...that begins with a single step.
Day 55/366 days Towards Self-Mastery. Mood: weary
My journey towards self-mastery started a number of decades ago. In my early twenties the searching for emotional capacity and emotional stability had already begun.
Although those early efforts were disguised as a search for happiness, the outcome was much more resilience building and stabilising.
It's a long, loooong journey for some of us. And it's a choice, a series of choices that you make every single day.
Those choices become easier, fuelled by the delight of beginning to experience ease in places where there was hardship, and joy in spaces that were filled with grief.
The first 54 days of this journey have given us the tools for contemplating the journey within to authenticity, towards self-mastery.
These foundational tools include:
Let appreciation till the fertile and life-giving soil of your soul
Find the magic of the life force in the ordinary
Realising that what you have is what you need
Welcoming opportunities to make choices that reflect your preferences
Living into the small moments of every day
A daily dialogue with your authentic self through journalling, meditation, walking reflections or other means
And time for creative visualisation of the woman you want to be
Today's challenge is to make the decision to commit to this journey everyday or stop now and return to the life you have. Be peaceful and contented with it. Go in grace.
From here on until the end of the year of this challenge, our everyday life experiences provide the resources and the inspiration to continue this journey.
Every day is an opportunity for growth
Since embarking on the self-mastery journey there have been very few days that I haven't dedicated to knowing myself more intimately, more honestly, more deeply. It's been a life long mission.
Being aware of this immersion in a culture and a society that wants to prescribe every detail of my life encourages me to protect my spirit from drifting back into the mainstream of that conditioning.
Living consciously required diligence to new habits, and vigilance in my reactions and response to life. At times exhausting, until I learned new ways to navigate this inner terrain.
Constant vigilance, which contributes little of value to the nervous system, creates chronic anxiety.
Shortcuts that act as a surgical laser beam on old conditioned responses include practicing awareness and being present to what I'm doing on auto-run. They include feeling into the embodied sensations that alert me to my reactions and responses, and connecting with the consciousness/information that resides there.
They culminate with those delicious "ah ha"moments of realisation and the seemingly magical release of energy and information from the body's field to set me on a new and upgraded emotional trajectory.
Once you begin this process there's really no turning back. Sarah, I think, is teasing us here.
366 days Towards Self-Mastery
When I considered my New Year's intentions for 2020 I had just one: To allow my heart to love what it loved...and let it lead me. (If not now, then when?)
I've spent months working on integrating my life. To live life more fully with my home life, my interests, my work, my responsibilities, all coming together, all connected. I want to give each the attention that they desire and need, and still have time and energy for the others. That means living and working from the heart.
As I was clearing out my bookshelf over the Christmas break I discovered Simple Abundance. I set it aside to explore it on New Year's Day as I lazed through another delicious day of nothingness. Sarah, the author, says this book is about living in grace. Living in grace I realised, is about Self-Mastery.
My thirst for understanding the human condition has driven me all my life, and hand-in-hand with self-mastery it has been a life-long goal. And seeing as I love to write, that living in grace is about self-mastery, and I love a bit of a challenge, then if I am truly going to let my heart lead, I really don't have any other choice. So scary as it feels, I'm starting out on a daily mission of leaning into the suggestions of this daybook and making a daily post to keep me accountable. If not now, then when?
I'm Josie. You can find out a little more about me here.
Simple Abundance: A Daybook of Comfort and Joy: by Sarah Ban Breathnach.
This book is written for the Australian and NZ market because it refers to seasonal changes. It's available on Amazon here if you'd like to follow along.