Dive deeper into you
You might love who shows up
Hello, sweet pea 💗
You’re doing great.
This stuff isn’t easy. Especially if you’ve got family treasures waiting for you along the way.
As you practice your daily SOUL sits, see what — and who — shows us. And just as the mystical poet Rumi says:
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival…A joy, a depression, a meanness…
….invite them in.
— Rumi
As you start to get more familiar with your inner self, you may feel pulled to explore a recurrent thought, experience, memory, story or fantasy that’s coming up. That’s good. Pay attention to what’s asking for your attention. What needs to be seen.
You have a lot of layers.
Time to see
As you progress through the steps of your SOUL practice, the U and L are a time to explore your deeper layers. They are for Understanding and Letting go. This is the engine room of doing your inner work: seeing your patterns, gaining a wider, more holistic understanding of your past and allowing yourself to let go of what no longer serves you.
No one tells how long, messy, and hard inner healing can be. People make this stuff sound easy, breezy, as if a handful of positive affirmations and pretty sayings on Instagram is all it takes.
When you have real inner work to do, it’s not easy and it is not fast. It’s work. It’s messy. It’s hard. But it is also fascinating, freeing, healing and a completely worthwhile investment of your time.
Ultimately, it’s going through these messy bits that leads to your freedom and a future unburdened by the past.
My advice: Go slowly. Go gently. Go gingerly, especially if you are just starting your SOUL practice, in the midst of a shit-storm (eg, change, uncertainty, job loss, divorce) or “dark wood” and extra-extra especially if you have very painful and unexplored episodes in your past.
This is a precious time for you.
Don’t rush.
Do not try to move too fast into exploring your depths or please do not avoid diving in all together. Give yourself time to adjust to exploring the contents of your mind with curiosity and the feelings that come up in your body without judgement in the S and O parts of the SOUL practice.
Pay attention to your inner signals. If feelings come up that feel too strong, back off. Stop and listen to yourself. Heed your own internal warning system. Proceed at your own pace or pause and find a trustworthy therapist or counsellor to walk with you. There is no rush and no need to go it alone.
Be thoughtful and kind to yourself. Take your time. Get the support you need.
Always, be good to you.
Going in deep
The U and L of SOUL facilitate a deep dive of self-discovery. These are steps for exploring different aspects of you, your past, your relationships and seeing what is coming up through your own lens of gentle curiosity and wholehearted self-compassion.
Allow yourself to see yourself. Your child self. Your adult self. All of you.
And journal, profusely.
You may be shocked at how much — and what — comes up. Keep a very private journal. For your eyes only. Write down what comes up during your SOUL sits. No editing, no filtering, just a full flow of what you have been feeling, sensing, noticing.
Write because the act of writing is cathartic. It allows pent up thoughts, feelings, insights to move up and out of your body, like releasing energy that has been corked up inside. Writing is a release, a way to allow that old energy to move beyond being stuck inside of you and free yourself from the burden of having to contain and carry that weight.
Write because seeing what you have been holding onto inside of yourself is deeply validating.
Let it all come up. Write it all down.
Know, respect, affirm what you have felt and lived through — that is your path to healing, clearing and cleansing.
And don’t worry, you won’t stay in deep dive SOUL visits forever. You’ll sense when you are ready for what’s next.
For now, take your time. Proceed gently.
Into the wreck
In the shift-storm of my divorce, I spent months in my daily SOUL sits exploring the contours of my twenty-year marriage. Examining every angle. Watching a different daily Netflix trip down memory lane, replaying all the thoughtless things Mr Busy-Busy had done to me, seeing myself as wronged, sad, betrayed, disappointed, disillusioned, martyred, mad, devastated, gutted, used, dumped. I witnessed it all. I felt all the feels in the privacy of my morning SOUL sessions, before my three kids were awake and the day turned into its usual tornado of To-Dos. Just me in the morning quietly witnessing and journaling, filling stacks of notebooks. Writing and recording about all about the hurt bits that had been blown to smithereens after years of trying to keep an exhausting marriage together.
As I continued to sit daily, I felt ready to move beyond the Netflix of who did what. I was curious to probe my own role. I wanted to understand my own patterns and see what motivations and beliefs were driving my choices.
I started asking questions.
Why had I chosen to marry Mr Busy-Busy? What was it in me that was drawn to someone who — in the retrospect of my SOUL sits — was so clearly arrogant, aloof and abandoning? Why did I chase, again and again, year after year, after someone who was always leaving me?
With 20/20 SOUL vision, I began to see an obvious cycle that had been invisible to me: I loved the excitement and razzle dazzle of possibility. I loved hearing hints and promises and riding a wild crescendo of giddy hope. Except, invariably, at the apex of hope, there would always be a dashing, devastating, gut-wrenching disappointment. He’d leave me stranded, aching and alone, crushed. Then, just as assuredly, he’d rush back as my apologizing savior. I would comfort him, reassure him, build him back up with lavish praise and sympathy for how difficult this time was for him. In my SOUL sits, I could see how this cycle played out across three continents and three children.
The pattern was evident before we were even married.….. “Make a reservation at the most romantic restaurant you can find,” he said, “a place you’ll want to remember for your whole life. I have a very important question to ask you. I’m bringing something precious for you in a tiny little box. I’ll give you three hints about what I’m bringing: it’s in the shape of a circle, it’s all natural made from the earth, and it’s a token of my love and commitment to you….”
Gentle reader, my hopes soared for weeks in anticipation. I thought an engagement ring was inside that little box. I thought this was going to be the start of a marriage — not the beginning of a roller coaster ride.
But my freedom didn’t come in pointing the finger at him. Or at me.
Freedom comes through understanding.
