To be embodied is opposite to being lost in thought.
It’s to be connected to the feedback mechanism of emotion.
For much of my life, I thought that the happiness, love, and fulfillment I so deeply desired was about my intellect. I was transfixed by an illusion that the experience of life I sought could be created in my head. I believed that I could think my way to happiness.
I was mistaken.
Happiness is a feeling. It lives in my body, not in my head.
I’ve found that feeling is the place from which the richness of my life emerges. It exists beyond words. It lies beyond the reach of my intellect.
To be disconnected from my body, as has been the norm throughout much of my experience of life, is to live in a state of perpetual numbness. It’s to struggle against the early warning system that is my emotions. And yet, I've noticed that I'm not alone in this struggle. Numbness seems to be the norm in our society. We live in a world of intellect, disconnected from the limitless wisdom of our souls; of our spirits.
Coming back into contact with feeling was scary, at first. It was a new way of moving through the world, which ran in direct contradiction to my old way of being. Feeling required a loosening of my grip on the circumstances of my life. It was, and is, a practice of letting my life unfold however it may, through surrender to the chaotic unpredictability of the world around me. Feeling is acceptance and recognition that we always and only have the power to affect how we respond to whatever hand we’ve been dealt.
After all, while we’re busy making plans, God is belly-laughing.
At our core, we are all simply a flow of experience. The only thing that’s truly real in our lives is the ever unfolding now. This moment is the only one from which I can create the version of my life that I’ve long been too scared to admit that I want. Everything else is simply a story I used to tell myself. Everything else is simply an often-unconscious creation of my intellect.
I used to think that it was my intellect that kept me safe. That it was my intellect that determined my value in the world. I understood it to be the arbiter of my worthiness of love.
So, naturally, I clung to it as if I were dangling over the edge of a ten-thousand-foot cliff.
I was confused; Afraid; lost in thought.
Instead, it's my intellect that has the power to deceive me into believing that I am anything other than pure love. It's my intellect, left to run amok, that has the power to fabricate stories about my-self and then to deceive me into believing that they are objective reality. After all, thought creates my experience of the world, right before turning around to say to me “I didn’t do it!”
Beyond my intellect, there are the feelings of my life.
It's in those feelings that magic and beauty spill forth.
Returning again and again to a state of embodiment has been akin to coming home after years away. Reacquainting myself with feeling has brought forth a rediscovery of the power I have to create my life to be whatever I desire most. It's liberation from the thought systems and beliefs that are so ingrained in family and society that they previously seemed like indisputable fact, not thought.
I continue to find at an ever-deepening level that the beauty of my life is born out of the feelings that emerge moment by moment. To be disconnected from those feelings—to be disembodied—is to feel nothing in the face of the immense power of the rising and falling tides of my emotions: it’s to live a life disconnected from the infinite wisdom, strength, and resilience that lies within each of us.
My discovery of this truth lay on the other side of a mountain that remained off limits for years. One where I long perceived danger to exist. In truth, that danger existed only in my mind. On the other side of that hill lay a world beyond the intellect.
That same discovery is available for each and every one of us, if we dare to venture beyond what we think we know to be “true.” To do so takes courage and determination. And on the other side lives a way of being in life that has exceeded my wildest dreams.
If you’re interested in speaking more about this way of being in the world, I’d encourage you to reach out to me. I’d love to have a conversation about what I continue discovering to be more true about how my mind works, and what I’ve found to be useful on this journey of creating a life that is uncommonly and unapologetically my own.
You can do so simply by responding to this email, or by sending me a message on LinkedIn.