Before we can feel at ease with the world we need to feel at ease with ourselves. Being at ease with self involves feeling physically well, emotionally balanced, and intellectually engaged. Being at ease with self involves accepting oneself as is. Being at ease with self means truly caring for who we are. It means we love ourselves, always, and no matter what!
If we want to make changes, we start from where we are. We do not criticize or put ourselves down. I cannot overstate how important it is to feel well in the body before you can feel at ease with anything. That means plenty of rest and eating the foods that support you. It is so important to rest your nervous system. This means staying away from conflict and negative thoughts. This means that your relationships are mutually respectful and supportive.
When we feel at ease with ourselves, we are available to be of service. Then we can do our part to change the world. Most importantly, living righteous lives will help us feel at ease with the world. Righteous lives seek the greater good for all, but never to the exclusion of self. A righteous life has an open heart, but is never a victim. A righteous life means that you believe in yourself and believe that all beings have a right to thrive.
IT’S NO USE! This remark comes from grief, from loss, from failure to change things so that life is better. Perhaps you feel that you’ve lost so much you can never fully recover. Perhaps you are resigned to things as they are.
And perhaps you have supportive friends who don’t blame you for feeling that way. They may even commiserate with you and together you find solace in ‘this is just the way it is, how things are, how life is.’
But if you want to have the energy you need to live your life, if you are not ready to give in to things as they are, then a shift in what you believe to be true is needed. It is time to rebuild your life from a new perspective and strategy.
Instead of being resigned to things as they are, surrender to them. In addition, let go of judging yourself for unfortunate decisions made in the past. See them for what they are — why you made them at the time, and what you now know not to do.
Resignation believes things cannot ever get better. Therefore, there is no incentive to dust off your creative capacities to change things. Surrender, on the other hand, does not resist. When you surrender, you are available to see the possibilities and the openings, subtle as they might be, for you to begin to move out of your situation. Surrender to what is as you begin to create what will be.
It is true that we cannot always just walk away. But we can begin to change our lives by believing that we are in charge of our destiny and that we are the ones who have the power, the real power, to redirect our lives. This may not appear to be anywhere near the truth, especially if we perceive that we are permanently caught inside a situation that is far larger and stronger than we are.
And if we accept that, and do not push back, that will be the case. Forever.
The way out is to take a ferocious stand for your life. Decide that the only thing that matters now is taking back your life. Feel into the desires of your heart, mind, and body for the future you want to bring in. Embody these desires by making every choice in service to the future, to the life you want to be living, to how you want to look and feel, to the people you want around you, to the experiences you want to have.
From here on out, every decision you make, from the most apparently insignificant to far more important ones, must be in service to your best interests — to you. Not to or for someone else. YOU ARE WRITING YOURSELF INTO A NEW STORY. Even if you have dependents, whether they are human or animal or other, you will serve them best when you are at your best. Now is always the time to let go of conditioning and programs that riddle you with guilt around who you are supposed to be in the world, what you are supposed to be doing, how you should live, how much money you should have, how you should look, to name a few, in order to be worthy, acceptable, righteous, obedient, humble, a good citizen, etc.
The only way to break out of conditioning and all the habits that are designed to undermine your flourishing is to take this stand for your life. You may never have done this, so now you may need to find your courage. You may wonder how exactly does one take a stand for their life. Begin by choosing you. Begin by saying yes to what calls you. You may not be able to leave your job right away, but you can uplevel your joy with things and activities that uplift, by focusing on what raises your vibration and getting rid of what brings you down. You may not be able to move a lot of territory initially, but the more pieces you move on your behalf, the more the energy stream will flow faster. Every single small action that you perform on your behalf, on behalf of the life you truly want to live, will have a cumulative effect towards bringing in a future that supports, values, and honors you. This is a law of energetics — where you put your attention and focus is what you will grow. Believe that there is no greater cause than yourself, that there is no more sacred purpose than the life you came to live. This is YOUR life; it belongs to you. You are responsible for it.
Have compassion for yourself. Have patience with the process. There will be days when you feel you have failed. The thing is to get back up and keep going.
Say YES to YOU. Forgive your past. Love your now.
This is yours to do, and you can do this.
There is so much more to come.
To LIFE!
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There’s an article on this website where I talk about the deep survival crisis the protagonist of Cast Away is plunged into when he is stranded on an uninhabited island. After four years of persevering and adapting to a harsh environment, he is able to free himself from the extreme confines of an isolated, ascetic life. In this article I explore the primitive and intimate process of being inside the reality of moving through severe challenges. ~ Gloria
In the Liminal Zone, we are eyeless, voiceless, and without skin to cover our bones.
We are wanderers in the land of the dead, a stark desert buffeted by howling winds. If you listen closely, you can hear the shrill whispers of its discarnate inhabitants – those unwilling to move on, unwilling to let go of their grief, and those who will not leave until they understand, from their most profound depths, WHY.
