to tell you the truth….
To tell you the truth I’m really struggling with reality these days. A certain degree of my world view stems from my brain’s interpretation of information. Data it receives from the outside world. The balance of my understanding comes from direct experience, messages from my internal world. My inner compass. Feet on the ground, breath in the belly, visceral impressions. Instinct. Intuition. The inside job.
Maybe you too are experiencing a change in your relation to info gleaned from the outside world. My inside world is undergoing a shakeup caused by that shift. Just a short ten years ago I leaned into deemed reliable news sources. Without question. Trusted places my brain went to gather information. In the convenience of hindsight, I realize this assumption of truth was perhaps foolhardy.
But the polarization of the landscape came on creepy-crawly slow. And the rise of appalling and deliberate disinformation has been insidious. And the recent spate of outright bully-lying has exploded on the scene with vengeance. Of course for so many decades it was not perfect but there was a sense of status quo, old school, same old-same old. And now, all of a sudden, it is not. Any security we felt may have been wishful thinking but now there is not even wishful thinking.
Okay. A new reality. If we’ve invested in a practice of awareness, this is where the shit hits the literal fan. Now is the time to lean in. Because if we cannot trust information we receive from outside sources, it’s imperative to begin or continue developing the inside job: an embodied sense of reality.
Take your pick. There are so many practices inviting us to drop down from thinking into the juicy world of breath and sensation. For me, seated meditation, yoga and dance have been go to for many years. With the way things are coming down, I need practices that build internal focus (meditation & yoga) PLUS practice with eyes/heart open building the vital skill of connection to other beings (dance).
Community as a practice. Vital right now. Look around. Check out your options. Where can you show up and be held in a way that invites embodied awareness as a basis for self-knowledge and relationship building. We need to be experts at mindfully being with ourselves and each other.
Truth: a quality sorely lacking out in the geopolitical sphere. No need for it to be absent from our personal sphere. In yoga practice, satya (Sanskrit for truth), is the second of ten guiding principles. How can we up our game of truth in thought, speech and action? Can we notice moments of honesty or dishonesty within? And how about in relation to others---cheating, discrediting, lying---can we track what we are up to? Satya, in it’s most beautiful expression, invites us to be open, vulnerable and real out in the world. Can we be truthful in our own backyard?
Integral to this conversation about truth is one of the things I love about being an old woman. It’s a breath of fresh air to care less and less for anyone’s opinion about who I am or what I do or how I speak and act. Being honest with myself, authentic with you, real out there in the world is easier by the minute. Those minutes have a looming expiration date and I have no time left for pussyfooting around. And that’s the God’s honest truth.
So wherever you are, feel the contact of your precious feet on the earth. Take a full belly breath and feel the one time only gift of your aliveness. It’s our turn to be on this amazing planet. How incredible to be living through times like this. I know I can do this. And I want you to know that you can do this, too. Let’s do it together.
❤️Bella