It was with a heaviness that has been familiar lately that I woke up on Friday morning.  This heaviness has nothing to do with the weather or even much to do directly with things occurring in my life.  It has to do with a step I know that I need to take.  After moving through the heaviness of the morning through cleaning, doing yoga and buying myself flowers for my fire escape, I finally sat….with myself and the sky and the clouds and the sun.  It was just me, my flowers, my Buddha statue and nature all around me.  I sat watching the clouds and wondered to myself “who am I apart from my fear.”  This fear that I speak of is one of the biggest fears I carry.  See I, like most people who are Type A, have created an identity intimately intertwined with my being able to carry life on my shoulders.  I have always been the stable, strong one who people look to to do the right thing.  Generally speaking, historically anyway, I have done just so.  At times I have deviated from what makes rational sense and followed my heart but generally speaking I have always walked a path that has been successful.  As I recently chatted with you about, two years I began the path towards my heart.  I have been walking along the path slowly taking steps towards creating more authenticity.  It has been a big step forward to allow myself the flexibility to discover parts of myself, such as my writing, that I never knew were there.  Slowly I have walked the path of confronting fears and stepping out into the unknown.  But all along I have known that there was a dark place that someday I would need to confront.  This dark place being the part of me that despite allowing myself to be shinier than before, still holds back because of fear.

The fear that I speak of goes like this “what if I followed my heart and somehow couldn’t hold myself up.  What would I do if I fully and completely released my grip on security and allowed myself to free fall.  Would that be like the scenes in awful movies when a character jumps off a ten foot story building?  Would I go splat on the ground?  Would I be able to be the person I have known myself to be?”   All these questions came to mind the other day as I stared at these beautiful clouds with the sun peaking through after I had had a discussion with a friend.  I told my friend that I had had  a recent networking conversation which lead to the discussion of the possibility of  me seeking contract work.  My friend brought to light for me that this would make me full time self employment rather than being part time chained to a job that doesn’t suit me while trying to build what does.  While I chat with you the same tears are welling up in my eyes as did when I watched these clouds.  My mind goes “um ya not exactly a coffee shop kind of post kiddo.”  And then a sigh comes out and again I say “ya and….what does that even mean.  So the staff here sees me crying what does that mean about me?”  Not much except that the story behind the tears is one where I would never allow anyone to see them and now I could care less.  Well sort of anyway she says more honestly as she sips her tea and eats her sweet potato fries (yes they are my guilty pleasure when I chat with you sometimes:)  Well I kind of vaguely know the answers to some of those questions and they go a bit like this….

“You will be ok.  More than ok,  More ok than you could ever imagine because you will be you without your fear.  You will be left with your breath, your body, leading with your heart.  You will definitely not be who you have known yourself to be because that person has literally not be able to fully breathe freely ever.  She has been in fear and that fear has suffocated her breath.  So trust and believe you won’t be her per se but you will certainly be a more free beautiful version of her.”

And that is the truth.  Things have always worked out and it isn’t really always because I worked hard to make it happen.  While that is true, what is equally true is that there has always been a net below me and around me on all sides.  The Universe has always been there to provide me what I needed at exactly the right time I needed it.  All of my friends who have a spiritual practice have been telling me over and over again that the most recent situation that occurred only happened as a way of pushing me forward.  I would stay in my fear and hide out forever if it were the case but that’s not the Universe’s plan for me.  Life has a funny way of making things work out even when you, and actually especially when you, least expect it.  The current state that I am in is an opportunity for me to fully allow myself to free fall and prove to myself that no I won’t go splat on the ground but instead will be caught by the beauty of the world.  The same friend who spoke to me Friday spoke to me on my couch last night and her words were “you can always get a job.  You will never have a problem with that but this is not about that.  This is about following your heart.”  Yes it is.  It has so much less to do with the details and more to do with the fact that I need to learn the lesson of the peaceful warrior.  Walk the talk.  Be the peace you want inside.  Treat yourself with love and never, ever abandon your heart. Never Ever.  Be there for it and listen to it.  It beats with a special melody that is only for you.  Other people may not understand the music because theirs beats to a different tune.  Let them enjoy the music they like and you dance to yours.