This past year for me has been all about shedding judgements and fears and letting go of what other people think of me. not easy, but absolutely liberating.
Among the sudden events and challenging relationships the lessons of 2018 have been about releasing judgements and not giving a *$%& what others think. Mastering my own inner alignment and daily personal practice has given me the stability and the strength to know who I am and what my truth is. Without my daily kundalini practice I would be a lot more shaky and uncertain and I’m very grateful for these teachings. I wouldn’t be the same person without consistent daily meditation practice. Here's a few of the most important things I learned in 2018:
Allow Others to Have Their Own Experience
I had some incredibly challenging moments this past year with family that put me in a very difficult position, leaving me feeling responsible for the lives and decisions that other people made. In an attempt to take away their struggle I went well out of my way to help them only to leave myself feeling burnt out, disconnected from my power and even slightly resentful when I received a cold shoulder and no thanks. What followed the 3 months of trying to pick up the pieces for another was allowing them to choose to live on the street. Yes, homeless. This is one of the hardest things I have ever experienced in my entire life. It was however, exactly what needed to happen for reasons that I later came to discover, and some that I may never come to understand.
The point of sharing this is that no matter what we think or believe, we can never know what is in someone else’s best interest. Even if it looks like 10 steps backwards, or the most terrible thing that could happen to a person, sometimes those challenges offer the greatest gifts, or lessons that help them their souls journey. It was painful and incredibly difficult to let go, but I had to learn how to give up control, and not knowing what would happen. The more I tried to fix things or help them, the more I seemed to interfere and the more I trusted that their higher selves were perfectly orchestrating their process, the more peace was afforded for all parties involved. It’s not always helpful to take away other people’s pain. In fact, it's rarely even possible. It can even be disempowering and often delays the inevitable. Don’t take this as advice, rather as understanding that we can’t really pick up the pieces for everyone. It’s just not sustainable. We can’t walk someone’s path for them.
I don’t know what’s in my own best interest.
This one is straight out of A Course In Miracles. This book as greatly influenced my life in 2018, especially this statement. At first I resisted it. Of course I know what’s best for me!
Being a crackhead living on the streets = not good for me.
Eating healthy and exercising = my best interest.
What I discovered once I cooled my ego, let my guard down, and let this truth penetrate my awareness is that no matter how much I think I know about right and wrong I could never know what is in my best interest. Some of the greatest lessons I have learned which have shaped me into who I am have come from things that I initially judged as not being in my best interest. For example, you’d think a car accident isn’t in anybody’s best interest. However, I have been in a couple of car accidents and every time they delivered a very important message that I couldn’t hear because my life was moving way too fast to hear them. Accidents cause us to slow down and listen.
Thankfully I managed to dodge all car accidents in 2018. I did however face several challenging situations where I thought I knew what was in my best interest, only to be shown that I was quite misguided. The more I let go of control, the easier it was to let life move through me without resistance and I started to enjoy a new kind of ease.
Surrender to Love
Another lesson this past year has been about opening my heart and letting love in. The only way this was possible was to surrender fully. I’ll never forget that day in June when I spent 2 full days going through all my notebooks, organizing my computer files and photos and made a master plan and filled our a great big whiteboard calendar with goals and intentions. I did a beautiful ritual and ceremony to align myself and get ready to smash my goals out of the water and during this meditation I realized I had to throw it all away. You can imagine how much of a blow to the ego this was. Everything made so much sense and there was incredible logic and planning that went into these plans. How could I just let them go? I felt like letting them all go was to fail before I even started. Nonetheless, that day is the last day I used a whiteboard calendar.
I had just a week before started reading A Course In Miracles and the daily lessons kept instructing me to tune in and let go of my fears. The idea of not having a plan or being motivated and ambitious to execute was definitely a fear (Aries sun, moon and mercury, with Capricorn ascendant). It was incredibly challenging but I figured if I couldn’t let go now then when would I ever? So I challenged myself not to make any plans for 40 days, and instead to be present and follow my joy. This taught me 3 important things that completely changed the way I work:
1. The more I let go, the easier things come to me.
I was worried that if I didn’t have a strict social media schedule or I wasn’t actively promoting my services that clients wouldn’t come in and my business wouldn’t grow. But, that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Sure, I was sporadic with my emails and content creation but I had much more freedom to play and be creative which caused me to move from inspired action instead of following orders set by past me.
2. Making things beautiful is a gift.
Heart opening is the most powerful abundance attractor. My yoga and energy medicine background has taught me a lot about the chakras, the law of attraction and magnetism. During this 40 days of surrender however, I experienced a deep understanding how how making things beautiful directly leads to increased abundance
3. Gratitude fixes everything.
Challenges came up many times both in my relationships and my own personal neuroticism. Whenever I got stuck in my head the thing that helped me most was to take a few deep breaths and think about the things I am grateful for.
Raw Authentic Expression
Processing emotions is super helpful and important for my own expansion and also for the benefit of those around me. It doesn’t mean it will always be well received, in fact, often times I have triggered others but in the end it’s information that offers a lesson or two for all parties involved.
I also experienced deep emotional release facilitated by Alokananda who helped me process grief and sadness triggered by the fires in California, and Zephyr who helped me express deeply repressed anger from my childhood that I didn’t even know I was holding onto. These were incredibly powerful life altering moments for me in 2018.
I could seriously keep going with the powerful lessons I learned this past year but I'd have a short novel for you and I don't think you were planning to read a novel on a blog today. If you'd like to learn automatic writing techniques or self-mastery practices join our email list and you'll receive Notes From Your Sol whenever inspiration strikes.
Love Always,
sol xx
ps: come over to instagram and share on my most recent post what you learned in 2018