Freedom, not forgiveness
Sooner or later, if your life gets messy enough, folks may weigh in, telling you to forgive whatever person, place or thing has happened. Obviously, it’s your call, but I’m not a big fan of focusing on forgiveness.
I think forgiveness is an over-rated solution to dealing with the sordid bits floating in your salad dressing. It sounds good, even ennobling, but IMHO, it does not set you free from holding onto the “burning coals” of anger, resentment, sadness or pain.
Harboring resentment is like holding a burning coal that you wish to throw at your enemy, but instead you are the one who is burned.
— The Buddha
Too often the push for forgiveness is too fast and too transactional. Like dropping the charges against a perpetrator in hopes that the crime will go away. There’s still been a crime. Feelings of injustice don’t just disappear.
Pushing for a quick fix resolution — a hurried bid to forgive — feels to me like another version of being shushed and told not to make a fuss. It’s another way to say your feelings don’t matter. Stuff them down. Be quiet. Silence yourself.
» You’ve come too far to silence yourself, sweet pea 💗
The way to release the “burning coal” is through understanding.
You let go of the past by exploring the coal, giving yourself time to witness how it has been burning you, acknowledging your pain, anger, resentment, hurt — everything that comes up — and eventually, by looking at how and why the coal came to be in your hand.
You release the burning coal by widening the aperture of your mind so you can see beyond the immediate pain — so you can see the patterns of the past that led you to being the person whose hands were open to receiving the burning coal.
Widen your lens
In the privacy of your morning sits, when you come to U in SOUL, quietly and gently broaden your circles of your understanding: understanding yourself, seeing the bigger tapestry of your life. Keep widening your lens so you can see a wider range of perspectives, your younger self, your adult self, the perspectives of the other people who have been in and out of your life. Even, perhaps, someday to challenging yourself to understand why you may still be holding onto the coals.
The path to your freedom is through your understanding.
» Through gets you through, sweet pea 💗
Take it slow.
Move gently through these deeper layers of perception. Seeing, feeling, understanding yourself — and others who pop up — with curiosity and compassion.
Give the washing cycle (in the laundry machine metaphor we talked about) plenty of warm soapy water, gentle nudging and the expansiveness of compassion to work its magic. Find a really good therapist to join your process of understanding. Call in the cavalry to help you understand your patterns.
You are worth it.
Look back to move forward
Over time, in my morning SOUL sits, I could see how my pattern of getting hooked on hope had taken root and influenced many of my most important relationships, like a talisman that I thought might work if I rubbed hard enough.
Scenarios flooded my morning sessions and I could feel echoes of so many similar experiences stretching back decades in my family, friendships, even work relationships. Focusing on “hope” had become a driving force for me.
As you may remember from my post about Ursula, my parents were stuck in an unhappy detente of a marriage. Parenting was not their strong suit. “Family time” consisted of exhausting nature walks at an unrelenting pace.
One time, I remember being in West Virginia, hundreds of miles from home, hiking for hours, my five year old getting legs tired. I didn’t want to keep up with my brothers, mother or father and feeling stubborn, I stopped in the middle of the trail and started rocking back and forth, singing “I’m not going any further.” I was hoping they’d slow down, hoping my father would break ranks and carry me for a while. Holding my ground, I watched my mother rise to the challenge, encouraging my brothers to walk faster, charging off in a huff, all of them disappearing into the wilderness….
Through my SOUL practice, I could see my patterns so clearly. Of course, I thought of myself as a reject. Of course, I sought out aloof, arrogant, abandoning people (who would reject me). Of course, I was afraid of speaking up. Of course, I chased the slimmest of possibilities like my life depended on it.
How could I not?
Part of me was still frozen in fear on that trail, rocking back and forth.
Eventually, in my SOUL sits, I widened the lens to see beyond my five year old’s perspective at that moment. I found myself witnessing (and relishing) what happened after my family disappeared… I stopped my sing-song and started walking, following a series of trails, finding my way out of the dark forest down to a pretty lake with a sandy little beach, sidling up to an older lady sitting in an aluminum chair and playing next to her for what seemed like hours, in the sunshine, gathering pebbles, one by one, delighting in how she cooed as I brought them to her. Until I saw an angry mob storming towards me led by my mother….
It took me a long time to see that part of the story.
And to notice that I am very strong and wonderfully willful.
Over time, by listening, witnessing the Netflix iterations of “how could he?” and “how could they?” and seeing the bigger patterns shaping me, my parents and Mr Busy-Busy, I felt like I could let it go. It was time. I did not need to keep holding these sad, painful coals, clenching them in my fists or hiding them deep inside so no one would see what a reject I was. I could release them.
And in letting go, I could begin to see myself in a new light.
Not lost. Not rejected.
Resourceful.
Maybe even likable.
I could see that I was a sweet, spunky, stubborn little girl who I’d like to get to know, take care of and be friends with for a long, long time.
That is the path to freedom.
I believe it’s your path too.
This is deep work, sweet pea 💗
Purge your old stories from the dark shadows of your mind, get them up and out of your body, on paper, so they are visible, recognizable. Healable. Let go-able.
Take your time and be gentle with yourself.
You’ve probably been through enough already.
Much love xxoo
Anne
Ignore those that make you fearful and sad, that degrade you back towards disease and death
— Rumi
Yes, that’s L’il Anne
Cute as a button, right? Sadly, I didn’t feel it at the time. But now? I can love on my scrumptious little self. Now, as a “woman of depth,” I’m grateful to be enjoying butterfly days, diving in deep, sharing treasure. Join me.
Author of two New York Times bestsellers, Editor of Prevention (twice), Editorial Director of National Geographic, Content Director for Mindful
Single-mother of three beloveds 💗💗💗 who are now adulting-ish
Interfaith minister - open, curious, with respect for all
Traveler - always and everywhere