What now

I spent a long time trying to find my own way by copying others. Course, videos, books, Q&As, discussions, coaches. I did a really good job of looking like I was working on my own growth by paying to hear how others did. Even with coaches and mentors, people I trust and respect and love, I would be really good at creating the impression I was doing the work. I treated it like being at school and trying to impress the teacher.

I carry a guilt that I am wasting everyones time, including my own, by watching others and then trying to figure out how their journey will shape mine. Usually from an action less and insert thinking position, which attempts to claim strain and effort by the furrows in my brow.

He must be taking his healing seriously; look how hard he is thinking about it.

I carry a fear that I am running out of time. I experience a wound in my experience every day. This could be anxiety (that rushes up like water through a cavern system, drowning everyone caught inside) triggered by any thing. The event is irrelevant when my world collapses all the same. This could be the catastrophising that stalks me. A spectre of impending hells that my mind insists on exploring and planning futility for - they are all world ending. This could be the release and joy, followed by bile inducing guilt, that I feel when thinking about loved ones dieing and finding some solace in the immeasurable grief that they will never bare the suffering the world has in store for them (manifested solely in my mind). Soon I will be old and looking back I will see the chance I had to be different, and I will choke myself on my own hand, and scream til my throat hurts. You fool. You let the fire rage. You watched it all burn.

I don't want to live like this anymore. So I went to books. And courses. And you tube. And google. And reddit. And coaches. And retreats. And everything else that I hoped would hold an answer. Each purchase, click, read or view a step closer to salvation. I have not made much progress in the last few years.

Not all is lost. I am not forlorn. In fact writing this I am my most positive and optimistic I have been. Because I have along my travels found frequencies that make my soul oscillate. I have had glimpses of enlightenment, ways of being, practices, spirituality that all combine to create a life I want to live. Not leaving or eradicating parts of me, chopping out the things I hate about how I am, but aligning them to who I want to be, or at least not letting them align me away from that.

Its hard. Facing the same situation that I have for decades. The same adrenaline of anxiety. The same cinema screen playing the inevitable horror of my future life. The same self talk that hates me. The same loneliness of my existence, utterly worthless. I face these and have found ways to be with them differently. To challenge them, or listen to them, or to be with them but to stop letting them be me. To sit with anxierty and let it wale at me in screeching tones but to recognise it is not me. I can sit and embrace it as a child, holding it while it screams into my chest and begs for it all to be over. I can comfort it. But it takes energy.

How many times have I told myself I am useless, or that my existence is pointless? How many thoughts like that have fallen as drops and been captured in waters that can drown me? And every time now I choose to be different. Taking drops out of these murky waters with chopsticks, slowly and one at a time.

Practice and spirituality have been one of those frequencies that resonates. The daily practice, the work, the tiny battles in my head that can all be reconciliations and reshaping if I choose them to be, I find effortless when I open myself to a connection with people, land and spirit. When I take the time each day to connect and be with that which I don't understand but I feel is with me when I honour it. It is immense. It is the weight of the night sky condensed to a point in my heart.

So I am finding my craft. I am committing to my own practice and my own work. To enjoy and be with an infinite that I know is there, when I am open and weave it into my reality. Weaving my own web.