Journey to the Center of the Body - Week Twelve
Photo Credit: https://www.miyakohybridhotel.com/blog/5-essential-hiking-trails-in-los-angeles/
By Joey De La Cruz
T-51 Tuesday, August 18 - New Moon
8:24am: About to do the morning yoga routine. It’s a necessity again. Also. Had some of the best sex of my lift last night/this morning. Connected, healed, deep, connected with one mind blowing orgasm. Body check: tight neck, left side, hip a bit sore still, starting to loosen, tight muscles, can sense some stress, this morning stretch will be a meditation and loosening of the tightness in the body. Here we go.
Completed: Tight from yesterday’s stretch, counter intuitive, but that’s how it works in the beginning, gotta get through pain for gain. Feeling better mentally, knowing that I took care of my body brings me a sense of ease and confidence to take with me into my day.
T-50 Wednesday, August 19
I got back on the mat. One hour routine of stretching and guess what, my hip is already feeling way better. The pointed pain that was present in the hip socket has now departed, the awareness of the issue, taking steps to help alleviate it really did wonders. Breathing into the space, taking action, no matter how small really helped me make leaps and bounds of progress. Dedicated action on a specific cause inspired drastic changes that really helped me understand that I have the power. As long as I have a goal, a focus and take small consistent steps, I can alter the physical/mental/emotional makeup of my body rather quickly. The results occurred in two days. Wow.
T-49 Thursday, August 20
Into the center of the body I went, and this time I found my power. Everything is connected and interlinked, so it would make sense that after all this time of bringing awareness to all these different aspects of my complete mind, body, spirit and soul that it all comes back to self-love. Today was one of the first times that I took a bath complete with salts, candles, music, incense and an intention to give every molecule of my body the love and care it deserved. I am constantly on a journey to remember that I am a cosmic being, and that within me lies an invincible unbreakable light, this is the light I wish to cultivate and to honor in the bath. I know that the intention of my mind and words have energy here in the physical, that is why throughout the bath I scrubbed my feet, thanking them for grounding me in this physical world, everyday helping me walk the path of life here on this beautiful Earth. I spoke to my entire body as I scrubbed with self-love: “I love my hands, I love my arms, I love my legs, my muscles, I love my tummy, I love my neck, my face, my back, my blood, I LOVE MY HEART.”
This was a ceremonial ritual that really brought me peace of mind and a genuine sense of care, love and respect for my body. All the negative thoughts of self-image, body conscious images melted away in the glow of self-love, self-respect and just being there for myself. It is a challenge sometimes to create the space to love oneself, but incredibly necessary. I wouldn’t have undertaken this ritual without the encouragement of a friend, helping to guide me towards the highest realization of my divine inner nature. This I know to be a test of my knowledge of all I have learned up until this point. The more I learn, the more I see there is more to explore and discover. I have already lived so many years of my life, with self-doubt, and this ritual in the bath was done with the intention to filter away the sediment of insecurities, the sediments of fear and compensation. To focus on the flow of love within me and to break the bonds of servitude and slavery to all others; people and ideas I have about myself that are not a true reflection of my innate divine nature. With every scrub of my naked body, covered in bubbles and salt I gave ultimate thanks for my body. I reflected on the marriage of my soul in my body, and the importance and miracle of this bond. Truly a miracle. This ritual is something I would like to do more often, to make time and create a space for myself to wash my body and soul with reverence, to treat myself with the same energy as that of the divine unconditional love. I love you, Joey. Thank you for taking that time to love on yourself, to transform yourself, taking one more step towards truly realizing my full and glorious SELF.
T-48 Friday, August 21
Family back in town.
T-47 Saturday, August 22
Spent the day bonding with family putting together a bed frame. Keeping my family energy centered and chill.
T-46 Sunday, August 23
Hamstrings got really tight after lifting a bed frame and putting it together. Really tight. Need to stretch that one out.
It’s amazing out how limiting beliefs, unconscious beliefs planted deep within our mind carry with us and play out in our lives. How they color every aspect of your choices, our actions, our interaction with others and ourselves. It’s challenging and painful at times to go to the source of those moments, to see them and forgive them, to be on the verge of tears and to know that you might need to go there, to cry and to move through that painful moment, relive it again in order to heal and transform it. It’s exhausting to live in the past. This is the journey, to find ourselves anew, to transform and become not what we have been told, but what we know we are: Love. Light. I want to remember and share about the time I was camping sometime last year and when I laid down to sleep my body completely crashed, like mega sleep mode, it was then that I realized my true form, a body of etheric light consciousness. I remember the moment vividly, like it was yesterday. Sitting there in the forest in my tent, the walls of the physical world dissolved, I saw a new layer of reality presented before me. It was as if I was opening my eyes for the first time. It took effort, but I remember SEEING from a different place, not from my physical eyes, but from my SPIRITUAL THIRD EYE. I knew that I was asleep, but I all of a sudden, through desire, I saw beyond the wall of my rain fly on my tent, and beyond that imaginary veil I could see the stars in the sky. I knew I was asleep, but there I was looking at the stars from a different source. I know that being in the forest helped, less interference. I know it was just time for me to have that experience. I was building up to it, and this was the moment of realization. I remember seeing another etheric light form, the form of a squirrel. Before I knew what was really happening, I’m playing with the spirit of a squirrel (it must have been sleeping too nearby), playing with its light body spirit holding it my “lap” as our light bodies interacted, we played. After that an otter came over to me as well, saying “hi.” This interaction did not take place between an animal and a man, but as different reflections of the same divine substance. Animal spirits are real. I met two of them, this has also better helped me to understand what native American tribes, among others, say when they talk about the spirit of the bear, the wolf, the tree, and the forest. This may sound weird and crazy, but the truth is often stranger than fiction, and this is what I am setting out to do, to find the truth, to set myself free.
