A New Year, A New Golden You
Jessica Weir
Happy New Year! 2017 is here. I'm working on my vision for the new year and the rest of my life. Making resolutions isn't how I operate. I see my life as a continuous journey of growth. The new year definitely brings a renewal of energy though. A new beginning so to speak. An opportunity to redirect my focus and my energy. I think of it more as setting intentions, but with a light hand. Trying to force myself to do something, even if it's good for me will not work. And I'll try to explain why below. Setting an intention is more like redirecting my focus. I'm not on this earth to live a crappy life, none of us are. But I also allow myself to acknowledge all the crap I'm working through. Working through my shit is the hardest yet most rewarding work I'll ever do. Healing and learning are a huge part of the journey that is this life. So my intentions are set, and the new year offers new energy to check in and course correct. My intention is to share my light with the world, to allow my inner divine and golden self to shine.
At the start of this great documentary about Joseph Campbell, "Finding Joe", there's a great story about a gold statue of the Buddha, shining and glorious, precious to the monks. Then an outside force is going to invade, to take and destroy what they can. So to save their glorious golden Buddha, they cover it in concrete. Slathering on gritty, grey concrete that dries and covers up that shining light. The offensive force passes it by. The concrete layer protected their precious statue. Once that threat is no more, they fear another attack, so they leave that concrete in place. It isn't until many years later that by chance, the concrete starts to break and crumble away. The monks discover a golden Buddha underneath the grey rock. So much time had passed that their protection tactic was completely forgotten and the concrete was the truth. They didn't know it was golden underneath, until little by little the concrete was chipped away.
We are all born golden. We are infinite and divine light. We are golden, shining and glorious. But as threats and experiences happen as we grow up, we protect ourselves with our own sort of concrete, emotional armor and blocks. It all forms to protect us. It's the gremlin, the limiting beliefs, the assumptions and interpretations. We learn /decide something about life as children to survive. For example, life isn't safe, I have to protect yourself. To feel loved and get attention, I must act out. Or to feel safe, loved and get attention, I must be perfect.
We spend the rest of our lives learning to heal and crack that concrete so the golden light can shine as it's meant to. We are all golden at our core. It's our reaction to the world, our thinking that gets in our way. And that thinking developed to protect us. It helped us survive, just like the monks protecting the Buddha from invaders.
The thing is, that the original thought and emotional experience creates a pathway in our brain. So that thought I had as a 3 year old, that the world is unsafe and men can hurt me created the path my thoughts travel down. It's like a lens that our perception of the world filters through. So my brain and nervous system is on the lookout for that threat because that is the road my thoughts travel. My brain is primed to be aware of those emotions and thoughts, because that is the lens through which I see the world. It helped me survive as a kid. Those pathways are reinforced every single day, with every single thought. Thirty plus years thinking about myself and the world in a certain way. That it's unsafe and I need to protect myself by being quiet and good. No wonder change is seems so slow and hard.
Don't get me wrong, being quiet and good aren't bad qualities. But they also don't represent all that I am. It's still a layer of concrete, meant to protect but not the full truth. There's golden divine light within those walls. That's the real me. All my experiences and thoughts about myself become a lens. It's as if my inner light, my inner golden self is surrounded by layer upon layer of belief. That's okay. But just like the monks who forgot there was a golden Buddha underneath, I can get lost in those layers, believing them to be the only truth. My inner light though, is right there underneath ready to beam through.
The real work of my life, of being a human being is to heal and connect with that inner light, my essential golden self. It's the hardest work I'll ever do. I meditated the other day with a mantra from kundalini yoga, "Sat Nam". It means I am truth. I had the hardest time sitting with that. I wanted to cry with disbelief. Fighting to create a new pathway in my brain. Whacking away at my own concrete. To really get in there and acknowledge the resistance I was feeling. That I had come to hold onto the old beliefs like I was clinging to the concrete wall because that was the truth. Often, that predominate emotion or belief, "I am not enough" wins the fight. Like an addiction, that pathway is so strong in my brain. It's takes conscious effort to pull back the reigns and redirect to a new pathway, a new lens. A lens of love and light, allowing my golden higher self to create a new way of being. "I am truth, I am love". That's my new mantra.
My thoughts have been influenced by what I've been reading; Dr. Joe Dispenza, "Breaking the Habit of Being Yourself", Gabrielle Bernstein's "The Universe Has Your Back" and listening to some T.D. Jakes motivational talks. One thing that stayed with me is that my perception is what will make this year. So to hell with resolutions, I'm all about building new pathways, seeing with new eyes. That's a life long journey. On that journey, I will take the renewal of energy the new year brings. I wish for you to shine, to see through a lens of love and light this year. I intend to share my journey with you, as a way for me to chip away the concrete, and let my golden self shine through, hopefully helping you in your own journey. Best wishes for 2017 and beyond.