Podcast Confessions
Two weeks ago, I proclaimed that it was time for me to lose control.
A control freak by nature, I had decided that my old self was vanquished and I was now ready to jump off a cliff and just let go. And it felt exciting, it felt good, it felt freeing… until it felt really bad.
As if out of nowhere, like a call to the universe answered, things started to go wrong and all my old patterns rose up to meet me, embedding themselves into my psyche. Old wounds resurfaced and started bleeding again, old fears drowned out new hope, 5D to 3D, faith to disappointment, trust to suspicion, confidence to insecurity. Old me was back, and she was back with a vengeance.
At first I didn’t notice, it was almost like I was straddling two worlds, the world in which I actually lived and the world where my old stories were coming back to haunt me. Initially I rationalized, I ignored, I questioned and told myself that nothing had really changed. But unfortunately, like all emotions and patterns that come out, the more you push them down, the stronger and harder they come up, screaming to be heard…until eventually I was left screaming at myself.
Yep, old patterns are there to remind you how far you have come, but unless they are fully exorcised, they don’t act as a gentle comforting reminder of progress, they engulf you instead, leaving yourself embodied in who you once were, rather than who you have now loved yourself enough to be.
I started turning to old habits to get me through, the unwavering need to not be alone became the driving force to all my decisions, I was turning to everyone and everything for answers because I had lost the faith to find them inside myself and I was reacting for a response to feel safe, rather than because it was how I really felt. And I was angry about it. I did not want to be that person or live that life anymore, yet somehow I was back there. Despite my best intentions to move forward, somehow it felt I had gone back to the start line.
Divine timing isn’t something that I have ever really put much stock in. Patience isn’t my strong suit and I have a very on again off again relationship with trust. In fact, it was those very things that prompted me to take control in the first place. But as I sat down to edit the next two episodes of my podcast, I was invited to learn otherwise.
Episode 5 spoke about how connecting to other people allowed you to connect to yourself. CHECK. In connecting to others I had connected back to my old patterns and my fear of eventual disappointment. That had left me feeling pretty crappy yes, but I had pushed it down, so it was okay. Manageable.
Episode 6 was about allowing your feelings so that they didn’t engulf you, feeling the lesson so that you didn’t have to revisit it. About having the emotional maturity and distance to be able to examine your feelings rather than embody them and it suggested how to do so in a healthy way. Not so much CHECK here. I had in fact done the opposite. Oops. Turns out I wasn’t as emotionally or spiritually mature as I thought I was. Turns out I was still human.
There is a difference between allowing your emotions and surrendering to them. Whilst the former gives you the opportunity to remain yourself whilst the emotion unfolds and be self aware enough to not only see the lesson but also approach it in a way that heals it, the latter results in a loss of agency as you allow the emotion to embody you.
One lets you integrate a wound, whilst the other forces you to lose control and become it. I had surrendered totally to my demons and unwittingly; I got what I had asked for. I had lost control. Karma felt like a bitch.
But Karma isn’t a bitch. If I had learnt anything in the months recording in a utility closet with Liz, I knew that there was an opportunity to really put something behind me here. Maybe my yearning to text my ghost on that sticky summer evening when episode 4 was released, maybe my creation of a new unrequited love situation (in my head mind you, I had started to contort and chase in my fear of potential loss), maybe my experience of connecting to myself and not liking what I found…maybe they were all the building blocks to get me to a point where I could learn something that my accelerated learning had somehow missed. Maybe they were the final pieces to the puzzle that new me needed to put together so that old me was a part of who I was, not who always I am.
In surrendering to the choice to lose control of everything, not just my need for control, I was throwing away the bandage without trying to heal the wound first. It wasn’t my need for control that was the issue; it was the fear underneath it.
In removing the coping mechanism, all my demons and late night self whispers that had been imprisoned with the zeal of a communist dictatorship, all escaped freely. I felt those fears deeply and acted on each and every one of them. Without love or thought. But with a lot of judgment.
The cure wasn’t releasing the symptom, it was dealing with the fear once it was exposed and left unprotected. The fear was running riot in my mind and being reflected back at me in the interactions I was trying to find solace in. The darkness was back and granted, it had shades of light, but nothing like the light I had been basking in before.
I hadn’t just relinquished control of the external and managing other people (pro tip- I had never been in control of that anyway, I just thought I had been) I had also lost control of myself and the love I had for myself, the only actual anchor in a world where often we can feel lost at sea. The mirror was clear and suddenly I was staring straight into it. Nothing had changed because I didn’t believe that it had. The key to re-open the door had been in my hand the whole time and I hadn’t loved myself enough to trust that I was holding it. I was scared of my old patterns and in my fear of them, I had started expecting them and letting them own me.
But I also know that a peaceful life is all about perspective. It’s not about giving up and surrendering to the pain, it is about lighting up the wounds that were left in the dark and allowing everything to be loved. It is about helping old me to come into the light, not leaving her behind. She is my new self, just with a different perspective. To appreciate the day is to remember the night, not pretend that it is never coming or has never been.
I could see that I knew what worked, but it turned out I wasn’t ready to keep it working when times got tougher. I had to embrace a new truth, that those feelings may never leave me but when I feel like I am looking for love the most, the only way to start that chain reaction is to start it with me. It’s understanding that it is not my fault when certain things aren’t working and knowing that doing myself justice is truly the only way to navigate life in peace. I had found peace through an act of love and continued acts of love to myself, echoed back to me by others. Ultimately, it was great that I finally had evidence of a new pattern: to get the love I so desperately wanted, I had to give it too.
Maybe I am not ready to lose control yet, but maybe that isn’t the answer anyway. It isn’t about losing control of who I am, it is about continuing to build on it whilst accepting that choosing to love is the only control I ever can really have, want or need.
Oh… and it wasn’t that Karma was a Bitch, it was just a valuable lesson that clearly I needed reminding. The fact that the learning came in the sequence of the podcast episodes was just coincidence… right?