2023 has been a challenging year to my earth element as it confronted me with several disruptive twists and changes that kept undoing any external sense of flow or consistency, necessitating that I practice living by my inner vision and sense of flow and security.
And yet in its disruptive, and expressly impermanent, nature it has rooted me more deeply into earthy qualities like grounding, stability, fertility, abundance, nurturing, and more.
Home
In looking back on the lessons and challenges I faced, the overarching themes can be subsumed under:
- Close relationships as a form of home for the heart.
- The body as the vessel and home of all experiences.
- The land, and city, I live in as a home to being.
- Nature as home to the body and human consciousness.
- Community as a home of sharing life and reciprocal care, support, nurturance, and delight.
I was called to look closely at my experiences and how they made all layers of my being respond, feel and think. In contemplations I was made aware of how I allowed, enabled, or invited unhappiness, imbalances, and disease into my homes. Fueled by self compassion and love the Self energy began to correct and calibrate perceptions, approaches, habits, and thinking for better alignment and healing.
A new multidimensional definition of home blossomed in my awareness allowing my body to release tensions and stuck energy held around it. My new understanding/sense of home is less sticky, attached, and emotionally charged than earlier versions have been.
Anchoring the perceptive vantage point in the formless field of consciousness allows me to perceive everything and anything vibrate with some degree of frequency of home. From that point I no longer attempt to connection and get a sense of home ‘human to human/matter’ but connect on the energetic and spiritual dimension – where oneness is an eternal reality. In keeping my inner gaze fixed on the energetic/spiritual dimension of oneness my heart is held in a field of interconnection, love, and benevolence – regardless of outer circumstances. Which teaches it to let go of looking for connection on dimensions fraught with lack and volatility.
I no longer *need* people, places, or my body to show up in a certain way to feel secure, safe, connected, heard, loved, etc. and instead live from a knowing of safety, connection, unconditional love, being valued, and so on. Which allows me to engage with all kinds of people and places as expressions of the one from a sense of wonderment, and little fragility or dysregulation around how they show up.
Once the human need for safety is fulfilled it is easy to get into playful exploration of the possibilities that open up with this inner shift: How can I connect to this land and city in new ways? What will I see and experience when I tune my energetic resonance with it?
And with these recalibrations of my energy and mind old blockages melt out of the way, letting in more insights, joy, delight, and a pervasive belonging that spans all dimensions of being – mental, physical, emotional, spiritual. Gone is the density and heaviness that underlay experiences as more lightness and luminosity flow through these experiences making may for more diverse and colorful moments of connection and belonging.
With the shifts and changes happening internally I find myself in a wholly new home in terms of body, relationships, land, community, and nature… without having moved or changed much on the external. Whatever changes happened in the external have only been in response to inner changes, not their cause.
My energetic base tone in engaging with life had been set for a couple of years to yin (receptive, inward) while my yang (directive, outward) energy was cleansed from overlays of conditioning. This year I felt the shift to a balance of yin and yang. And what a delight it was to be in yang energy again and experience how easily I could shift out of it and back again, how well both energy played with each other now.
Insights and Lessons
Through dancing with the above themes I have gained new insights into my workings, capabilities, limitations, boundaries, preferences, and tinkered with more sources of joy and contentment.
Here are some of the insights and lessons this year gifted me:
Life
The incredible, spaciousness, ease, and bliss that are born of surrendering to reality as it is and trusting life implicitly.
To embrace the fundamental role of impermanence in life, to integrate it into my thinking, planning, and engagement with life.
To concurrently perceive from eyes of consciousness and eyes of humanness.
To focus on the blessing, gift, and benefit in sudden shift or changes, and release attachments to outcomes trust life.
To see, acknowledge, and appreciate the beauty in all experiences beyond mental judgements of good or bad, aligned or unaligned.
To keep flooding my being with beauty and heartful experiences to anchor and nurture awe, gratitude, and playfulness into my current vibrational set point.
To practice doing hard things.
Relationships
To engage with life from an expanded self value/ self love – as I value myself more things are rearranging to either level up with me or move out of my experience if they cannot.
To set strong, intentional, and conscious boundaries.
It is OK to bow out of a relationship or friendship when the other is traumatized to a degree that is beyond what I am willing, or able, to hold space for.
To release connections, which are dear to me thanks to history shared, when they have persistently lacked attunement, reciprocity, or vibrancy. Focusing especially on ‘legacy’ male friendships which do not meet even the most basic standards of relating.
That it is not only possible to end a connection in ‘incompleteness’ but to derive sweetness from the process even if tinged with bitter or sad notes here or there.
My aligned and healthy relationships have a new quality of tenderness, openness, and playful exploration that gives rise to sweetness and deeper intimacy my heart relishes.
Self
To embody more responsibility for my experience and being, and decisively act as my advocate, caretaker, cheerleader, and handy woman.
What a good caretaker I am for myself, while also being present for beloveds.
How lovely it can feel to acknowledge ‘not knowing’ and let others take the lead in their expertise. Receptivity is a gateway of nourishment to my being.
My ability to stand in the ‘fire’ of emotional flashbacks and remain open hearted and compassionate with self and other has expanded beyond what I thought was possible for me.
The joy in witnessing and being present sans any, however subtle, attempts at controlling the situation.
How good I am at standing up for myself, making my needs and boundaries clear, so clear I rarely need to enforce them. (Though there still is a part of me that is ready to fight for it with almost any means necessary if the boundaries are crossed)
There are some areas where I slacked off, turned a blind eye, to not being in full integrity with Self. An invitation to come back into integrity and holding myself accountable and to be less indulgent as my inner tribe growth and strengthens.
That I still underestimate my abilities and worth, just to be surprised and proven wrong by the way I keep showing up.
To listen more closely to the wisdom of my body – following it as trustingly as I do my inner guidance system and to curb the mind’s habit of second guessing her.
When I calmly surrender to an unexpected change or plot twist, focus on why it may be better and what blessings and possibilities it might bring with it, and adapt my plans and activities to it, life meets me with unexpected gifts and manifestations of wishes that are supportive to this new trajectory.
Love helps me meet challenges in ways that are gentle on my being and allow for more growth and integration than else wise.
Closing 2023
With the solstice a new year and energetic slip-stream began calling to my being to attune to a new year and reality and I feel excitement as more and more spiritual fire flows through my being. I am at peace with 2023 and can let it go graciously and gratefully. Honoring it as the year that taught me about home, integrity, and accountability where I had been lacking in it.
And so I close out this year in humbling awe of the great teacher and in amazement of the infinite ways we can experience a moment or life. I bow in gratitude to Self and Source for all the love and support along these winding and heart-wrenching moments.
My heart is full with gratitude for family and friends who journey and share this wondersome life with me, and gratitude for those who no longer walk by my side as they have left this plane or my experience. I know this year would have been a lot harder without having my soul tribe and beloveds to lean on.
I am especially mindful of and grateful to my body for her poise, wisdom, and guidance along a path of facing off with the specters of death and mutilation. I bow to my body for her strength and indomitable alignment with Spirit throughout it all, for choosing healing and thriving over resignation and surrender to others beliefs.
This has been an important and hard year in my journey and I am grateful for the privilege of living and experiencing it.
