Showing up.

I haven’t done resolutions in a long time. This year though I did get a notion as the New Year ticked over that it’s time to be more intentional about how I start and finish my days. I have meditated morning and night since the year began, nothing fancy, just spending twenty minutes with myself to start and finish each day, until this morning.

This morning I rolled over, grabbed my phone to set my timer, saw a message come up, read it and then before I knew it I was on Instagram. It happens. It’s designed to do that to us. The outside world constantly trying to take our attention and manipulate where it goes and how long it stays. I’m no longer hard on myself about it, I just notice it when it happens, notice my frustration with it and try to move on with my life.

I also try to notice when maybe it’s leading me to something important. When maybe my inner knowing has at least a hand in the directing. It’s often tricky to know what’s what but this morning it feels pretty obvious. A post popped up, I stopped to read the words on the image. They spoke about a podcast, I looked up the podcast and read the intro. I pressed play to hear the first five minutes and then before I knew it I was at the end of the one hour podcast…and I still hadn’t meditated but…I had two quotes written in my notes and I could feel this post swirling and ready to start.

The podcast wasn’t about anything relevant to me or my life, on the surface. Something guided me to it, something had me listen to it, until the end when it became not only relevant but powerful to me and where I am right now. It was different to the mindless scrolling that often leads to nowhere and steals my energy. It wasn’t twenty minutes of stillness and silence but it was still a meditation. The difference is in what I am connected to…an algorithm or to myself and while I was listening to the podcast I was deeply connected rather than distracted. If I had ‘controlled’ what my meditation looked like this morning I would have completely missed it.

Over the holidays I found myself unplugging, from myself, from the work it takes to stay connected with myself. It was somewhat intentional. I needed and wanted a real rest and I got it. These words stopped coming through, I stopped seeing and feeling the stories and learning opportunities in the experiences I had with my children. It stopped being work and it was just life and love and living for that time. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy the rest. I’d also be lying if I said it didn’t bother me at all, that I didn’t worry I might have lost my ability to connect and ‘tap in’ to this space forever.

Because I also found myself more and more connected to ‘the algorithm’. Watching other peoples stories and lives, connecting with the outside world on various levels and it wasn’t all negative but it was frustrating. But it did nudge me towards rebelling and shutting it all down in order to come back to myself. It did nudge me to focus on my ‘meditating’ and resist against being ‘online’ in a controlling and more ‘disciplined’ way in order to solve the imbalance.

I really don’t like the idea of getting too caught up in ‘the algorithm’ or what the outside world expects of me. Because it tends to disconnect me from myself. Because in the past it has and that part of my past brings up a lot of resistance in me. I know that I do also have the tendency to get caught up in my inner world. Having felt how powerful and positive it is to live from that inner knowing, to be connected to my intuition, having also felt how damaging and negative it can be to lose that connection altogether I can sometimes spend too much time there.

Whenever I am too much in one and actively resisting the other I’m controlling and I’m out of alignment.

The process of recovering from complete and prolonged disconnection from myself has, up until now, included a fair bit of rebellion. It has included a whole lot of fear of falling, of going back. It has included a need for shutting down and out anything that feels like it might take over or take control of my attention too much. Anything that might prevent me from living from my truth by muddling up what I hear and know as my truth.

‘Showing up’ this year feels and looks different already. It means deciding in each moment where to plug in, consciously making the choice over and over again about when I need to be connected in and when I need to be connected out. It also means allowing the natural flow of my attention and being curious about what is behind it. It’s not either/or anymore, it can be BOTH/AND. I can be BOTH connected with my intuition AND connected with the world around me. I can be BOTH open to the outside world AND a healthy, highly sensitive person and mother.

I will be if I can just allow it to be.

**The podcast was the latest ‘We Can Do Hard Things’