Hi all - it’s been a bit. I’ve been busy with an art program (more on that below) and work, but I’m very much still writing when I can find the time. Fall is my season and October is my month, and I welcome the transition from wanting to be outside all the time to curling up in sweaters and blankets with open arms. I’m also going through my own inner transformations, coming to terms with what I thought I wanted and how I actually want to spend my time doing and being. I invite you all to reflect on this as well as you read on.
Love,
Lia
Dharma: The inner flame inside of you
I was listening to a recent Good Life Project podcast on the topic “How to Find Your Calling & Live It” the other week while lying in bed recovering from side effects of the latest COVID vaccine (…that means it's working, right?). The guest, Suneel Gupta, talked about dharma as the “inner flame inside of you” and how living a good life means to bring that flame outwards in order to light up the things outside of you.
But how do you actually begin to discover what that inner flame inside of you is, so you can express it?
A few insights I took from the podcast:
We're all aware of our dharma, and have known moments where we've felt that effortless flow and find pure delight in what we're doing. The idea is to keep coming back to this, to allow dharma to reveal itself to you again and again. The risk of not doing so is that it can hurt like hell when you’ve got this thing inside of you that’s not being expressed. It can eat away at you. So you owe it to yourself to discover it, tap into it, and express it.
A job can be a vehicle, or a way for you to start expressing a little bit more of who you are. Bright spots in your job, even if you find yourself burning out or disconnected from it, can help you get back in touch with your dharma, the essence of what makes you come alive. For example, if you’re a nurse who enjoys writing, and only 10% of your job is writing patient charts, tap into that. Add your flair, let people know, and use that as a channel to express your dharma.
Suneel does an index card exercise that I plan to try. He put each idea that lit him up on an index card, with a 1-2 sentence reason why on the back. Then once a week he’d revisit the deck and sort the ideas in order of what still captivated him, and used that to narrow in on how to express his dharma. Eventually, only 1-2 ideas would stay at the top, and he’d use that to reveal what it was he really wanted to do (and not just keep chasing shiny pennies).
On finding flow and enlightenment
This past weekend I went to a concert for my favorite band, The All-American Rejects, and I had the opportunity to take part in an intimate acoustic and Q&A session. Someone asked what they think about when they're on stage, and I resonated with what Tyson Ritter (lead vocalist) said:
Thinking destroys a bit of your presence in a creative flow or in the moment. Anybody can look back on any sort of great experience in their life and if you were thinking, then obviously you were considering it. And if you were considering it, then obviously you weren’t in that moment.
So when we do it right, we’re so focused and present.
People always talk about the high of playing, and that is from, you know, the experience of playing for everyone — that sort of togetherness — I think is the closest taste of enlightenment that we could ever have, which is…you know, you see these people who have pure harmony within themselves. When you achieve that for even like a song, because it can happen for like a song at a time, you’ve completely removed yourself from the equation.
It’s the drug of playing live. You want to be that all the time. And you can’t be. Because you’re f*cking human. We aren’t these monks who have gone away to Tibet and sat with ourselves and really done the work. We get a cheap thrill for it. We get there the quick escape route. So yeah, for me, that’s what it is.
To them, it was a privilege to get to do what they do and that people enjoyed their music. While we can't escape our world, we can find moments of enlightenment by losing ourselves in moments while expressing our essence.
Realizing childhood dreams
I started an art program last month, and art has been something I've wanted to do since I was little. But, as many of us women of color were raised, I stayed on the safe path, influenced by many voices around me. I moved further away from my “right brain” and eventually found my way into design.
Yes, design is creativity, but applied very logically. It’s very left-brained. Now that I've been training the other half of my brain more, I've unlocked something in me that hasn't happened since I was little: I'm becoming very much a feeler again, crying at many parts of a Pixar movie instead of the one pivotal moment. Fighting back tears for songs that have lyrics like this:
…as I’m singing along while driving, and feeling my soul sink when I do work or spend time in ways that isn’t aligned with me. I used to roll up my sleeves at anything and everything, and now I'm starting to deeply feel which parts of my current role I truly enjoy and feel strongly averse to what no longer resonates with me.
All of these recent experiences have culminated into me feeling more in touch with myself. I’m not sure how else to describe it. Alive? More present? My soul is no longer longing to get somewhere, because I’m already here. I’m finally doing what I've waited to do for years (and really, at some point it was me who ended up holding myself back)…to seeking out and becoming inspired by the possibility of how I can best express my flame and light up what's outside of me.
Wrapping it up
Just like me, I feel that my brand Swishie® (which is now an officially registered trademark!) is evolving from a thinking to a feeling type place and I hope to express this more soon. While I still enjoy a good framework, I also want to hold space for discovery and live in the present to explore and experiment. My hope is for all of us to feel more deeply, and to make strides in finding and living out our essence. To keep things human, personal, and to really feel our way around this world so we all tap into what makes each and every one of us come alive.
If you have stories or moments of how you have discovered or are continuing to discover your essence, I'd love to know. (I'll share with you my journey, if you share yours. 😉)