Don’t Turn Your Back on Yourself

Most of us have lost touch with our innate ability to listen to ourselves. We have collectively disconnected from our intuition, suppressing our deepest and truest thoughts, feelings, hopes and knowings. We turn away from noticing what is off in our lives and numb ourselves to the impact, preventing ourselves from envisioning and creating change.

Part of us always knows when some way we are living is not right, not in alignment, not what we want, not good for us, not good for others. Our bodies speak to us. We have inklings. Ideas stir in the back of our minds. But without even noticing, we silence ourselves. It is understandable that we have this pattern of turning our backs on ourselves. It was a protective measure developed because of real lived conditions, over millennia. But this pattern of disconnection and separation from ourselves and others that has become so entrenched, especially in dominating cultures and nations, such as the United States where I live, does not serve us. It is keeping us collectively stuck in lives and a world with so much wrong.

We don’t allow ourselves to notice where we need and want our lives and world to be different because we believe there is nothing that can be done about it. We convince ourselves that we are comfortable in conditions that are in fact quite uncomfortable. We have accepted the commonly held yet wildly incorrect notion that change is too hard or impossible, so we decide it’s better not to even try. We experience people doing this all around us from the moment we are born and we internalize and carry on the practice of turning away from ourselves.

Contrary to how it can seem, it is in fact so much harder to live in conditions that are not right than to change course. We know that so clearly after we have made a needed change. We feel the pain and discomfort of what we lived with, what we convinced ourselves was just fine. We come to understand that things were not at all fine. We wonder how we lived in those conditions for so long.

We get to forge a different path and stop turning our backs on ourselves. We get to notice what it really feels like when we do. We get to support each other to make our decisions from our deepest knowings. We get to build lives and a world that are best for us all. It is more than possible. It will make all the difference when we do.