Mindfulness to Stop Abandoning your Authentic Self
There comes a time in inner work when you recognize that you’ve had a habit of abandoning yourself - maybe for your whole life.
Perhaps you run from your dreams and any possibility of conflict. Perhaps it’s “safer” to disappear than to acknowledge your needs and desires. Or, maybe you move out….Out into everyone else ,offering your care and over-doing. Maybe you bypass what’s in your Heart in the hope that others will return all they’ve received from you.
Or maybe (probably) it’s both: out and in, hide and prove, shine and disappear.
Recognition comes when the dance of hiding and proving doesn’t work anymore. You wake up and notice that your relationships can’t be sustained unless you sacrifice yourself. And, having done so much work to find her, you’d rather not make such a sacrifice anymore.
Discover Your Center
A new way is needed: one that’s not too far out or too far in - a middle way.
Now you must discover your midline.
That’s what being “centered” really is, isn’t it? It’s having access to your own midline without being pulled off it when life intervenes. Life intervenes in many ways - through people, relationships, emotions, obligations and anything and everything else. Life keeps life-ing.
Your task is to discover your center, your madhya, your midline and hold it even while life keeps life-ing all around you. This is easier said than done because you have accumulated years of running away or running toward. So much running that your center has been abandoned over and over. So many abandonments, in fact ,that you may not remember what it feels like to be in it.
Live in the Middle
Living in your midline takes re-learning. It asks something different than your early work of self-discovery. Now you’ll need to watch yourself and hold strong in the moment - every moment. You’ll learn to be with life while it’s life-ing and noticing when you start to abandon your center. Notice how you try to hide or prove yourself. Then choose NOT to do what every cell in your body wants to do. You choose to stay in your center. You choose your midline over and over again.
You forget over and over again too - and that’s what the infinite do-overs are for. As soon as you realize you’ve abandoned yourself you turn back around to your center. You attempt to stand steady in your midline once again.
Unquestionably, this is shaky at first.
Sometimes your midline feels as thin as a razor’s edge. One tiny misstep and you’ll fall off to one side or the other, lost to your habit of disappearance or entanglement. But it IS there and you can find it. Stay with it.
When the middle is little you’ll probably feel uncomfortable - that’s what makes you want to let it go. You’ll feel exposed, vulnerable, scared to hold center - it’s just so familiar not to.
Expand Your Midline
Practice and do it anyway. Hold center. Become centered. Over time it won’t feel so hard every time. In a Tantric text (that is escaping me now) it’s said your task is to discover the midline and to expand it.
Now there’s any interesting thought. What if you learned not only to find the center, but to grow it? That means not only are you not rushing outside of yourself, or holding yourself back you’re growing. You could experience more and more life without forgetting yourself in the process. You could hold space for your people without losing yourself into them. You could state your needs without trying to disappear into the background. The wider your midline, the more life you can experience in it. More joy and more sorrow too, of course - but mostly more LIVING your Authentic Life.
From Self-Discovery to Self-Empowerment
More and more I’m noticing this is a necessary transition. In the beginning of inner work there is a kind of re-introduction to yourself. You’ve been outside of her for so long that in the beginning it’s like falling in love with an old friend. You remember who you are and return to what’s important. The work is like digging up buried treasure. Mostly beautiful. Sometimes surprising. It may be scary, but not terribly difficult.
But then the transition. When you decide to live your life as her, inner work becomes ‘work’. That’s because now you see the ways you participated in burying her. And you must decide not to do it anymore. You must decide to stand strong in your center and not to waiver.
This is the transition that moves you from the lightness of self-discovery into the depths of empowerment. I speak to this having felt it in my own life as I learn to stand in my own authenticity. I speak to this as I facilitate it with my clients.
While the transition to living from your center may sound daunting it’s also deeply rewarding. After the initial period of discomfort you’ll start to settle in. You’ll shift your orientation to life. Suddenly you’ll feel like you’re planted in your bones. Instead of being run by the world, you run your world. You become a shaper, a co-creator with life in all it’s life-ing. (that’s when things start to feel like magic!)
Your Authentic Life
The journey of becoming who you are is one that never ends. You can help it along by finding your midline and choosing to live from there. Life will bring all that life brings. When you’re in your center you’ll be able to meet it and grow through it. Come home to yourself and hold steady dear one. Your authentic life is waiting for you to embody it in the way that only you can.
Low Stakes Practice
Your starting point is seated meditation
Sitting quietly, watch your breath
Notice when your mind wanders off your breath
Return your attention to your breath
In this classic meditation technique your breath serves as the center. Practicing coming back to center in meditation trains your mind. It grows the awareness you’ll need in order to call yourself back when you’ve lost center out in life.