Environments and Energy

Remember when you would visit a friend’s house and you would see how different things were?  There were different scents, different ways of doing things like eating a meal, putting things away? Different ways folks would interact with one another.

My relationship with my self has deepened and I have learned how to listen to my body and the signals it sends. Now, as I step into environments I am aware of how they feel around me and within me. I am aware of the space I am entering. I am aware of how I feel in them. Some feel light and upbeat, others feel dense, heavy and stagnant. I also notice shifts in the environments and have had waves of nausea, tears and even a strong desire to flee.

This is new for me, this listening, this awareness and I am working with it. I am developing ways to adapt. Ways to accommodate. Ways to accept. ( Interestingly, it has been easy for me to provide ways to adapt an environment, to create ways to accommodate someone in an environment and to offer perspectives to accept an environment when I work with children and others. For me, this journey has been to find ways to support myself in various environments).

It is become clear to me that the way I have known, the way that has been shown is not the only way. There are many ways- many ways to interact, many ways to speak, many ways to be together.

The way it has been does not need to be the way it is. We have choices. We can choose. We have the ability to choose. We have the ability to choose how we interact, how we respond, how we engage.

I was told once, “that is the way, you just have to accept it.”  I remember thinking in the moment, No, I do not. I am not buying in to this. I do not agree. This way does not work for me. It was a deep visceral response. Even recalling it now I feel my jaw clench and the grip in my hand tighten.

You know when something is not working for you. You feel it in your body. Something within rises up. Something is there. For a long time I could not place it. I could not name it. I knew something “wasn’t right,” I knew something did not feel good.  I knew I felt uncomfortable. I knew I wanted to remove myself, to find some way to leave, some way to hide.

Yet for years I would stay. Stay in the familiar pattern. The familiar known. Feeling that is what I should do.

I know now, the only thing to do is to be you.

You can break the pattern. You can break the chain. You can remove the shackles. You can remove the ties of bondage.

What masks have you donned to fit in?

In what ways have you adapted to the environment?

How have you shut off parts of your self to function, to play a role?

What camouflage have you put on?

Many years ago, I was offered the book The Power of One, by Bryce Courtenay. I held on to the book, feeling I should read it since it was offered to me. I opened the book and began to read it a couple of times. I wasn’t feeling it. I wasn’t hooked, I was not drawn in. Something about it was not working for me. Until I made another attempt and that time I could not put it down. 

The book has risen to the surface for me again. As I held it in my hands, in preparation to mail it back to the friend that offered it to me, I felt called to open the pages and read it again.  The words. The characters. The story. The narrative. The dialogue, internal and external. All of it. It holds me. It is as if I can not get enough.

Here are a few quotes from the book that I have been sitting with:

You can get used to anything, I discovered. pg 44.

I learned to be in two places at once. pg 44

I knew then, that the person on the outside was only a shell, a presence to be seen and provoked. Inside was the real me. pg 46

How do you access your self?

What do you know about your self?

Do the environments you are in, bolster, support and nurture this aspect of your self that you know?

Each time you step into an environment, you have the opportunities to see, to notice, to observe.  Listen. Listen to the signals in your body. You have an opportunity to choose. To choose how you engage, choose how you want to interact, choose how you respond, choose the words you want to say, or the silence that you hold. All of them are choices that are available for you.

Bryce Courtney writes… And the beginning of the power of one- how I learned that in each of us there burns a flame of independence that must never be allowed to go out. That as long as it exists within us we cannot be destroyed. pg 20

Environments, interactions, folks can each alter your flame.  At times, there can be attempts to snuff out the flame, throw water on the flame or moments when your fire is tended by giving it the air and the fuel it needs to shine bright, radiate light and heat while dancing with joy.

How do you tend to your flame?

What environments nurture your flame?

What environments snuff your flame?

When you shine?

When you feel dim?

Ask yourself these questions. Listen. Listen by hearing the words. Listen to the silence in between the words. Notice what arises.

Tending to my flame and inviting you to so the same,

Sara