Positivity, positivity, positivity.
It’s all so freaking boring.
It’s a slither of life experience.
Toxic positivity creates objects out of human beings.
Objects with rigid masks hiding their true feelings.
As a child I always found those horror movies about dolls the most scary.
Chuckie was the most terrifying.
Whilst I was touring as a sound engineer, I worked a show in the middle of nowhere Bavaria; deepest rural Germany.
Beautiful town, with mountains and rolling hills, and quaint buidlings surrounding a town centre steeped in local tradition. You could feel it in the stones.
When I checked into my room I had to move the two dolls, staring at me from the window sill, outside.
That is my heart fear.
It is real.
It existed in me.
I feel like it stemmed from a childhood where I always felt scared to express.
My heart fear was pointing to the thick masks that I wore.
That I was never authentic in my sharing, for fear of being withdrawn from, or from being abandoned.
I use the past tense because I have reached a level in my journey where I can write myself, free of fear. I can write what I want to voice, without fear of judgement of what other’s will think, or perceive me as.
That’s profound.
I got there through acceptance.
I got there through facing the fear, turning towards it, looking the monster in the face, and seeing the eyes of my wounded child in it’s face.
My fear taught me that I was abandoning myself, by trying to please others.
By trying to please others in an inauthentic way, they always felt that something was off, they felt my masks.
The antidote for me was to embrace myself fully.
To embrace the fear.
Embracing the child in me that was/is still scared of life, scared of people.
And agreeing to walk alongside him.
Agreeing to never abandon him again.
That’s what he requested of me, by the way. That I walk alongside him in life. That I hold him, and always be open to listening to him.
Sometimes what he has to say isn’t pretty or positive.
A lot of the time it looks like anguish, grief, despair or depravity.
But I made a promise, and I’ll keep that promise forever more.
In this way I don’t miss my life.
I have presence to my days.
I have length of days.
I don’t let him drive my life, and there’s always space for him at the table.
My shadow part looks a bit like Gollum.
Always searching for the precious.
Always searching for those that stole it from me.
Always asking to be cared for or saved.
Always sneaking around in the dark corners.
The more I faced the fear in my heart, the more I related with it.
The less scary it seemed.
I correct myself, it didn’t go away.
I befriended it.
The more Smeigel could emerge (sticking with the Lord of the Rings metaphor).
It started to add to my life.
A level of depth that I didn’t think was possible.
I could access my body in a way I never imagined.
I took a course once about a Tibetan meditation called the 9 points.
In that the sultry voice of the American man who was translating for Sounds True pined about the endless worlds of the body, that open up when the consciousness focuses on the body.
I can attest to that.
When I first started that course I remember a sense of a great chasm space underneath my body. An endless spacious knowing, connected to all things above and below.
So many of those sessions I would fall into a deep sleep, and wake up hours later. Full integration sleeping.
Wisdom is embodied knowledge.
I am learning all of the universe from the consciousness of my body.
Look, I’m not the buddha or anything.
Not yet, although I joke that by the time my son is 18 I will be.
I am on the life long path of knowing myself, and embodying that.
Forgetting, then coming back.
Forgetting, then coming back.
Before, when I thought about writing my voice down, I had a physical constriction in my heart, a flutter of adrenaline and fear.
It’s nice to acknowledge the difference in me.
How I have grown.
Now I feel privileged and honoured to share my story in each connotation that it comes out in, and I release to the world as its own entity.
Each part of my process; my history, ancestry, and environment that came through in each fluctuation.
Re-membering my self.
The truth is that the thing stopping you from achieving what you want to achieve in life is fear in your heart.
That fear comes from somewhere; it needs to be honoured, seen, held, accepted. It needs to belong in the rich tapestry of your life.
What does your heart fear feel like?
How do you explore it in safety?
How do you give yourself that?
—
Previously Published on Medium
iStock image