Outsourcing and Guidance

I have been sitting with this after reading a chart of a dearly Beloved.

Are outsourcing and guidance the same?

How do I view them?

What do they mean to me, what have I come to know about these through my experiences?

When do I outsource?

When do I seek guidance?

As I have been writing over the past bit, when I give over my power and my ability to make choices, when I place that responsibility on someone else, then to me, I am outsourcing. I am no longer standing in my power, claiming my strength and my capabilities. I am turning those over to someone outside of me. This, I am coming to understand, happens for a variety of reasons, one of which came up today. I outsource when I am tired. When I am drained, when I am exhausted. Now, to me, this is different than having someone decide say for example, what I am going to eat when I get home from a long shift and I do not feel like I have the capacity (read, nor do I really care) what I eat. In that moment, it is more important that I eat, that I nourish my body and take care of it than being concerned about someone making a decision for me. For I have learned, after over a year of not eating because I was too tired, that this choice wrecks havoc on my body and nervous system.

Outsourcing, is wanting someone else to do it and often someone else to have the responsibility of doing it, is different to me than seeking guidance. Seeking guidance or tuning to a friend or mentor to talk something out, to receive another perspective or simply for them to hold the space so that I can talk something through is a way in which I maintain my me-ness and the abilitiy to make choices, I am simple looking to other to shed light or provide an gaze that I have not yet seen. I find, when a friend holds space for me, I can usually talk openly and freely and it is in that held space where the insights and clarity come. Where a light goes off or dawn awakens something within me.

When friends are able to hold space- to truly listen, not listen to respond, not listen to tell you what to do-when a friend really hears you, I have found that it provides me the space to hear myself. To come to my own conclusions and my own awareness. To make connections that are known to me.  It provides me the opportunity to tap into my own inner knowing, my own inner guidance. It allows me to bolster my confidence of what I know to be true. When I figure something out it is affirming and confirming. It is validating and ressauring. Like a deep sigh. Ah yes. Yes, yes, yes. I do know. I can trust myself.

When I outsource, I am asking someone else to figure it out for me. And really, how can they? There is no one else in the world that has the same experiences, perspective, the unquieness of me that makes me, me. No one else can be me, so why would I want someone to make a decision for me?

I used to willingly allow others to make decisions for me. What I would eat. What I would wear. What I would say or not say. I say used to, because during those times, I did not know myself. I used to think that others knew me better than I knew myself. And to be honest, they probably did because my relationship with myself was so shallow, so surface. I fluctuated all of the time. I had no idea who I was. I would meld and adapt, cram and fit myself into whatever role someone wanted me to be molded into. Willingly. Until I met myself and I learned and am learning that I no longer want to life my life that way, the way someone else wants or believes or thinks it should be. That was then.

This is now.

What I notice sometimes is that I get tripped up around timing. Because I have found that when I want something, I want it sooner than later. I do not want to have to wait the 3 years for it to circle around to me or come flowing to me. When it takes time to come to me, like an answer to a question, the space in between the asking and the knowing usually involves a huge head game, you know the tug and pull back and forth? This is where self doubt comes in, self negation shows up and I do not like these stories. I do not like when they present their presence in my mind. They show up and lug me toward the desire to return to my old ways, wondering why I put forth all of the time and energy of being present and aware - of getting to know myself. For what?  I cannot tell you how many times, through sobs and wails, tears flowing, gasping for breath have I asked, For what? What more do you want from me? What now?

And then, the clarity comes and I realize that I am holding myself up to some sort of measuring stick. This isn’t totally new to me. I have been held in tornado storms in my mind, hurricanes sitting in the eye of it all, waiting for it to pass. When the storm stops and the clouds part and when there is some break, I can begin to see. I can see what is holding me or what I have been holding on to.

In October of last year, I was in the grips of something. Its jaws were latched tight. I felt as if was being shaken from side to side, so disoriented, so confused.

There was a sense of rigidness from that time that was showing up. The rigid, fixed thinking that I was being asked to addressed was strong, the pull of the mind is so strong. It was so strong that when I was literally physically tired, I told myself that I could not rest. I told myself that it is not okay to be tired and that I needed to push through. And yet there were times when I was really generally tired. At that time, I was doing a lot for reading. I read about the great masters and teachers saying that there is no such thing as being tired and that it is all on the level of the mind. Yet, there I was, tired and fighting against something within me, these stories of judgement and competition. And I was confused. Conflicted with what I was reading and the reality of being me, because I kept finding myself here in this body on earth and feeling that this body sometimes gets tired. It became a real internal battle to allow myself to soften and allow myself to be. To give myself permission and not get wrapped up in the snares of shame and self hatred. Again, I was in this fixed, rigid place. I was locked in a place and the grip was tight. So, when I reached out to Beloved Lisa and shared this, these intimate stories from the depths of my mind, I had such gratitude, gratitude that she continued (and continues to this day) to offer me, to hold me in in her lap so that I can to see myself fully and talk and process and heal and to say out loud, aspects that are often in my mind…that are dark and hidden and do not want to see the light.

Lisa offered me this:

There is something within you that is measuring you, measure that is not allowing the rest, that is not allowing that which has already arrived….

 allow yourself, to fully take your seat knowing you are perfection right NOW-

 nowhere to go, nothing to do

I offer this as an invitation for you to rest into

Absolutely fully, let go

Let go

Be in the moment, no plan

No should, no expectation

It’s about letting go of all of it

It’s not about claiming, it is about letting it go.

And fully knowing that grace of you.

That was over a 15 months ago. 15 months in linear time. 15 months, that when I stumbled on the pages in my journal that revealed her words and the description, I wrote about what was unfolding in my life at that time, brought me to a full stop. I sat and in the sitting I realized how much I have grown. How much I have changed. How my effort, energy devoted to and commitment to myself has been unshakable. And how much I have softened in and accepted. How I have developed forgiveness, compassion and love for myself. All of which is expanding and growing with each step I take.

Each time I trust my inner knowing. Each time I turn to others for support and guidance. Each time I learn to rely on myself while simultaneously trust that there is something much larger than me at play.

A force that has guided my way on.

So, as I type this I guess, in a sense I am outsourcing. Instead of outsourcing to a person, I am trusting the Divine intelligence in partnership with myself, my full self, my whole self, that has brought me to this very moment, typing these words here for you and me to read.

Whole and full. Full and Whole.

Sara