What are You Avoiding or Hiding From?

What are you hiding from? What are you avoiding? When we get really honest with ourselves, we all do it, and my answer to this is: we are hiding from ourselves. We are hiding from those parts that we feel guilty about, shameful about, angry about, depressed about, even happy about. We not only hide from the so-called bad parts, we also hide from the amazing parts too. We sometimes run and hide from challenging situations or conversations. But we can only do that for so long, and life can really blow up in our face. When we run and hide, we are stuffing our feelings down and storing them in our body, which can make us very sick and do crazy shit. Fear is the driving force, and we all know that when fear is the driving force, it never turns out well and creates more suffering.

Do you feel like you have to be perfect in order to be noticed, heard, seen or loved?  When you look in the mirror, do you pick yourself apart? Do your thoughts kick the shit out of yourself? Perfectionism is a pattern that we create to cover up our insecurities and false things we believe about ourselves. We often feel that people will only like us when they don’t see these vulnerable parts. This is a lie. Vulnerability is real and raw, and it brings us closer together with understanding and compassion. So when we are hiding those parts of ourselves which make us unique in this human experience, it robs us from beautiful, healthy attachments to others. Covering up our uniqueness creates separation and suffering, because at the end of the day, we all just want to love and be loved.

“Forcing ourselves to be happy is not genuine or useful. Being honest about what we feel, while remaining calm and aware, is the real work.”

Yung Pueblo

I just had a coaching call with my pattern and belief coach, Ginny, today, and I shared with her about a situation where I had expectations of an outcome. We started digging into ‘Why I do that?’ Why do I purposely create situations in my life where I set myself up for disappointment and sadness? Where does this from? And how do I fix it? How do I stop creating situations where I am continually disappointing myself? I will get to the answer, and in the meantime, I want to share a little more. During the session with Ginny, she asked me what I do when I have toxic thoughts about people and circumstances. The first thing that came to mind is, ‘I beat myself up for even thinking that way, and at the same time, it feels like it’s feeding something inside of me that feels uncomfortably good.’ (If that makes sense?) Then I would catch myself and switch it to sending blessings to the person or situation. Which, guess what? Turns out to be another pattern — of spiritual toxicity (hiding and avoiding)!!! Man, that was a tough one to swallow.  What a sneaky mother fucker that hiding and avoiding is. What I was doing or what I have been doing is hiding from why I feel about the situation.  Getting really honest with myself instead of creating a story.

Acknowledging how you are feeling is the first step to conquering hiding and avoiding, and having the same situation or attracting the same person over and over into your life. I love getting to the root cause of the situation. There is no accident I am passionate about Iboga, the sacred root!! The truth is, acknowledging and accepting your feelings is the first step to freedom out of the painful cycle, as leaves space for new possibilities like clarity, love, kindness and compassion. It will feel uncomfortable in the moment, when you get really honest with yourself, because you may not be used to being that way. It’s like flexing or using a muscle you haven’t used before, or very often. Once you do, and you feel the freedom, you will want to continue to live your life that way.

The greatest gift to the world is being who you are. You are a gift and so is every life experience you get to have. Every experience creates who you are. We are here to learn and grow, and it is through the darkest moments we get to evolve and become who we came to be. The beautiful contrasts create the miracles.

To close, the following poem was written by a beautiful soul I’ve had the honour of meeting at my retreats. I HOPE it touches you all the same way. It made my day, Dean, and I’m forever humbled and grateful

HOPE

A life full of commotion and agonizing emotion,

No will to live, a lack of self devotion,

Running from lows and chasing highs,

Distracting myself just to get by

A road once so dark is now full of color,

Now that I’ve accessed my inner lover,

My heart feels so much fuller.

Dean, Edmonton AB 

Much love and appreciation for you all.

Bassé,

Treenz

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