Mindfulness as a Guide

When I was young I had no frame of reference for the word “mindfulness”.  It probably wasn’t even a word that was used much back then.  But, my heart has always been built for this type of practice and it’s been a guiding force in my life whether I was aware of it or not.  As a creative soul, a reader, a poet, a deep feeler, and someone who nerds out over all things nature, discovering ways to be mindful is paramount for me.  It gives me permission to feel it all, & experience it all, while also cultivating acceptance for myself and provides a map on how to show up with love for other amazing humans in my life.  

As a child, I let my heart guide me with my wild imagination spooling stories of grandeur and adventure.  With an untethered heart I felt free, daring, and without boundaries.  Yet as I grew and learned the ways of the world, more constraint came.  I experienced confusion, shame, and doubt as we all do.  I retreated into my own inner world more and more.  I wasn’t brave enough to rebel or even test the edges of the rules that I was taught.  Out of love and fear, I accepted and conformed and with that my brave soul shrunk a bit.  As I learned what was acceptable in society and what was considered abhorrent or ugly, my mind & spirit became a little less expansive. My curious heart felt stifled & I was scared to explore as freely as I had done before.  

It seemed that the world was telling me – you are too much, your emotions are too big, your feelings are dangerous.   I sought what was being sold as the ultimate goal – happiness.  Yet I definitely wasn’t always happy – was anyone?  And I felt that I was expected to filter my experiences and emotions through a lens of positivity rather than reality.  Reality was scary and so it seemed better to sprinkle some sugar on top of the shit to make life palatable.  Because of this I placed a lot of guilt and shame on myself if I was feeling any type of negative emotion, even deep loneliness and sadness.

Everyone knows that this sort of pattern isn’t sustainable forever.  We all need an outlet.  We need to feel safe in our true experiences and be able to filter through things, and learn to trust our own guidance, so that we can learn to come back to our center.  And thankfully there were mindful moments that sustained me and helped teach me how meaningful this practice would someday become.  

In my teenage years I found myself finding hidden gems of clarity popping up here and there.  My wanderings and wonderings found groundedness in books, poetry, & nature.  I could tap into my present emotions through music and many nights you’d find me driving around singing to The Cranberries and No Doubt as the street lights sped past.  Other times I would hear someone speaking their truth – something I didn’t dare yet breathe into existence – and I used their words to clear the fogginess from my brain like windex on a bathroom mirror.  Watching other women who were strong enough to stand firm, to speak the things I wished I could say, to step fully into the expansiveness of their heart were the times that I could dare believe that I could be freed from my habituations and step back into that space of openness where my childhood self had thrived.

Thankfully I have always been a searcher – leaning into the what if, the mystical, & the unknown, and one day I ended up in a yoga class. I moved with the teacher’s instruction and positioned my body into various shapes and postures. I experienced this distilled connection to my body and that had been missing for years and years.  I listened to my breath.  I felt the oceanic hum of other humans breathing in sync with the movements of their own bodies.  My mind cleared out and I became keenly aware of what was happening in my own inner landscape, in that one present moment.  

And finally…..aha!

This was what I had wanted to be able to recreate in my own life and here it was at my fingertips.  It had been there all along – living in my mind, in my body, & in my breath.

As my mindfulness practice expanded, so did my sense of self trust and self discovery.  It was like the little adventurous girl that once thrived jumped out of my heart and soaked up the awe that was there all along.  She was giggling and whispering, “Feel this, touch that, sense this, experience that!”  It became a pathway to self empowerment and healing that was more powerful than any other life experience I had had thus far.  

It’s like dear Mary Oliver said,

“I don’t know exactly what a prayer is.  

I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down 

into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass, 

how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,

which is what I have been doing all day.

Tell me, what else should I have done?

Doesn’t everything die at last, and too soon?

Tell me, what is it you plan to do

with your one wild and precious life?”

All those little moments where I was feeling all the feels, when the wonder of life was too beautiful and the grief was too heavy, and I allowed myself to welcome it instead of pushing it away, those were the times when I was being guided by the voice that was distinctly my own.  Those were the times when I was participating fully in my life.
And don’t we need this in midlife?  Don’t we long for it?  A life built on awareness, where we are more fully engaged, and present in the pursuit of finding awe and delight?  Yes.  To feel safe to expand fully into any feeling whether happiness, sadness, anger, or light.  To live as a real participant, and a main character – rather than numbing out or shifting into autopilot.  Yes.  A life filled with a curious mindset, an inkling of self discovery, and a soft relationship with our inner landscape.  One where we can choose to steep ourselves deeply into each moment, choosing to get carried away by it or return to our carefully cultivated center.  Yes, and over and over and over again.