Exhume your chalice
Assume the position. Child's pose...
They say our cells regenerate every 7 years. Of course, we don't acquire them all at once so the shedding isn't so dramatic at times. But the reality is, you do not have the same body as when you were a child, literally. It's our ongoing locust shell contained BY our spirit and defined by our soul. Our bodies will evolve with our regenerated cellular structure which is based off of the pattern of muscle tension created and compounded from your reaction to events in your life. This creates an altered persona of the child/soul dependent upon how strongly conditioned habits were formed and maintained. I created a direction for myself (one of many) in yoga after I realized that I was taught to push and stress myself to the limit and continually take on more and more. This was ingrained in my fibers. I realized how this never left me time to be intimate with the process and exactly what type of pattern I was half-hazardly creating for myself just because I'd been conditioned to push by 20 year old child-parents still learning to deal with their own frustrations and fears. I learned that taking on was one way to go but not the only and not always the best way. I began approaching movement with softness and ease - allowing joy to fill the spaces I would usually rush past in an effort to extend myself. My body responded back in kindness and began to trust me with it/her again. During the times I would consciously practice loving movement I noticed how foreign it was for me to give to myself. I felt like I was treating myself like a child, except as a child I don't have many memories of kind and safe touches and embraces. This made me look at how I approach and react to others. How would I expect a child from my experience to behave with themselves or others? Can I forgive myself for behaviors that I would never fault another innocent child for? How do I side step my conditioning to find out what dreams that child had and make them come true for the unobstructed me? Start small. Last month I treated myself to a massage, which are rare these days, and was debating on whether to splurge on an additional foot reflexology treatment. God asked me "what would you want for little jenny?" I got the extra treatment. Its not always a financial exchange but finding ways to spoil the child within me and learn to feel worthy of it gives life new purpose, fun and excitment to my journey. Reconnecting to childhood can be scary or just too stuffed back into the memory for some. Some great ways to reconnect to our former selves is to use nostalgia, which we do naturally, like watching old tv shows from childhood, hearing an old song or playing an old childhood game. Yoga is wonderful for triggering muscle memory through childlike and even infantile-like movement once some guards have been let down. Writing or drawing out old stories and memories you play in your head can trigger a scavenger hunt of resolutions.
During the second day of my "God encounter" he began dancing with me to songs that brought up old childhood memories. I'd heard these songs many times before but they'd never hit me in this way. He reminded me of a time my mother was yelling at me and I immediately recollected how frightened, shamed and tense I'd felt in that moment because I believed I was the sole cause for this outburst, ie. had I not been such a horrible girl my mother would be happy, peaceful and love me again. This was an energetic pattern/mantra I continued to practice unknowingly under stress until I was faced with the root of the adopted response. A response based on false interpretation has influenced every stressful situation in my life, a false response that has colored my view of myself for 30 years. When God placed me inside my mother's mind during the situtation I could feel her anger and frustration from years of progressed repression and past experience of being on the recieving end, her reaction had almost 0% to do with me but my child self took on 100% of the blame. I realized I had to and could finally resolve letting that weight go. So many people in the spiritual circles are looking for someone with answers. We were all born with the answers in tact and the closer we can bring ourselves to our innocence can reconnect us more closely to the whole (knowing).
Ask yourself some questions. Would the child me approve of the direction I've taken my life? Would he/she feel safe/comfortable/free/at peace with my environment/decisions I've made/company I keep? This can help to resolve subconscious disconnects to our spiritual nature and spiritual sickness will always manifest in the physical. Pull out old picture of yourself at different ages and ask those questions. Meditate on yourself rather than some iconic symbol. Do you have trouble looking at old pictures of yourself? Many do, especially women. Why does this fear plague you? If we hate ourselves so much why do many run off so quickly to make reproductions? What part of you is trying to get out of you so that you HAVE to stare it in the face? Do you see the beauty yet?
Instead of searching, sometimes you only have to look behind you. Practice inversion and not just diversion. How would you treat the "child you" today if they were to materialize? Would you give yourself the same treatment? Can you accept self love without criticism? Tension holds us back, it's time let go of the hardened caste that's held and protected us while we developed within rigid struture. Recreate a you that is capable of living in a world of love by learning how to receive it.
Happy unearthing day!