When you’ve lost your job, your spouse, your child, your beloved pet, when you’ve been forcibly and permanently separated from who you loved and what you need to live, the grief and shock are overwhelming. You’re not having a debate with despair, loneliness, or terror – you are those things; they live inside each cell of your being, roiling through your guts in an endless loop of horror. You are now inside the cruel universe. This is about your absolute powerlessness to do anything about being swept away, tugged under violent waters, and thrown against sharp rocks and jagged reefs. And it all happens without your consent while you choke, unable to scream or protest.
And then – miraculously – you are flung to the surface and you gasp madly for air.
Unknown depths stretch endlessly before you. If you want to live, you must now tread through them. You have entered the Liminal Zone, the bridgeless chasm between the life you had and the one that does not yet exist. You are in the space between the stories of your life. When we’re in that space, we don’t know if we will get back to our former life, to our worn but comfortable story, or if we will find ourselves on a different track in a new story, or if will get back at all. And therein lays the unassailable terror and invitation of the Liminal Zone. It is here, at the threshold of scathing unknowability, that we have the opportunity to wrestle with personal limitations made even more potent by the inscrutable environment we find ourselves in. The story of your life as you knew it is in its death throes.
In this space of complete vulnerability, we don’t know if we will live or die.
Death is the end of the current story. The resurrection of what was is not a likely option, so what will the new story be? We don’t know. We can’t know. We can only guess at what’s possible. We can try to calculate the odds by accounting for external resources and the capacity of our ingenuity, including the state of our mental and physical health. It’s possible, too, that although the apparent horizon holds no promise for it, life could change for the better. Some unplanned events or resources could unexpectedly appear. But if we want to live one thing is certain – we must stay focused. We do not have the luxury of displacing this primary focus with endless philosophical queries and metaphysical excursions into WHY. We must make our peace with what is and proceed. If we want to be able to write ourselves into the future, we have to be the authors of our lives in thought, word, and deed. But to get to the future we will have to go through the Liminal Zone.
Once inside the Zone, your former identity is unceremoniously shed.
The attachment to your accomplishments – to the “Great Work” you put out in the world – becomes irrelevant and dissolves into a lack of meaning. After all, it cannot sustain you here. The identity you established in your former life is violently hacked right off your bones. Your persona is altered beyond recognition. It is here, in the Zone, that you are dismembered. You have become Liminal.
Now you must put yourself back together, create a new body, a new identity, and a new story.
In 2013 I wrote When You’re Going Through Hell Keep Going where I talked about the deep survival crisis the protagonist of Cast Away is plunged into when he is stranded on an uninhabited island. After four years of persevering and adapting to a harsh environment, Chuck Noland is able to free himself from the extreme confines of an isolated, ascetic life.
Navigating the Liminal Zone
When Chuck’s plane went down into the South Pacific he was thrust into the Liminal Zone. What did he reflect on during those long lonely days and nights, especially when he knew that he might never see his family or friends again? He knew he could die of illness, starvation, and exposure. What kept him going, despite the loneliness and the acute unknowability of his future? Although he made several attempts to end his life, he continued to push forward into and through the Liminal Zone, eventually making his way out.
But how did he do that? How did he make his way to the other side? To begin: he was still in his body, in one piece. There were no immediate ways available to end his life other than returning to the ocean and intentionally drowning. But such an act is counter to the body’s instinct to survive. The innate tendency is to preserve one’s life for as long as one can. And that is how Chuck moved forward; he looked for ways to hold onto his life. Although there was a huge learning curve in understanding his new environment and mastering it sufficiently to stay alive, his perseverance and small successes encouraged him to continue to make the effort to live. That is not to say that he did not have frequent nightmares that this was how life would be for the duration or that he completely ceased to entertain taking his own life. I believe he walked between the chafingly disparate worlds of wanting to live and needing to die, and sometimes his need to die created pressure so abrasive that it was only his greater need to quell his hunger that saved him. His continuous dialogues with despair and hope were companions as inescapable as his breath and as inevitable as the blood running through his veins. Nevertheless, he pushed forward – driven by hunger, hope, and despair – and in doing so, stretched his capacity to wait, to be patient, and to be resilient inside the unknown.
When you are in the Liminal Zone, time is experienced differently.
In a sense, there is no time. There is no schedule for how long it will take to break the trails that will lead you to your new story. It can take weeks, months, or years. Your body, your spirit, and your will are the gifts and tools that will keep you going. The Liminal Zone gives no quarter; you either commit to your life or you die. This is the gift of the Liminal Zone – comfort may be hard to come by while you’re in it, but you are nevertheless offered the possibility of a new life.
to love life, to love it even
when you have no stomach for it
and everything you’ve held dear
crumbles like burnt paper in your hands,
your throat filled with the silt of it.
When grief sits with you, its tropical heat
thickening the air, heavy as water
more fit for gills than lungs;
when grief weights you like your own flesh
only more of it, an obesity of grief,
you think, How can a body withstand this?
Then you hold life like a face
between your palms, a plain face,
no charming smile, no violet eyes,
and you say, yes, I will take you
I will love you, again.
The Thing Is by Ellen Bass, from Mules of Love.
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