A while back, on Instagram I made a short video about the sacral chakra and how our desires are actually clues to the next step on our path.
Sometimes desire gets a bad reputation, but without our desires how would anything happen? Would you say that your desire to eat healthy or pursue meditation or spend time helping others is "bad?" If it were not for my desire to deepen my spiritual practice I would never have made the steps to find a teacher and a lineage or end up with 10 years of practice under my belt leading me to become the person I had set out to 10 years ago.
One message that has been coming up lately in my sessions with clients is this need to define our values. Having a set of values allows us to have an anchor point for our decision making. It ensures that we are doing our best to align our actions with our values and build a life that has meaning for us.
As a younger person my life revolved around achieving good grades in school and prestigious jobs, having the most up to date fashion, and maintaining societal beauty standards. Needless to say, none of this was fulfilling and likely contributed to my ongoing anxiety and bouts with depression.
Once I started on my healing journey I realized what was actually important to me: community, healing, spirituality, love, and fun.
I started slowly making my decisions based around these values. Is this choice going to help increase my sense of community, healing, spirituality, love, and fun? Or is it taking me further away?
Now, 10 years later, I can look around me and say that my life reflects my values and brings me a deep sense of contentment and joy. It took time to realign every part of my life to reflect my values instead of the values that were handed down to me by society, but it absolutely happened.
And it's an ongoing practice. With social media and the speed of life it's easy to get taken away by other waves. Recently I had realized that I had become more preoccupied by IG follower numbers and whether or not I was going to do anything "big" with my platform. I could feel a tension building within me.
I took some time to reconnect to my values and what kind of life I want to lead. Essentially, I just want to do the work I feel called to do, have loving and healthy relationships, to help those less fortunate, expand my consciousness, and have fun. Realizing this I was able to release the tension of those previous expectations and connect back in deeply with my work. I feel more at ease, more contented, less stressed, and more fulfilled.
Here's another exercise you can do:
Think of your values or where you want to be one year from now.
Now list three things you did on purpose today that support this life you want to build.
:)
How else do you connect in with your desires? Or where do you feel like you struggle with this?
I'll be back with more exercises and classes touching on how to feel into your desires through the body and how to heal this relationship with self, which in turn helps us to heal the world. <3