I’ve been in inquiry around this question, observing all the ways I habitually disconnect from my experience.
It’s easy not to pay attention and to enable this part of me that is used to operating on autopilot.
But, if you asked me if disconnection feels pleasurable or satisfying, I would adamantly tell you, “No.”
There is truly no contest when we compare how we feel when we are orienting from flow and attunement with our deepest essence and truth and when we are noncommittally skirting around the edges of what we want and are resting in a state of perpetual checkout.
You know the state of which I speak.
It’s the state where you feel confused about who you are and what you want.
It’s when you question where you are going, and outer feedback feels safer than trusting your inner knowing.
This is a painful place to be, and yet, without the contrast of disconnection and the discomfort of being out of touch with all that we are, we come to know ourselves intimately in a way we would never have before.
I am not saying that true knowing of ourselves requires suffering.
True knowing and embodying of all that we are requires a devotion to learning the parts of ourselves we have been afraid to fully acknowledge, touch, and feel.
Intimacy with our true nature and potential blooms with patience, compassion, profound care, courage, consistency, and a tender, cracked-open heart.
Being intimate with our becoming is a feeling process, a feeling from the inside out.
We learn to welcome the roots that stretch so far into the depths and darkness that we can’t possibly see their origin.
We learn to listen within the spaces between sound, story and thought and hear with our whole beings, not just our ears.
We become willing to relinquish what we think we know so we can be present in embracing the truth of all that we are in this now.
This path is a particular kind of alchemy and not for the faint of heart.
Once you start seeking truth, all will be revealed, and in the revelation, there is no place to hide and no place to turn but fully towards.
And, in this process of turning towards, we come to taste and savor what truly being free in body, mind, heart, spirit, and soul is.
