On clarity...
Opening, allowing and surrendering to what is.
These words stormed me in a personal moment of metamorphosis.
At times throughout the piece I write from ‘we’, yet truly I mean me.
And, I also trust the way the words landed, knowing that they’re talking to more than just my personal journey.
So with that, I share them here…
Ultimately, experiencing clarity in life comes through the acceptance of what is.
Even if I feel lost, in the acceptance of the lostness comes the clarity.
Confusion is the resistance to what is.
And suffering is birthed by any unwillingness to look at why I am resisting what is.
A version of the work when it comes to our growth, evolution and embodiment, is to sit with, examine and seek to understand why I am suffering the current situation.
What do I believe this situation says about me that I don’t want to see? What is it about this particular unfolding of life that I find so hard to accept? What is it about the way life looks right now that I can’t face?
In this inquiry, we find the social stories we are carrying about how life should be. We see the assumptions on how I should act, what I should say and the right way I should be. This is where we locate what walks of life we deem worthy and those we deem unworthy. This is where we discover what actions we associate with love, and more importantly, those that we definitely do not. This is where we see the level of self judgment we carry, clearly mirrored in the way we judge others. And this is where we meet the secret, social contracts we are unknowingly living in accordance with.
A lot of the time, and in total honesty, when I reflect on past moments of anguish I see that part of me would rather stay in the suffering of confusion than clearly see these false stories.
It is brave work to shed the layers of social safety we call identity. As we continue to drop these facades, we meet the edge of insanity, aloneness and lostness. And along the way, we see the depth of our addiction to distraction.
Many cycle through the repetitious story of ‘feel the pinch - pay for pain relief - stay the same’.
A large part of our society runs on offering that next little hit, that ‘healthy’ outlet, that thing that becomes the next addiction, gifting us another minute, month or year of bearable discomfort in the straight suit of ignorance.
Until, we reach our own breaking point.
Until we can no longer look at the lies and pretend it feels beautiful. We can no longer abide in the social story of distraction. We can no longer cope with the elephant in the room.
At this moment we make a choice. We choose to set aside the distractions and delve deeply into the boredom, we allow the mind to crack into what it believes will be insanity and we surrender to the stream of life without needing to know exactly which shore, at what time and on which date we will delivered to.
This process, of allowing the unknown to pierce every aspect of life, is the paradoxical path of living life in complete clarity.
From what I am experiencing, the process of allowing clarity to be my centre is one of many simple moments, recurring surrenders and honest internal conversation.
I pray you are all meeting your edge with the will to see what is beyond the desire to distract and the courage to be with the unfolding of now through all the cycles of time.
With love,
Ryan
This one hit home