It gets to be easy.
It doesn’t HAVE to be easy... But it gets to be if you want it to be.
It also gets to be the opposite of easy. It can be hard, chaotic, or overwhelming. It’s literally whatever you are asking for at any moment.
What the F*ck is “it”??
Everything. Life. Love. The pursuit of wholeness. Expressing and witnessing your truth. All of it.
Sound crazy? It sounded f*cking nuts the first time I was slapped with this doozy of a truth bomb. I was full of all the vibrant emotions when my first spiritual advisor served this little darlin’ up to me. I felt attacked, baffled, betrayed, angry, confused, curious, and I had trouble grasping just one emotion to settle into.
She was (and is) a fabulous lady who kindly pointed out many truths I refused to see for myself. When she asked me if I was REALLY happy, I angrily replied, “of course I’m happy. I literally have everything on my list... I have the perfect house, live and work on my favorite road in Arkansas, and my commute to the office is 4 minutes door to door. The only thing missing is my life partner. So… how do I finish my list?! Can you tell me what he looks like? What does he do? When will I meet him?” In retrospect, she told me all of these things, but I wouldn’t say I liked anything she told me. She gave me the details that played out almost ten years down the road. At the time, the details pissed me off because they didn’t match what I thought I wanted. The point is that my soul had a preference my earth suit hadn’t aligned with yet.
The reality of the situation is I had been running from myself. I had moved five times in 1.5 years, looking for my dream town. I had been on and off 3+ dating sites at a time, been on 20+ first dates in 6 months, and was doing intense workouts 1 - 2 times per day at least five days per week to burn off the garbage I was consuming and kill time between work and dates.
With this approach to life, I tore my patellar tendon at 30 years old, could barely walk, gained several pants sizes quickly, and fell into depression because my life was over.
The same wonderful woman mentioned previously had encouraged me to do movements that nourished my body, eat foods that were easy to process (primarily fruits and vegetables), and vary the food for nutrients. She had said my body was overwhelmed and outputting a lot of energy and not recovering well.
What was I doing? Crossfit. Olympic lifting. And the crap version of Paleo. You know… bacon, sweet potatoes drenched in butter and agave nectar, paleo brownies, and steak. Maybe a broccoli floret with a Paleo-friendly dressing when someone mentioned greens. Lots and lots of margaritas.
Yoga made me angry because holding positions was physically irritating. I realize now that sitting still with myself was alarming to my body. Resentment filled my cells, along with repressed anger ready to show itself any moment. Denial and running were my ways of life. The extreme movement was the way around me sitting with myself and looking the dragon in the face.
So, my body pulled rank, said, “we are done,” and my left knee tendon raised the white flag.
I was forced. To sit. With everything. I had been AVOIDING.
This was where I was faced with the emotional wreckage from a traumatic childhood which included; rejection and abandonment from both parents, not trusting myself, not trusting the world to support me, and running from who I was because that was all that had ever been modeled.
Chaos was my safety. This consistently showed up in my relationships with my body, romantic partnerships, and friendships. I avoided looking within because I had never done this. I wasn’t good at this. My South Node is Sagittarius….I study things and accomplish. This is what I knew. I had published research in college, for crying out loud! No time for dilly-dallying just because.
I had never considered what I would enjoy just for enjoyment. If accomplishment or result wasn’t attached, it wasn’t something I was willing to look at. Momentum and chaos masquerading as butterflies was my jam. I would move mountains for one moment of this sensation. More on this at a later date ;)
What my mentor didn’t tell me was this: The version of easy that presents itself comes from what feels safe.
A real eye-opener is taking the time to ask yourself a series of questions and taking the time to see what surfaces...
What feels safe? Where is your safety? Who is your safety? Whatever feels safe to you will present itself to your body, mind, and awareness. It will show up in your thoughts, habits, relationship patterns, and external environment and will try to keep you safe by ringing the alarm bells when you approach an emotional trigger… Here is where you get to choose your next move.
The basic moves are:
Do something (different)
Do nothing (carry on with what you are doing)
There is no wrong answer. The correct answer is the one that is right for you at that moment. It’s a choice not to take a step in either direction, and it’s also a choice to wait to respond while collecting more data or waiting for the right time. This is actually a strategy for specific archetypes in human design. Knowing when to sit back and wait before responding is GOLD!
Knowing if this is your strategy or not is also GOLD.
Knowing if you are expressing your energy in the way that only you can and in the way that is healthy for you is damn near PLATINUM.
Back to the alarm bells; your nervous system is sounding off to keep you safe.
I’m not saying put yourself in harm’s way. We all have a barometer of what feels safe to us. What a safe romantic relationship looks like. What a safe level of appearing sexually attractive to a potential partner feels like. What a safe level of health feels like. What a safe level of income feels like. What a safe level of money in the bank feels like. What a safe level of expression feels like.
Safety doesn’t have to make sense. It rarely makes sense because the trauma that shapes the perception of safety doesn’t make sense.
What is the easiest way to figure out what level of easy or tough you’re allowing based on what’s safe?
Observe your environment and external reality, and note your complaints.
Or… observe your environment and external reality, and note what gets an energetic rise from you. This could be any range of emotions or bodily sensations.
This is the quick and dirty version. I teach an entire course on this.
What’s the point of me harping on ease or dis-ease and safety and all the bizarre ways it shows itself with coping mechanisms and masks?
I get to meet many people, and most of them are asking for help in some way. Help in reclaiming something they once loved to do, help in feeling better or help with how their mind, 3D reality, and body interact.
Some are ready to hit the GO button for vitality, but many hold back on going for the possibility of better.
After asking a lot of people a lot of questions, the common denominators are…
fear of not getting a positive result that lasts
finding out their bodies cannot do what they had hoped.
This turns into denying hope and staying safe on this side of fear.
I understand.
This is valid.
We are all innately looking for safety, and we are all innately looking for expansion. Pursuing both at the same time has never been possible before. This is why it feels nuts to take a risk to feel a way you have never felt before. Even if it could be mind-blowingly amazing. Amazing may not turn out to be safe in the long run. This is what our original wiring tells our unconscious mind, which sends the signal to the body, which produces a primary emotion and then tells us how to feel based on the history we have experienced in this life.
If you get nothing else from this rant... know this.
Your body can perform miracles.
All it needs is one moment in the right environment, with the right intention, the sweet spot of safety, and an empathetic witness who sees you as you truly are. This magical self-healer who temporarily forgot their powers.
When your body pulls off miracles that are witnessed and acknowledged, the thinking mind shatters the old matrix and reforms around this new reality that wasn’t possible. New neural pathways are formed. Chaos becomes communication. Dis-ease becomes ease and flow. Anticipation becomes acceptance. This is the space where miracles happen. This is the space where miracles become your normal.
For me, there were decades of coping mechanisms, carefully curated masks, and severe codependency to untangle before uncovering the REAL me. The essence of me. I had never met her. I didn’t know if I would even like her. I didn’t know if the world would accept her. The first step was daunting because I felt the gravity of the amount of work ahead if I chose this path and if I chose me.
On this side of all of the shit, I will say this.
I never want to go back to hiding who I was pretending to be.
And…
IT WAS WORTH THE PAIN OF HEALING.
IT WAS WORTH FINALLY FACING THE DRAGON.
Everything really can change in one moment.
Willingness to see things differently is all it takes.
Just be willing to see things differently and take the next step in trust.
You deserve all the damn miracles.
XOXO
~ Dr. Caroline
P.S ready to let food be easy?
