001 Inner Stories - Bloom
The morning sun was shining through my front window into the room I will call home for these final 3 weeks, you could find me sitting cosy in meditation feeling the warmth of his rays gently fall over my right cheek and neck. A feeling of safety in his presence. Nurturing safe energy. It was when I fell into this place of stillness that I received a very clear message regarding the blocks I have been experiencing in my life right now and how the reason I am not feeling like life is moving into a place of alignment is because so much is rooted and buried in fear.
Call it my desire for change and a new beginning, call it the energy from this New Moon or maybe that we are in the year of the water rabbit but all of the above are guiding me to mine. My new beginning that is. I could feel it deep within wanting to be seen, this knowing that something big is happening, something unpredictable and something so very needed. So I carried on connecting to my soul for guidance through this meditation as I knew I was about to be provided with a seed to plant for my future.
As I sat there allowing life to be and asking for clarity on my path I was shown what my true desires were. I allowed myself to see. Suddenly I was led on a quest where I was living a life that my heart has always dreamt of. Illuminated was me doing the things that bring me most joy. I was happy. I was in love with life. I had a home of warmth and kindness. I was inspired to create. I felt safe. Ultimately I was at peace.
I was then led on to see the true reason why I feel so disconnected from receiving and holding this right now. It was hard to witness and for my soul to feel but I was shown how deeply scared I was of creating and birthing this life into existence and then I was shown why…
The walls fell down and I felt a deep rooted fear of failure and ultimately loss. The feeling of having all I have ever wanted and fear of losing it all.
So instead I have created a life where I choose not to risk losing what I yearn for. I choose to never know, to never allow myself the opportunity of receiving and holding what my soul and heart aches in pain for. I choose to fail in a whole different way.
For if I have all of this and then it falls through my fingers I am also losing the time I spend blue sky thinking of my dream life as if it were real. The time I spend deep within my imagination of colour getting lost in my inner world. Where I detach from the chaos of reality to catch my breath and feel safe. A place my inner child roams freely, playing with no fear of failure. Playing with no expectations. Just creating through being alive.
For this is my safe place and if i were to lose this then where would I go when life becomes treacherously unbearable? How would i find solace in my solitude when there is nothing there anymore to be inspired by because I chose to blend my inner world with my outer world, which ended up eating it whole.
What would this existence be then?
And so I answered that question, with the words “I don’t know”.
I simply do not know what life would be.
Which then led me further along this Alice inspired path of realising that there is a question I do know the answer to and that is what life would be if I carried on living the way i am. A numbing existence of being alive. Never truly whole. Never truly at peace. Never truly embodied in my art. Alive and breathing but not alive and thriving.
I was suddenly transported back to being 17 sitting in a philosophy lecture where our teacher played us American Beauty, and then replayed the plastic bag scene over and over again. Ive always been mesmerised by that scene, even when I first saw the film probably around 8 or 9 years old, there was beauty to be found here.
That’s what life feels like sometimes. Existing, ever so gently being blown in the wind. Transfixing but also numbing. Not feeling in control of where we are being taken. What the dance of life looks like. Just floating with no roots grounding us down. There is a lot about that scene and about life that I will never understand, nor am I meant to. It is about feeling, feeling the beauty of life in our own way. I think that’s why I find this scene so beautiful, it showed me that you can find beauty in almost anything in life. You can create art from almost anything in life.
I realised then that the full spectrum of feeling alive was missing in my world. Including fear and loss, which touches my soul with grief. As what a beautiful life it is to be able to experience loss, to know the meaning of love on such a deep level and to now accept this love no longer has a place to reside. To honour the duality of this life and the medicine each side offers us.
It was as if I saw life as a frisbee. What you put out will never come back, so don’t let go! When really I needed to shift my perspective and throw my dreams as beautiful boomerangs. Knowing that it is safe to let go and share with the world as it will always land safely back within the palms of my hands as long as I trust and stay open to receive.
Life is giving until the giving feels like receiving.
So i decided in that moment of stillness that it is time. Time to start taking small yet meaningful steps in creating a life that feels like a blend of my inner and outer world. Allowing this journey to flow so seamlessly that the fear of loss starts to disperse and is replaced with excitement for what will now be. True creative fulfilment. A life embodied in passion and love no matter where the path may take me. It is time this ever moving outer world was blessed with my inner stories.
Towards the end of this moment in time a voice softly whispered to me “Olivia, you can never lose” . It felt like the warmest embrace, these words. Any time I feel like I wasted was in fact my pause to breathe in new life. To know a unfulfilling life will always be more painful to live than fully embracing and trusting a life that was always meant to be mine. For in truth there is no risk.
There is simply being alive or fully and wholly living.
I choose the latter.