When I started my Journey Home to Self on the heels of an existential crisis and a Spiritual Awakening, the intelligence and wisdom of Sacred Feminine ripped through my body, awakening me from a deep slumber.
This energy is often like a wildfire that purges all that is untrue and inauthentic about us. Relationships fall away, careers crumble, and sudden health symptoms show up.
We feel the pain of this uprooting in our lives. We feel the anxiety, the edginess, the discomfort of our life being shaken up.
Our escapism nature takes us away from feeling this pain into the busyness of our lives. This is what our world has taught us.
Avoid the pain at all costs and do not trust your intuition.
But not when you are on the Journey Home to Self. On this Journey, we walk towards the pain, not away from it.
“These pains you feel are messengers, listen to them.” - Rumi
In her book, When Things Fall Apart, Pema Chödrön writes about Obstacles appearing as swords. She writes, “What we call obstacles are really the way the world and our entire experience teach us where we’re stuck. What may appear to be an arrow or a sword we can actually experience as a flower. Whether we experience what happens to us as obstacle and enemy or as a teacher and friend depends entirely on our perception of reality. It depends on our relationship with ourselves.”
On this Journey, we walk towards the parts of ourselves that might make us uncomfortable, the parts of ourselves that have created feelings of shame in the past, the parts of ourselves that we have not fully accepted -- to listen to the truth they’ve been trying to tell us.
We show compassion and acceptance to those parts that have been hiding in the shadows.
There’s a story from my childhood that spilled out of me the other day when I was writing for my book.
The story is about a time when I was a little girl and my cousin cut a big chunk of my hair during a “salon” pretend play. In re-writing that story I realized that I knew she was going to do just that. I mean why else did she go for the real scissors while pretending to be a hairdresser?
I knew I did not want her to cut my hair. And yet, I stayed quiet. I didn’t question her or object. I sat there silently as the scissors made contact with my silky hair and the strands landed near my feet.
Staying quiet maintains the status quo.
Staying quiet doesn’t piss off people.
Staying quiet doesn’t shake the system in which we have all unconsciously agreed to play a part.
Feeling the pain of my younger self not being able to use her voice, get up, and walk away showed me what I needed to do for the 40-year-old Deepshikha.
Speak your truth
Without my heart pounding. Without my tongue turning into jelly. Even if it upsets a few people. Especially when it upsets people.
It’s been a journey.
It started with speaking my truth in private. In a journal. Then, slowly it translated to my public writing here on Substack and the podcast, Journey Home to Self.
These little T and big T truths have been milestone markers on the Journey Home to Self. As I cross them, I feel emboldened and less afraid.
These truths also point towards something else, something greater.
I have a Google doc that’s titled “What’s your truth today?”. Whenever I get stuck, I open it and start writing in it.
There’s a quote I loved from the book, The Covenant of Water. It says :
Sometimes we have to “live the question” not push the answer
In living the question, “What’s your truth today?”, another answer is often revealed to us.
The question then is, what is your truth today?
With much ❤️,
Deepshikha
Oh I love this: “what is your truth today?”…bam! Keep telling your truth, Deepshikha!! 💥💜