i’ve never really “fit in” … growing up, i felt a profound sense of loneliness because i seemed to be so different than anyone else … what appeared to be so “normal” for most people was completely foreign to me …
as i aged, it was challenging enough to try to come to a deeper understanding of myself; it was also very isolating …
at heart, i do think that most of us want and need the same things : we need food, we need shelter, we need clothing, we need fresh air to breathe, we need to be loved …
for many years of my life, i lacked that final need : i never felt loved … it took me years of searching to realize that i never felt loved because i felt purely unlovable …
this all stemmed from the unbearable loneliness that i felt throughout my whole life … in a moment of a complete catch-22, i developed an intimate relationship with my own loneliness … it became the strongest relationship that i had in my life, and it was the relationship that protected me the most in an unforgiving and cruel world …
my relationship with my own loneliness fortified and grew stronger over the years … we knew how to co-habitate; we built a successful life together … i believed that it would just be the two of us until the end of time …
and then something happened …
i found a place … and i found a community … and suddenly, my loneliness and i started to go through a major break-up …
i began to feel loved by others because i really started to love myself …
this all happened because of my yoga practice, and — particularly — because i found my way to laughing lotus yoga center on 19th street and 6th avenue in the heart of chelsea …
laughing lotus was my home … and everyone there was my family … and the main mantra for the entire community became : let us love you until you learn to love yourself …
i learned soooooooooooo much there … i learned to let people love me … i learned that i was worthy of being loved … i learned that i was truly lovable …
i learned that all feelings of being unlovable stemmed from my own ego … and by showing up daily — every motherfucking day — through practicing yoga, the fortress surrounding my ego and protecting my deeply monogamous relationship between myself and my loneliness began to disintegrate …
suddenly, i was surrounded by people who i loved and who loved me all of the time … and we took these incredible daily journeys together — at first exclusively on, and later, both on and off the mat — where we took deep dives into self-relection {svadhyaya}, truth {satya}, compassion {ahimsa}, fierce determination to grow {tapas}, and — ultimately — into complete surrender {isvarapranidhana} …
when you relinquish all concern with what other people think of you, you begin the daunting endeavor of dismantling the ego …
yes, the ego is the part of us that is boastful, full of conceit and arrogance, and believes that we are better than everybody else …
however, the ego is also the part of us that diminishes our own light, that feels that we are unworthy, that makes us feel that we are unlovable …
striking the balance between these dualities is when we arrive at a healthy state of ego (it is imperative and true to fundamentally understand that the ego is not entirely bad) …
once we reach a healthy state of ego, then we can safely begin moving beyond the ego, or — simply put — we can begin to grasp the magnitude and totality of who we really are : our true selves {purusha} …
to do this, it is essential to understand that what other people think of you is none of your fucking business …
i hope that you’ll drop a comment below, sharing with all of us how you go about living your life giving absolutely ZERO FUCKS about what other people think of you !!!
#loveismedicine 💖✨️🕊✨️💖✨️🕊✨️💖
I love you and your brilliant soul exactly as you are… all the time, without break, with passion and over a long period of time. Wahooooo🙏🏻🚀🔮