It’s been thirty days since I’ve written in my blog and about 7 days since I’ve been sun-gazing. Many factors have caused my gazing to be sporadic and my blog entries even more so, the most significant of which, I now understand, has been the sun itself. Ever since phase two began and I rounded the 15 minute mark of gazing two months ago things began to change. Each gazing session feels significant, like I can feel the sun melting old dysfunctional parts of my brain away. Each time I gaze there is a buzzing in my skull and an almost etheric calling from the universe to stand taller, to glow brighter, to live in the world as a beacon. A beacon of what, I don’t freakin’ know, the whole beckoning thing has me totally freaked out. It’s not like I “hear” an actual voice calling out to me, I’m not crazy. It’s as if the sun used phase one to burn up all the mental and emotional ties that were holding me in the place of my old fear based and anxiety ridden belief system about life; so in phase two it’s calling me to stand up and enjoy my new freedom, to embrace the newly discovered expansiveness of my soul, and to—gasp—be myself! That act, I realize, is the biggest act of courage a human can take, to fully become yourself, and then be yourself.
It seems like being yourself should’t take so much courage, that it should be the most natural and comforting thing in the world. What could be easier than being authentic, and wearing no masks? I know when I go to halloween parties the first thing to come off is the mask because of the chaffing and the sweating, so in life, it would seem like we’d be much comfier if we just didn’t wear masks at all. But that’s not the case. Our society currently is so thoroughly programmed. From rules of etiquette to dress code, from political correctness to sensitivity training, our society has become so rehearsed and performed that when someone is actually being themselves and coloring outside the lines of what we consider acceptable behavior the rest of us actually look on in fear. “What are they doing?” “They are going to get us in trouble.” “Come on honey, let’s go to the other side of the street.” Being yourself, I’m realizing as the sun calls me back to my truest nature, is very discomforting. The discomfort comes not because being yourself is hard, it’s not, it’s the most exhilarating thing in the world. The discomfort is because everyone around you expects you to be what you were, to continue the performance of whatever roles you accepted in adolescence to garner approval from those around you; to wear the paper mache mask you made in third grade and like it, Goddammit.
But I can’t go back to masks. I must go forward on this spiritual journey, led by the sun. The fact of the relentless sunrise every morning makes me understand I can get up again and again and that each new day is a new start and a new opportunity to embrace myself, embrace life, and accomplish my goals. The circumstances of my life have been swirling around me in a constant ebb and flow that has become crystalized in the place between prosperity and daily struggle. The struggles with my marijuana shop are a reflection of my own inner struggle to accept the prosperity that is my birthright. I have grown accustomed to struggle. I have made “sticking it out through adversity” an identity, a badge I wear, and until I can take that badge off and accept the abundance of life, the abundance of life will elude me. The universe has no interest in challenging my belief systems, only supporting them. So in its unwavering support, if I believe that I must struggle to find worth in this life, then struggle I will encounter. If I believe that abundance is all around us and we need not toil and struggle to attain it, then that too will become true.
Life is a mystery, a living being itself that actually responds to me, to my whims and preferences, but not the ones made of words in my brain, the ones made of energy in my being. If I feel struggle, I will get struggle. If I feel ease, I will experience ease. As Martha Beck would say “External circumstances don’t create internal emotional states, internal emotional states create external circumstance.” It may not always be easy to see this, but that’s because if you don’t believe it the universe will support that unbelief. That is where the magic is, pick your beliefs and then watch reality change before you. I know this is true because I experienced it for the four months of my phase one in minor ways almost every day. As I’ve struggled to come to terms with new levels of trust in myself and in the universe in phase two I realize it is because the sunlight has finally dug down deep enough and is scraping at the bedrock of false but dearly held beliefs I’ve ascribed to for longer than I can remember. Each new bout of sun gazing, at this length of time, scraps and tears away at those beliefs. I didn’t realize this at first, but it’s what’s caused me to skip. I wasn’t ready for how quickly my old notions would be stripped away. Now, as I write this, I feel more ready. The powerful nature of the phase two transformation started to make my head spin, I shrank back, bewildered. But I’m not afraid anymore. I long for the next unbelievable levels of freedom and prosperity waiting for me.
SIDE EFFECTS: Foundational parts of your personality will begin to shift and float around your consciousness like dislodged parts of California after that one big earthquake.
BENEFITS: Those parts of my personality that are being chiseled off by the sun are the masks. So like I feel at every halloween party, I’m grateful to finally be able to take them off.
