Yes, this time of quarantine has certainly provided the time to reconnect with friends and family, but I have experienced the most unexpected rekindling with someone I have neglected while being occupied with the busy-ness of life. Myself. I have discovered a wounded little girl who took on others’ actions as reflections of her own self worth. And because she is a peace-keeper at heart, tried to be perfect to fix everyone else. Being a high achiever was a way to prove that she was worth love. She was drawn to partners who needed her because they, too, were wounded. But helping others only took her focus away from herself, so the wound never healed.
Flash forward to Spring of 2020. With more quiet time, I have been drawn back to meditation and yoga practices, which took a back seat to what I thought was more important (“real life”, I called it). I have found a self-awareness that has allowed me to actually “see” my thoughts with my mind’s eye and consciously decide whether they serve me or not. When I catch myself thinking negative or judgmental thoughts, I acknowledge them, thank my subconscious for bringing them up, and redirect my thinking to life- and love-affirming thoughts. It is helping me shift out of the need to blame and control to being more at peace with myself and others. It is a process but I’m seeing evidence of a real transformation.
Sometimes the physical body reminds me of what no longer serves me. It is then that I am learning to pay attention to the signals and what they are trying to tell me, rather than soothe them. So when I threw my back out while cleaning my 25 year old stepson’s room because a contractor was coming to the house unexpectedly, I immediately stopped and examined what thoughts I was having right before it happened. Wow, was that an eye opening experience! I recognized a pattern of thinking that needed to be transformed. And so my healing – not of my back, but of the underlying wound – began. I affirmed aloud a new perspective (even though I admit I didn’t believe it 100% yet) and acknowledged that I created this pain. I apologized to my body for holding on to this pattern, asked it for forgiveness, thanked my body for bringing it to my awareness, and showed my body the self-care it deserved.
You may recognize this process as Ho’oponopono. “I’m sorry, please forgive me, I thank you and I love you”. There are lots of resources online where you can learn more about it. Not only is it simple and easy to adopt, but it is one of the most powerful practices I have found that truly gets to the core of our subconscious beliefs and releases them so that we can heal.
The most important lesson I’ve learned from reconnecting with myself, though, is that this only works and continues to work if we practice it. We may be tempted to jump back into life they way we were living it before we discovered ourselves, but then we will once again lose that connection. When an opportunity presents itself and we have the chance to spend time alone to give our souls what they need, we need to take it. Because the benefits of knowing thyself spread way beyond ourselves. Everyone whose life we touch will feel it. More love. More peace. More of who we really are at our soul’s core. And that is re-connection like I’ve never felt before.