Around and Around We Go
City life often drives us when we live within its cacophony
…of sounds, multi-layered happenings, traffic and crowds; each person living out their personal history as they make daily forays into their life, their story, their individual and internal narrative about who they are, where they’ve been and how their future might unfold.
Bumping up against the worlds of all who pass us along the streets, within the buildings where we work or inside the entertainment places we visit, we exist among an ocean of external ‘happenings’ when we live in cities. Even in our private lives, we’ve adapted to continual sensory input through our ongoing technological addictions to texts, phone calls, emails, and the internet or simply by watching cable TV.
The sounds and energies permeating our environment and surrounding each person include our own internalized mental chattering too. All of this affects us mentally, emotionally, physically and spiritually and in many ways we become dulled to our own sensitivity and receptivity; to that quiet and small, inner voice that lives in our core and speaks our truth. We neglect to feel the internal and true inner pulse of life that resides within inside each of us; within every human being and so, instead, live this half-life of outer appearances and ‘doings’.
So what to do if you are a bona fide self-confessed lover
Of all things that live and grow and breathe in the city or if you must be an urban dweller out of necessity yet want to remain in touch with that inner sense of self that vibrates and calls out to be heard? How do you or I honour who we are so that at some point during each day we reconnect with that infinite sense of self.
This writing is about how to begin to listen to those vital missives upwelling from within.
Many may arrive in the form of some kind of discomfort – mentally, emotionally, physically and even spiritually, but in their unfolding become the grist for a kind of soul practice that opens up inner portals and gives us the strength and resiliency to continue onward in the possible best way. Practising self-awareness is a key that can potentially transform life events and/or circumstances that you might currently shun into new beginnings and/or revelations that arouse the freeing up of those deep and inner realms meant to provide you with guidance and knowledge through all of life’s occurrences and encounters both difficult and sublime.
What do you feel in this very moment?
Notice and name what it is that runs through you; not how you’d like to feel, but how you truly are. What calls out to you and if you are not certain where to begin, then begin with your body. Scan it in its entirety and find the place or places that call out to you. Maybe it’s a pressure, a pain, an ache that you discover or perhaps you notice an anxiety living in your solar plexus or elsewhere. Whatever it is, once you uncover that body sensation, simply observe it and allow its expression to come fully forward so that you might hear its message. It may arrive as a shape, a colour, a density or an emotion, memory or insight. Any form is perfect. Let it emerge so that it might reveal its story; its mystery. Simply through this act of witnessing ‘what is’ and allowing ‘it’ to be there creates the sensation of movement that is felt within the body and as the movement progresses, a deep release of that which was stuck, arises. This is transformation.
Why would you want to do this practice”
It is because what or how you feel governs the inner barometer that narrates the story of how you show up in the precious now.
Check-in with yourself each morning and throughout the day too
Preferably each morning after you arise from bed and then again in the early evening as your day winds down. If one or both of those times are not possible for you or you forget or neglect to check-in, then simply select times of your own choosing during the day when you can feel into what needs your attention, what calls to you in the moment so that you might recognize how things truly are for your body, mind, emotions and spirit. A morning check-in allows you to notice the tone of how you begin each day; and an evening check-in shows you how you end each day; and anything in-between during the day shows how you rise and/or fall to whatever is coming your way or already inhabits some part of your psyche.
Keep a journal so that you have a place to chronicle what is occurring within you at any given time.
What? You don’t keep a journal? Well, consider why doing so might benefit all that you desire to know, to love, to notice, to do in your life. It’s a record-keeping of all the journeys you walk each day and a way of keeping track of all those bridges you’ve crossed and all those passages you’ve negotiated and will continue to walk into greater and greater awareness around who you are. From your journal-keeping, you may find material for a book, for a teaching course, for a painting, for the creation of a business or more because you’re recording the internal messages arising from your inner self. This practice provides nourishment for the soul and for what you might ultimately create in your life.
- Notice how you feel within yourself each and every day whether it’s emotional, mental, physical or any combination thereof. In particular, scan your physical since it is the part of us that always lives in the present moment and tells the truth about how we are. If you can, scan once in the morning and once in the evening and anytime during the day that is best you. Get to know your own rhythm.
- In your journal, begin with entering the daily self-assessment information on its pages. If you haven’t explored the world of journaling, consider doing so by purchasing a notebook and entering the daily self-assessment info on its pages. On a scale of 1 to 10 with 10 being excellent include a few scribbled notes or even fine prose that describes the thoughts and observations about how you are at that time.
- Provide a date for your daily check-ins and a clock-time, too, especially if you make multiple self-assessments during the course of a day.
You will discover that by recording your state of being each day…
A pattern emerges as you see more clearly those days and times when you feel ‘ in the flow’ and those others times when everything around you feels difficult and heavy. Eventually, it will become obvious that your state of being often correlates to occurrences in your life, to the people surrounding you, to your thoughts and to your patterns of beliefs, mental strongholds, emotions and more. You will understand how you ebb and flow as well as what influences affect you for better or for worse.