I recently had a male friend come to me and say, “Rachel, I’ve quit reading your blog because I know that you’re going through some tough patterns in your relationship & so I don’t want to read your blog anymore, you’re not walking your talk.”
I took his words to heart, as I would the words of any dear friend. I viewed it as an offering, a reflection, and, I noticed that I felt very hurt. I’ve moled it over now for a few weeks.
What I have to say is this…we, each of us, have our own karma, our own patterns to work out. We can never tell where someone is on their path. We honestly don’t know what someone is working through, what energies are being cleared, or how many life-times they’ve been in the grip of something, unless we can see energy beyond our 5 senses.
If you read my blog because you think I am perfect, or you think I have it all figured out, then you’re missing the point.
The point of my sharing in the world, and my work, is to make the unconscious conscious. It’s about transformation. I am in the business of deep shadow work.
This means shining the light on our deepest, darkest places, uncovering wounds life-times in the making & dissolving & moving the energy so we can heal & shine our light. That is not a pretty process. Love & transformation take death.
It’s a death process.
All of life is about letting go. Everything arises to pass away. What do you expect to be perfect, pretty, or put together about death?
Like the onion, our souls go through a peeling away process. We never finally “arrive” somewhere and can finally teach & share from a totally healed place because we’ve got it all figured out. That’s not the point.
The point is to mirror one another. The point is to be real. I can easily share my wisdom & reflect to someone where they’re being unconscious, being a victim, or forgetting they have choice. I don’t have to have a perfect life to do this.
The point is to live in the death process, to let go, to shed your skin and continue to be reborn anew, sharing your wisdom every step of the way for others who can hear it and choose it.
You can simeltaneously hold deep wisdom and be clutched by past patterns.
Transformation is an energy thing. It happens on a level unseen to the untrained eye. You can’t look at me and know by what I say, or what I wear, wether or not I am healing karma & transforming.
I could be working out a pattern that has had its grip on me for a thousand years, and to you, it seems I am failing, I am a mess, I am in it, I am not getting it, I am stuck.
To me, I am finally healing an ancient wound. To me, I am in the last stages of the old skin. Looks can be deceiving.
Love your neighbor because they exist, get off other people’s backs, and into your own life. Never assume that you know what’s going on with other people, for you really can’t know.
I love the quote by Theodore Roosevelt that Brene Brown shares in her book, Daring Greatly:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
It’s real easy to judge another when we ourselves are not sharing with the world. Unless you are putting yourself out there, risking being seen, then I don’t really care too much about what you have to say about me and the things I write. Of course we can do our best to embody our truth & values & teachings, but if we are truly growing, then we will falter.
Brene also says:
You can choose courage or you can choose comfort, but you can’t choose both. When you choose courage, you’re choosing to get your butt kicked. The one thing you’d better have in the arena is clarity of values, and someone who loves you and can say, “that sucked, but you were brave.”
Brene says people need 3 basic things in their lives:
1. To be seen and loved
“We cultivate love when we allow our most vulnerable self to be shown to others. It’s not given; it’s cultivated only when there’s self-love present. We can only love others when we love ourselves.”
2. To belong.
The #1 barrier to connection is fitting in. We need to make space for people to show up and be seen. Not for what they should be but for who they are. People are desperate to be seen.
3. To be Brave.
We were born to be brave—in love, in grief, in faith, in our work.
So, in the end, I’m doing my best to belong, to be seen, and to be brave. If you think I’m not doing it well enough, that’s your business. To really be a friend and love another, we would do best to offer our support for who and what and how they are, and not criticize them when they fall.
If you’d like to be brave, to be seen and to work on whatever is in the way of fully feeling your belonging, work with me.
May you dare greatly,
XO
Rachel Claire
Beautifully written! Thanks for your wisdom!
Thank you, Jeannie! Thanks for reading!! XO