I had arrived at a new place in my life. A new sense of softness arose within me, yet it also held a fierce strength, a fierce determination and tenacity that has expanded with time and burns brightly in the fire of my Soul. I had birthed a Warrior Woman through dancing in my fire, dancing through the moments that I thought I would die, yet in truth I was dying. The self that was a victim was dying, the self that was a survivor was dying. I died in those flames of pain and in every moment of death I was being rebirthed, the proverbial Phoenix arising from the flames, a woman of fire, a woman of substance and grace, of truth and love was to emerge from the pain. I immersed into this woman gathering up her strength and calling her power back home with arms outstretched to the sky as I was walking away from this relationship that had held my spirit between clenched fists.
Down the track a new relationship sprung to life and I met a man who cherishes me in his beautiful and unique way. Yet in the beginning, it was difficult for me and for him too. This was the evolution into full self-awareness and discovering all that was running in my unconscious programming through a new relationship where old stories boiled rapidly to the surface, playing out over and over until one day in a heated argument I stormed out of the house, the usual tears welling up in my eyes and emotions of the past being expressed through the same patterns. I didn’t make it far out of the house when I stopped dead in my tracks once again and thought to myself “I don’t want to do this anymore.” I turned around, went back inside and returned to what I had been doing prior to the outburst. In another flash, I had become aware, I had once again become the observer of myself and chose change. I recognised a cycle, a pattern that played out and realised that it no longer served me, it was time to let it go. I think that this was where I realised that I needed to deepen into knowing myself and understanding these trigger points that I carried and the emotions that came with them so that I could move into the person that I truly wished to be.
To shift into a new consciousness, we need to train ourselves to become the observing presence of ourselves. This takes a certain amount of practise. As I mentioned previously, it is up to you how often you train and how quickly you build the muscle required to level up and achieve the results you are after. It requires discipline and a willingness to step fully into self-responsibility.
We start by watching our thinking. We notice where our judgements lie and what the beliefs are that lie beneath those judgements. How do we perceive those around us and how is the world showing up for us? There is a guiding principle that can be a bitter pill to swallow at times but gives us an accurate reflection of our state of consciousness and our relationship with ourselves. It is called the Mirror Principle and it teaches us that the people and experiences we have in our lives are simply a reflection of ourselves. Juicy, isn’t it? I personally struggled with this principle when I first learned of it at 25 years old. It was only years later in my life that I was able to integrate its wisdom to some degree. It is confronting for those of us that have experienced trauma through abuse in any of its forms and everything inside of us may want to recoil, lash out and strike at it in defiance. Yet, I recognise that out of all of the abusers in my life, I was the greatest. I abused myself far longer than any other would ever abuse me, talk about mirror principle in action there.
We can notice how we are being by those that we have surrounded ourselves with, and this is often where friendships and relationships may fall by the wayside as we awaken to truth and love because we begin to shift our perceptions and they may no longer align with those around us. Sometimes this path can be lonely for a time, but I can assure you that the further down it you walk the more you actually relish in the moments of solitude and your need to be constantly surrounded by others begins to dissipate, plus you draw to yourself new people, places and experiences that align with who it is you are choosing to be and how you wish to create your life. There is simply a bridging that needs to occur between the old you and the new you, your old world and your new world. There is a space between those worlds where there is a sense of chaos and emptiness all at the same time, and it can be enticing to give it all up and return to the old ways, but with a little more persistence and a few more steps you get to the other side and your new way of life begins to manifest more and more in each moment of every day. This concept can be seen on a collective scale in our world reality at this time in history. The old world is falling away and crumbling as the structures of society that no longer serve begin to crumble and a new consciousness is rising. We are in the bridging phase, and all seems chaotic, scary and even hopeless. The key is to hold the Dreaming. To keep Dreaming into your life, into the collective experience because it is the Dreaming that manifests and we all Dream all of the time.
What is it that you are Dreaming? What is your world telling you? Are you surrounded by people that uplift and inspire you and others, or are you surrounded by people that are judgemental and negative? It may be the case that you have both these types of people in your life and it may also be true that you may maintain some of these relationships because you can see the deeper essence of these people that is simply waiting to shine through. Either way, they are all mirrors, reflections of aspects of yourself, gifting you with insight into your inner state of being.
Take a moment here and reflect on the situations that are currently presenting in your life. Are you in a never-ending cycle of struggle? Do you feel drained and tired by life? Are your relationships with those around you strained or difficult?
These mirrors are there to give us valuable information on how and who we are being. Our outer reality is the manifestation of feedback that, if we are listening, informs our inner reality of the necessary adjustments required to create differently. Once we can move through the discomfort of this principle then it becomes a valuable tool that tells us moment by moment where we need to make shifts in our energy and return to presence. Self-awareness is fundamentally about presence and what is presence? It is the gift of our essence. It is the expression of love unconditional that cherishes the present moment, the now moment in all its sanctity. You see, when we are so fully present in the now moment, we enter Divinity. Think of a dancer as she moves and flows, her eyes closed with a smile upon her face lost in the moment, consumed by the music or the musician that she dances with exuding his passionate expression through his song. The athlete with focus so intent that there is nothing else in his or her awareness but the present moment and the task at hand. There is power in this place, yet we spend so much time living in the past and projecting into the future that we forget where we are at times. When we are lost in the past and projecting into our future from the past we are creating more of the same, because we are creating from the old stories. Until we become aware of our beliefs, not just the surface level beliefs that we know of but those that live in the depths of the dark spaces that whisper to us that we are not good enough; that we are failures; that we could never possibly have all that we choose, until we know these and transmute them we will be creating our future from our past reality and life will always be the same cycle in whichever form it presents for you.
The more present we become the more self-awareness we cultivate because we can only be aware when we are present, and we can only be present when we are aware. A beautiful and complimentary circle that opens us into expansion.
Opening our awareness means that we open the inner listening and we start noticing the feedback from our outer reality. The more we watch ourselves in every aspect of our being, the more we know ourselves and the more we know ourselves the easier it becomes to create the change that we seek, but we have to keep flexing the muscle of consciousness and training. Every day presents us with opportunities, countless moments there for us to use to our advantage, to mould and shape our reality the way that we choose for it to be.
One day I was sitting and crocheting my first and only crochet project to date. I was using this incredible wool that changed into different colours as it unravelled, it was like watching a kaleidoscope evolve as I worked which was mesmerising. I had no music or documentaries playing as I would usually, for whatever reason, and I entered into observation. I watched my mind cycle through the same sequence of thoughts like a buffer on a computer screen going around and around and around. I didn’t fully engage in the thoughts but simply allowed them to be and witnessed them. For seven hours I noticed this cycle and pattern
