In order to wake up…..

“You create your own reality”. Those 5 words are the bottom line of an 8 hour workshop by Caroline Myss, a brilliant spiritual teacher and author, that I have now listened to twice. It’s called “Energy Anatomy” and her theories revolve around our energy centers (chakras) and how key they are to our health and well-being.

I have a lot of work yet to do, but listening and absorbing her message has strongly reinforced my belief that I’m on the right path and those 5 words encompass what I think is the most important thing that I, personally have done and I’m going to tell you what that is: I have questioned EVERYTHING that I thought I knew or believed.

The good news is that this reassessment and subsequent realignment has changed my life. Spiritually, emotionally, professionally, geographically. Everything. I’ve done a 180. I’ve done a vigorous scrub of my belief system. The bad or maybe daunting news, is that it’s taken me about 5 years.

Caroline teaches that our first chakra, the root chakra is where our tribal beliefs are held. From the moment we’re born, our tribe (parents, culture, religion, etc) influence us to fit in with the tribe. This is about survival. We learn our role and our values within the tribe, but eventually we begin to question and this creates internal and external conflict.

We’ve all been there. At some point in our lives, we wonder why we have to follow a certain religion or political party. Why do we have to marry at a certain age and have kids? Why do men and women have to conform to certain roles? And on and on. Often, we go through these periods of questioning or rebelling and then go right back to the tribal norms. Even though we often are not comfortable with them and that can create problems, or as Caroline posits, disease.

Breaking from the tribe is hard. They will tell you that disaster awaits and that you’re contributing to the downfall of society (gay marriage anyone?). That doing things differently or believing something different is bad and that you are bad.

I’ve always sort of lived my life between these two worlds of tribal norms and marching to my own beat, but about 5 years ago, I started a quest to get my shit together in an effort to deal with my alcoholism. I studied religion and spirituality on a broad spectrum, from Christianity to Buddhism. I began to meditate and in my opinion, that was the key. Regular meditation gave me incredible clarity and that was when I began to see that my beliefs were based on nothing. They just weren’t true.

This is what I want to tell you: if you’re struggling (and we all are, let’s be honest) and you’re trying to find relief or a path or a solution or something, start questioning. Everything. Are your beliefs based on something you think you’re supposed to believe because “I was raised this way”. That doesn’t work. That may be why you’re struggling. You’ve found yourself in a place that just doesn’t feel right because you’ve followed the rules that were set out by your tribe, but it’s not workin’ for you.

My political beliefs were the biggest casualty in my awakening. I’m now ashamed at some of the things I stridently supported over the years. These were things that someone told me were true and based on my background and my tribal (family) filters, I just took them as truth. The only real truth is that we have no idea what is actually true or false; there are just too many gray areas and too many things that I just honestly don’t know.

In regard to religion, I have no idea what “God” thinks or wants us to do, other than be kind to our fellow humans and show compassion and be helpful, rather than hurtful. Again, I’m ashamed at some of my past performances in this regard.

For me, it was absolutely empowering and freeing to admit to myself that I just don’t know and that nobody does.  It’s the great mystery, isn’t it?  God or the creator or the universe gives us little hints as to which way to go and we just have to listen.  It’s in our physiology.  We have intuition that we too often ignore, so that we can listen to the tribal norms or the louder noise of “this is the way things have always been done”.

Start scrubbing and don’t miss even the tiniest corners because a lot of stuff lurks in there that needs to be rousted out and examined.  Don’t wait.  I wish I had started so much earlier.  Be well.