bad for this younger , innocent version of me who felt under pressure to be, to perform a certain way so that I could get accepted for who I am. I could never accept me for who I am without seeking validation from others. But this is a thing of the past and all this has been possible owing to my sensitivity and intuitive nature which helped me connect back to my inner truths and it has been a life changing and beautiful turn of situations, circumstances and also my choices which have all added up to becoming more and more self aware and kind to myself.
My being open and kind has been a precious gift which I have either given away unthinkingly and has been a thankless job, but the more I stay true to it with awareness, sensitivity and kindness, the more this gift is what I feel good about and proud about.
My mother-in-law's toxicity and inner garbage has reached all new heights of psychological pollution for those around. She resists being the disinfectant that she can be and is so consumed by her own addictive need for dramatizing her emotional baggage that others can't bear weight of anymore and sends dense vibes effortlessly which others including me wish to keep away from.
She is the pest in the garden of acceptance, forgiveness, and letting go because she can chew away on all the supportive manure and leave her root to rot and expect other flowering plants to sympathize and stop their individual growth in order to support her. She can't support herself let alone enable others in their growth. A damage beyond repair is the state of her inner emotional and mental damage and she is responsible for it.
She resists inner introspection, honestly asking herself about her behaviors, thinking patterns, and wants others to dive and sink with her in her shallow, dark insecure, moldy waters and that's really not possible, and she knows all too well but cannot resist drinking and spilling over from those same waters even if many a pot has broken completely, unable to carry the weight of her stuck emotions, mood swings, vengeful tendencies, comparing and belittling others and playing the victim card herself - I wonder how less perturbed can one be and not get overwhelmed at all by the grossness of her past traumas which wouldn't have trickled down to the gross level had she developed and strived for refining herself and seeing herself stronger and inspiring in her own way, rather than proving a point or two or more about being the victor in the victimhood and expecting her family and relatives to sympathize with her over and over.
Her traumas from her past have hardened her to stay stuck within an angered, helpless, victim mode rumination which she has not snapped out of and is a negative source of energy wherever she goes. She looks at life from her own lens and can never look beyond and see bigger at others struggles or even bother knowing how others cope up or had dealt with their respective traumas, because there's almost everyone under the sun who has gone through challenges and traumas and it's the way each of us responds which makes us who we are from within.
And so challenges are not given to corner you or anyone in particular, but it's life's way of testing your resolve, your strength, and in helping through them for your soul to take home lessons and experiences.
My mother-in-law has been a challenge and a pain to me but has been a karmic teacher in her own way for giving me the above lesson on inner strength, as it took a lot of it, trust me, to see her for who she really is and not get infected by her toxicities.
My connection to how much I made believe my lies to be true and self gaslighted into victimhood expecting freedom from her trap from those she made herself feel small with in order to adapt herself with others and that means literally everyone. I didn't know the first thing about being myself and was neglecting that until it gets invisible for me to really tune to so that I can let that slide as if I don't matter yet again all over again for all these decades of experience of doing that to myself.
It got so thick and numb in me that I just couldn't cut the layers, the root of those layers, and the space that it took within me eating my insides out as if an infested bacteria that was feeding off my emotional pain and physical sensitivities. It was as if I just had to give in in order to stay true to adapting to this self created limitation pattern that got woven into how I was looking at my life, and so much of it seeped into past wounds as if they have been empowered to define me. And the real pain was that it had stopped hurting - it stopped hurting to not be genuinely myself, my moods, highs and lows, frustrations, fears, anxieties and so much more.
What truly stood out for me was how many times I had gotten saved, cautioned, protected, guided, reassured and so on through divine interventions - just quick, clear messages coming straight out of nowhere and landing when I really needed to hear, feel, or see them, but it took me long to realize that I was not willing to see how close I was to the spirit world and was seemingly burying myself with the smallness of my adapted limitations that I had repressed myself to fit into.
There was nothing new about my life and I had taken chances to try something new but only to want to have the old patterns of thinking and old habits to stick through for me as if they had to be my close friends to see me through. And they did do that but there's only so much that old friends can come along specially ones who are not good enough for you and you are just holding onto them because you think you need them, and they have just pushed past your boundaries to indulge, utilize and misuse your big, giving, creative, kind space.
It's true then that it's not who you were that matters now but who you are and who you want to be and become that matters. It's just work in progress and at whatever timeline that really kickstarts doesn't matter as long as you keep going and are sincerely committed to it.
You can restart your connections - what makes you feel hopeful, feel like your heart expands in joy, like your tears wipe out the dust from the limiting layers collected from the past, like you can trust to talk, to cry, to open your heart to your God, your guiding energies, your higher self, because you deserve to have a moment or two of quiet, of truth, of love, of gratitude, if you really mean them in any particular order that maybe or even not and have a bone to pick with, but truly spoken from the heart, from the crust of innocence, from the clear voice of your inner child, is all that matters. The validation that you are heard, understood, loved, protected is a beautiful gift and not something to let go of if you discover them from deep within your inner core, from your God within.
It's just one life we have got we think or we maybe like this from many past births, but not being the same old self making the same old mistakes and feeling like nothing new is happening is a loop we can break free from at least in this lifetime. We can recreate ourselves if we allow that to happen by willing to change how we see ourselves, what we think of about ourselves, and what are the words, the inner chatter we go through to create the narratives that makes our life stories what it is in our minds. We can if we put our hearts into it change our life narratives and take immense pride, responsibility, and trueness to this purpose if we channelize how to delimit ourselves, how to reconnect with our soul, our inner soil, and grow fully, unconditionally, and with all the love that you choose to nourish it with.
To forgive myself - the hatred I had harbored for my body because it was/is "too sensitive".
To forgive myself - for seeking constant approval for my health conditions and emotional support for helping me regulate my emotions and feelings.
To forgive myself - for abandoning my true feelings, frustrations, emotional pains, sadness, anger, hurt and adapting to environment by repressing them.
To forgive myself - for not trusting my inner strength enough and seeking validation from others for who I am, my personality, individuality, and weak boundary setting, and giving in easily my will power by not working on my resilience and constantly staying in a state of numb repression and robotic way of functioning on day to day basis.
To forgive myself- for thinking I can't put forth my opinions and shutting down on my individual voice and just obliging with an ideal picture of myself in order to adapt to others expectations.
To forgive myself - for lying to myself every day just so that I can stay in the victim mode and keep expecting empathy or understanding from outside world and form judgements that I stubbornly stay stuck to.
To forgive myself - for depriving my self of genuine self respect and trying to justify others definitions of who I am and who I should be.
To forgive myself - for not honoring my life space and taking control of my life as my responsibility and choosing to disconnect, stay indifferent at the cost of my inner growth as a person.
