Take a deep breath into every cell of your being. As you exhale release all the labels, all the descriptors, titles, both other and self created. Bask in this space.

What are you?

Close your eyes and feel your way to it. Don’t define it, don’t put it into words, but feel it completely.

Do you feel a sense of spaciousness, of limitlessness, of infinite potential?

If you are not all or any of these things, if you can not be defined or put into words, but only felt.

What are you?

Remember who, or better yet, what you really are.

Remember your potential, remember your limitless possibility.

Remember that you can not be defined, by self or other.

Remember what you are, where you come from and why you’re here.

Remember your knowingness, your awareness, remember your truth.

What are you?

 

You are the awareness of all these things.

You are embedded deep within yet extend far beyond.

You are the driving force of all these things.

You are both the wave and the ocean.

You are both the dance and the dancer.

You are both the creator and the container.

You are me as I am you.

~Alexa Torontow

and who are we when we ask the question? and who are we when we forget? and who is the one within the existential meanderings of mind? and who simply follows clouds?

The humanism bypass. I did it for years. I saw glimpses of someone’s potential, their beautiful soul, their loving heart, and told myself that this was who they truly were, ignoring all the rest. But the rest was what destroyed. The rest is where they lived most of the time. The rest was no illusion- it was them, too. This self-destructive pattern was birthed in two places: (1) my deep desire to see the best in my difficult parents. Not for them, but for me. I needed to believe that there was something kind and caring living inside of them; (2) a misplaced projection from my own self-concept work. I held the belief in my own potential, as a way of overcoming the shame I carried. But I made the mistake of assuming that everyone else was just as eager to find their light. Of course we all have glowing potential. At the core, we are all magnificent beings with profound capacities. But how many of us fully actualize it? At this stage of human development, not so many. The trick is to hold the space for two things at once- a deep belief in everyone’s possibilities, and a deep regard for your own well-being. It’s okay to pray for everyone’s liberation without joining them in prison. Pray from outside the prison walls, while taking exquisite care of yourself. It’s okay- you can’t do the work for them anyway. Boundaries, boundaries, boundaries… don’t leave home without them.   ~Jeff Brown

under wings

Jung puts the burden squarely on each person. This psychology of individuation, of making what you are, and of what you’ve inherited of the universe, of making that specific, of making the collective in you individual, and carrying it as an individual, and not only standing still in it, but moving through life in your own way- this is the hardest thing you can ask of a human being.  ~Laurens Van Der Post