May 2019 | Seeking Truth

Thanks to my sister Sona, her love, her support and her soul touching words to me, I am inspired to share this story with you.

What is it inside that drives us to want to change, to be better? Is it wanting something different than what we grew up with? Is it wanting to understand the truth behind our pain? Is it the desire to seek knowledge about our world and want to use it to help others?

People have thanked me for being vulnerable, but the truth is, the more vulnerable I am, the more protected I feel, the more connected I am to a collective, to being in it together, and that brings an ease, a bond to all of life. The change has felt so gradual and I'm still very aware of the times when I guard, and why, but I'm also becoming much more ok if I can't please everyone, if other's don't agree with me, choose to be condescending or just don't like something about me. I still try my best to offer respect when I can. And that makes ME feel better to move out of reaction and into choice.

I grew up with a fear that was crippling, bereft of any belief in myself. Through the fog of terror, unease, confusion and loneliness, I left home when I was 17. All I really did was enter in to a different kind of prison, a different kind of loneliness and loss, where I was rife with the guilt of knowing I had left my younger sister.

Sometimes we have to rebel against everything we've been told to begin to know ourselves, to find a rising courage, that even for a time being can be profound enough to call the storm to stillness, to shake us and wake us from the nightmare, the pain, the darkness; to engage in life despite the fear and get a glimpse of something different-- another way, and we start to welcome the voices that call us back to ourselves and beyond ourselves.

We find a way to see the beauty that we can harvest from the riches of the darkness. We respect the beauty, hold on to it for dear life, and it becomes visible in our dignity. And if we look for it we can see it in how we hold ourselves in the world, how we hold others in the world, eventually enveloping them too in trust and safety. We are in this together.

There is a remembrance in me that wanting to help myself and others to improve their lives means that sometimes I get to go first. It's an honor to show up in a way that gives others permission to open up and find their own Truth that allows their most beautiful selves to emerge. Sometimes we have to go in and in, into what can feel like a scary abyss, so that we can find and release whatever is false and crawl out the other side. And yet we must also find the balance between overindulging the memories and emotions and denying that they are there at all, to the point of a deep insincerity towards ourselves. Both are dangerous places if we stay for too long. We must use the subtle eye of the heart to watch ourselves in this process, to hear and see the hidden heart, to heal it and bring it back to life; to create one spark - is all we need to nourish the flame.

As you're reading this, I will have left home again, at 39, traveling to Europe celebrating 10 years with my love. Each time we leave home, the road takes us into a world we've never been in, finding ourselves alone in a different way. We become more attentive to the selves we have brought along, and what and whom we meet almost always touches the part of the heart that is waiting at home. When I travel, a renewed presence comes with me, welcoming all invitations of transformation, and if I listen deeply I can hear what my heart would love to say. A journey is a sacred thing where we discover more of the hidden, returning enriched. May you have your own in the nearing summer days.

My love to you always and love for the journey,
Anisha