Moving on

I am moving forward with my life.  It feels both liberating and petrifying.  I love the direction that I am going in, but I find myself flashing back to the weeks of depression and social anxiety I just encountered and I shudder.  Yet after reminding myself to breath through the sudden anxiety I just gave myself, I remember how brilliant the body and the mind are.  They have the capacity to adapt, to change, to renew.  We can cause ourselves to go in a downward spiral just by the thoughts in our brain or we can lift ourselves up and remind ourselves how resilient we are.  

Of course moving forward also means dealing with the original problems that got me to the place I was in.  It is amazing how much we can cover up and add on to a simple problem just so we can try and cheat at dealing with the main issue at hand.  So now that I have a smile back on my face and have become my conversationalist self again, I find myself dealing with all my little insecurities, about my need for acceptance, and wanting to be liked so badly that in the past I was willing to change who I was.  Well awareness and mindfulness can be both liberating and...well....a pain in the neck hah.  Now I watch the insecure thoughts go through my brain and I want to engage in the same actions I used to, but knowing that they are unhealthy, I try and just sit.

To be perfectly honest, I never realized what an emotional person I am!  It is so easy to ignore it all with television, or food, or the Internet.  We can make ourselves go numb; we can go get a drink, or get into drugs, or get obsessed with a relationship just to not deal with ourselves.  No wonder monks stay in isolation, they have enough to work with just with the imagination of the mind.  I think when people get into yoga and meditation at first they believe it will "cure" them.  But, the opposite happens.  I think at first things get worse.  All of a sudden you become more aware.  Aware of thoughts, sensations, smells, sights, sounds.  All these little things we take for granted every day that simply just pass us by.  It is overwhelming.  

And then we become aware of every thought going through our brain and there are so many! Suddenly things seem so much more complicated than before.  But, you are still you.  Nothing has changed except your awareness.  All this new input does not have to be perceived as overwhelming because as time goes on we see that life can be extremely simple.  I have learned what makes me happy and I am still learning how to follow this compass or path of new smiles.  I ask myself questions on a continual basis.  Why do I feel this way?  What is behind this emotion?  Where did this behavioral or thought pattern come from?  And how is it serving me now?  Sometimes we are so used to our patterns we have stopped questioning whether these actions are benefiting us anymore.  It is up to us....you can either make things very complicated or very simple.  You have the power, remember that.