The Balance Between Surviving and Living an Encoded Life
Dear Reader: One of my core struggles– on and off throughout childhood and adolescence– was the bringing of my voice to the world. This was certainly not because I was inherently shy, but because I came to associate being fully expressed and vulnerably revealed with negative consequences. Instead of celebrating my self-expression, I was met with judgment and jealousy. It was too much, too honest, too accurate, too distracting in an already overwhelming family environment. It was seen as a threat to the familial powers-that-be. It had to be contained.
Can you relate?
As a result, I eventually became a kind of closet expresser. I wrote and wrote in diaries, utterly determined to express myself into being. And when I was away from my family– at school, summer camp, and with friends– I couldn’t shut up. I think I was making up for lost time. And, lost expression.
We are relational beings. Expression is fundamental to the human experience. When we insist on bringing our voice to the world, we are insisting on our right to exist. It’s that real, and it’s that significant.
In my work with clients who are longing to live their callings, we often come across a deep resistance to public sharing. They know that they have something to express– a poem, a book, a wisdom– but they can’t bring it to the world. Some block it even before knowing what it is they want to say. Others get it down on paper, and then retreat. Others retreat the moment the camera turns on.
Only a few know what is actually happening for them. The fears and negative associations around public revealing run so deep that they are often entirely blocked from awareness. There is something in there with their name on it, but the quest for anonymity– and the repression of the painful primal memories that source it– are stronger. As a result, a whole life often gets organized around self-containment.
In order to excavate our buried voice, we have to work on many levels. There are often many layers of healing required around the originating wounds. And there is something else– practicing the art of expression.
Some of the things that I have found helpful, particularly if you feel a very strong call to speak or write for the world, are the following:
(1) Make a commitment to a certain number of weekly hours to engage in a process of crafting the language you long to express. Devote yourself to its expression;
(2) Don’t limit those hours to the tangible act of writing. Include within them all the time that you spend reflecting on the project. For example, when you feel the need to walk and ponder the material, or when you need to retreat to attend to the feelings that are coming up. All of that is fundamental to the writing process. All of that is writing;
(3) Grant yourself permission to experience the first draft(s) as opportunities to outpour whatever it is that you need to express. Quite often, writers and other creators get ahead of themselves. They freeze up in the first draft(s), because they begin to worry about what will happen in later drafts. For example, their anticipated resistance to being publicly revealed comes up to block expression. Or they begin to worry about how people they know will respond to what they said about them. Ideally, one deals with that resistance in later drafts, when you are closer to going public. At the very least– and even if you inherently know that you are not at a stage where you are ready to share your thoughts with the world– grant yourself permission to GET EVERYTHING OUT OF YOU, in the early stages. In other words, the first draft(s) are for you and you alone. Even if that is as far as it can go just now, that is still a fantastic step forward. Because the soul is gratified when it gets the opportunity to honor its calling to expression. Whether it needs to bring that expression as an offering to the world, is a different question altogether. You don’t need to answer that question just yet.
So, move through the stages carefully, building the inner scaffolding required to be fully expressed. If you try to push through the resistance too quickly, you may retreat altogether. Progress in increments: clearing emotional debris, strengthening your resolve, insisting on a little bit more of your voice with every scribble. Allow your actualizing tendency to come to life, as your encoded call to express begins to take root in every area of your life. You’re not just fighting to express yourself. You are fighting to become the whole of you. Nothing matters more.
If you are looking for writing encouragement and support in the coming months, check out my next ‘Writing Your Way Home’ course, which begins July 16th at Soulshaping Institute (Course description & signup)
In Trudeau’s Kitchen is now available for pre-order!
If you are interested in pre-ordering In Trudeau’s Kitchen, here are a number of available locations. Quite unexpectedly, the book reached #1 on Amazon’s ‘Hot New Releases’ in the Canadian History just days after being added to Amazon. I’ll take that as a good sign:
The Balance Between Surviving and Living an Encoded Life
Dear Friend: Let’s begin with this quote from Chapter 12 of my last book, Where is God in all of this? A Conversation: “It is important to recognize the obvious: your commitment to an encoded life demands that you survive, first and foremost. You do what you have to do to sustain yourself, until space opens up for a more soul-centric life.”
At the heart of the book is the idea that you are a soul traveling through time. In each incarnation, you bring forth encodings – callings, gifts and offerings, archetypal transitions, essential healings and learnings, key occurrences and events, sacred geographies – that are fundamental to your soul’s unique blueprint. At the heart of each encoding is a piece of the puzzle that is distinctly you. It is for you to identify and actualize these encodings, so that you can become more and more aligned with who you were born to be in this life.
Even those of us who are consciously focused on identifying and embodying our reasons for being must accept that there are times when we get knocked off the path by survivalistic concerns and pressures: financial challenges; unresolved traumas; interpersonal triggers, disappointments, and losses; medical problems; war and forced migration etc.
Many of us who are doing the work to live an encoded life become frightened and even beat ourselves up when survivalistic concerns divert our focus. This is especially true if you are someone who is just beginning to step out into deeper soul waters, after years buried below the weight of adaptation and circumstance. You can begin to wonder if you will ever get back on a soul-centric path. You can even begin to feel tremendous grief and loss, as you watch the soulful consciousness that you were establishing fade from view. Some even wonder if it is worth going on.
I am here to tell you that all of this comes with the territory. Our species has made so little progress with respect to prioritizing and cultivating an encoded life that it is little wonder that you are seized with worry when your focus shifts. And while it is certainly possible that you won’t find your way back to it – the odds are that you will. Those encoded tracks that you have already laid down, will show up again to remind you as soon as the coast is clear. You will slowly but surely get back to the growthful work of excavating and actualizing your reasons for being. And you may well realize that some of the survivalistic circumstances that you confronted had an encoded quality after all.
For example, you are felled by the dehumanizing loss of a great love when you least expected it. You plummet into a dark and desperate place, only to find that somewhere at the heart of that journey is a deeper healing journey that you were encoded to experience in this lifetime. Or, you are forced by war to migrate from the country that you called home. It is uncomfortable and insecure for many years, until you realize that the place you landed was actually one of the sacred geographies that called your soul home. Or, you find your calling to serve others while struggling to survive economically.
So-called spiritual people often contend that it doesn’t matter what befalls you. You always have an opportunity to act from your highest capacity in the toughest of situations. Sounds good, and that may well be somewhat true as one becomes a more encoded being, but I’m not of the view that this is always true or that it must be true. Shit happens that is so severe that it is all you can do to activate your inner protectors – and distractors – and survive it. Sometimes survival is the victory, all on its own.
And sometimes you come to realize that your fight for survival is encoded, in and of itself. That every time you fight for your right to the light, you assert and confirm that your soul has a right to be here. Yes, the fight to survive may not feel as gratifying as some of your encodings, but your refusal to give up builds and fortifies the sense of self that you need to live a more consciously encoded life.
Of course, it may well be that it is in your better interest to not feel remotely connected to your conscious quest for a more encoded life. Sometimes our quest for survival is so earth-shatteringly uncomfortable that it is best to bypass our longing for something deeper. It’s there, waiting for us, but it is best hidden from view so that we can keep our eyes fully focused on getting through the challenge.
If you are feeling survival strain right now, but do feel like it would serve you to remain somewhat connected to your conscious quest for a more encoded life, here are some of the things you can do. These things helped me to balance survivalism and my authentic self as I worked my toward a life that felt more aligned with my sacred purpose: