What do you think of when you think of consciousness? Is it something like this…
Most people think of consciousness as a destination, as something that we arrive at.
There is no destination, just when we feel like we’ve arrived, we can feel like we’re falling again.
Consciousness is a lived practice in the moment. At each moment of our lives, we are presented with choices.
On average, we make about 35,000 choices a day. We pretty much make a choice every second of every day.
When we experience seemingly random highs and lows it is because we are making these choices unconsciously. When we make unconscious choices it eventually results in high levels of fatigue, stress, pain, and frustration.
When you make conscious choices, you have awareness and take responsibility for the choices you make. Consciousness leads you into a process of shedding all that covers all that you already are.
The truth is, everything that you need already exists within you.
Growth, or what we call expansion, is a shedding process, rather than an adding process. You have to unlearn everything you were taught in order to remember all that you already know!
You already are all you need to be, right where you are. You are powerful. You are peaceful. You are passionate. You are all you need to be right now. You are pure light.
Shedding is the process of releasing all that covers your light.
Shedding is a process that all of us will go through in our journey with Reiki. In order to make space for something new to come in, we have to learn to release and let go.
In healing, we peel back the layers to get to our core, to get to our truth. To discover the truth that you already are all you need to be, right where you are.
That process requires us to have faith and trust. We have to trust that the process works. We hold faith that underneath all those layers that we shed is our truth.
We trust that the process is worth it. We have to have faith in ourselves that we can work through the process and discover ourselves.
Honestly, shedding is hard. Often it will send us into a reality check, where we meet some of the lowest lows we’ve ever experienced. So it can be challenging to stick with it.
Instead of trusting the process and having faith, we may choose to go back to our old patterns and behaviors because it was easier.
Ultimately, this will lead us back to the same suffering we experienced before. We go back to the same toxic relationships. We turn to people pleasing and putting others’ needs before our own.
We go back to unexpectedly experiencing highs and lows. Instead of flowing through those highs and lows with ease.
Let me give you an example of this in my own life.
At this particular point in my life, I was 23 years old and I was living between my parent’s house and my ex-husband’s parent’s house. I had tried so hard to make my life work after getting married and moving out of my parent’s house for the first time.
Everything that could go wrong in my ideal life and marriage that I had envisioned had gone wrong. I was married to an addict, cheater, and narcissist.
I couldn’t maintain the finances to live on my own after losing much of what I had to support the man I had married. I had tried desperately to save him and to save our marriage.
But things kept falling deeper and deeper into shambles. It began to feel like I was being raked over coals over and over again.
Then one day while I was at his parent’s house, his mom pulled me aside and sat me down to tell me that “I needed to fix my marriage.” She told me it was my responsibility and that in order to honor God I needed to find a way to make it work.
It was at that moment that it finally dawned on me, I had spent the last two years taking responsibility for this man and my marriage. I had been trying to save him but the real person I need to save was me.
My ex-mother-in-law was wrong, saving my marriage wasn’t my responsibility. The only person I was responsible for was me. I realized then that I was responsible for saving myself and getting myself out of the situation.
At the time, the truth was both of us were denying ourselves, hating ourselves, and by all means hurting ourselves. All the damage he directed externally toward others, I directed internally toward myself.
All that damage I was doing to myself during the relationship had truly started before that relationship even began. What I was doing to myself wasn’t enough so I manifested someone in my life who would mirror to me the way I treated and talked to myself.
I had lost all of myself but in that conversation, I realized that I had the power to change. I had the choice to leave and start taking responsibility for putting the pieces of me back together.
That realization was so liberating, I was finally free. This story, for me, is the process of awareness and conscious choice, self-responsibility, the reality check, and shedding occurring in a series of moments!
That story is what began my journey of stepping into my power. It was a rebirth in my healing journey. The months and years that have followed have been really difficult at times.
This journey has required me to have faith and trust in the universe that the choices I made have always been leading me to the path of my highest good.
Facing who I was at the time and continuing to face myself since then hasn’t always been easy. Sometimes, it’s not easy now.
I still find myself shitting on myself but I know now that I get to choose my reality. I work every day to choose to let those stories go so that I can be more of who I am.
Every story is different. Each reclamation moment is different.
It can be simple like college debt, felt through our striving and driving. It can be traumatic, felt in our struggling and surviving. It can happen all at once, or in tiny little moments throughout our lives.
Remember there is no arrival!
While many things occurred at that moment for me, shedding has been a process.
Trust the process, the process works. Have faith that underneath all the layers you are shedding is your truth, the core of who you are. The process is worth it. Have faith in yourself that you can work through the process and discover yourself.
If you need support in the process or would like to learn how to work this process on your own, please reach out to me and schedule a clarity call so we can talk about the next best step for you.
I also teach this process in my Reiki courses so keep an eye out for those coming up!