I’m so grateful for those moments, it taught me so much, and as I write this now, worrying and fretting about all the things I have to do in life, my many roles and responsibilities I attach so much importance too, the fact that I am actually a being of pure infinite light will never perish. It gives me comfort. It also makes me want to life this life to the fullest, to reach my full potential, to reach past myself limiting beliefs, through the suffering of limitations and to push through towards the greatest realization of who I can become. It’s 11:11am at this moment. A sign from the mystery that I am at the right place at the right time, and I guess that goes for every moment in life. We are always where we need to be right on time because that is the only true reality of the moment. We can desire to be somewhere else, at another time, but to truly accept where you are in this moment is powerful, for I am here, sitting in my body, no matter it’s condition, right here, right now, and in this moment, I have the potential within me to make whatever choice and decision I want to lead me to realize that grandest potential.
On a simpler note, I did a core workout two days ago, I am working on building that back in, again, life comes at us, and it requires discipline, and at times suffering to take the next step on my path to arrive where I want to go. These are the beautiful lessons that will forge the person I am meant to be. Every step counts. Progress is being made, no matter how small, and I know I’ve taken huge leaps and bounds. My diet is continuing to progress into primarily fruits, veggies and limited meat intake. I can feel the shift. I feel my body requires less food as of late, something I want to recognize and honor. I wish to feed my body what it needs, when it needs it and not to overdo it. I want to become lighter and brighter, not heavy and lethargic. Movement is life, I need to remember to move, but also to rest as I can feel the deep tired within me from a big year of growth and transformation. I pray to God, to Pachamama for your aid and support through this time. I know you are here with me at every step. Cheering me on, rooting for me to become. I am grateful. Thank you, I love you and I love myself. The truth will set me free. Questions to answer for MYSELF. WHAT TO I NEED? WHAT TO I WANT? To fulfill myself...
T-45 Monday, August 24
Today is Monday, and as I enter a new week, I have made the deliberate choice to NOT engage in any social interactions. The past two weeks were full of outings, meeting friends, chilling at the beach, drinking, family, dinners, and OTHER people. This week a very conscious choice has been made to NOT meet anybody, to stay in the house, not even going out to dinner, to cook the food in my fridge, chill with myself and to really reconnect with MY energy and center. If there’s one thing I’ve learned on this journey it’s that ENERGY is very real. Physical energy, emotional energy, and spiritual energy. This energy is never created or destroyed, it just changes states, shifts from one place/state to another in a ceaseless flow of transference, absorption & emission. When I was meeting with all these different people I was giving and receiving from them subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, exchanges of energy that would leave me either energized or drained. One way or another there was a very literal movement of energy and interaction between another person. As I’ve gone deeper into the body, I’ve recognized that we are very often unconscious of this transference, and often unconscious of the rational reasoning and motivations behind our shared interactions of energy. Why do I go see the people I do? Why do the people who come see me come see me? Why do I go out to the places I do, and what am I receiving/experiencing/feeling when I go do those things? In an effort to answer this question I’ve done the only thing I can do. Exclude myself from all those exterior energies and to remain alone and go within myself to discover the answer.
This week I have told those friends that I spoke with that I will not be going out in a ‘hibernation’ or ‘incubation’ mode in order to be fully present with myself and to really ‘re-group’ my energies in a way. When I’m with another person it’s as if there is a string of energy that forms when we are with them, a give and take, an influence on our subtle body is taking place in the give and take of conversation, laughter, emotion, ideas, physical proximity and sometimes that string becomes tied on real tight to the other person. Even when they leave, I can still feel their influence on my thinking in my energized or exhausted physical state after they leave. They ‘rub off on you,’ on me. This is the truth, I know plenty of people that are great to be around or lousy to be around, regardless, I am around them and this affects me in one way or another and the common denominator of all these interactions, I am less myself.
I take on some of their energy and therefore I am not fully myself. Even with a lover, a partner, a spouse, parent, father, mother, daughters, son, in-law, friend, enemy, I am less myself. If I am less myself, when am I ever full myself? This is an interesting question for me because even though I’ve fallen in love recently and am fully committed to this other person, on my walk on the beach just now I was by myself. Alone with my thoughts, alone with my emotions, alone with my body. No matter who we surround ourselves with, at the end of the day I close my eye and sleep within my own body, in myself I am alone.
UPDATE: I did complete a 25 minute slow back and hip yoga routine again targeted at the location in my hip where I have a diminishing tendency to told tension and stress in my body. Notice the language I employed in the previous sentence. I have a ‘diminishing tendency,’ that is no accident. I know now that my thoughts and my emotions have a VERY real effect on the physical state in my body, had I said something more concrete or given affirmation to the tension or stress by simply or unconsciously saying ‘where I hold tension and stress in my body,’ that, on the basis of scientific fact would have created and perpetuated that stress and created more of it in the present moment and therefore the future. By consciously choosing the words ‘diminishing tendency’ I gave myself the space to FEEL and BELIEVE that the stress and tension in that area of my body is indeed diminishing. And that is actually the case as I complete these exercises and continue this journey into the center of the body. At the end of that routine, I did a portion of my normal morning yoga to also improve and flex my muscles. It felt good. I am still a bit tight but, there again, that’s how easy it is for language and belief to creep back in. Yes, I am tight, but I am also getting looser, from my stretching today I am more flexible than I was this morning, for that I am grateful. And in being alone and with myself I came to this very valuable realization, I am truly alone. That is why it is so important for me to cultivate a sense of self-love, self-respect, self-gratitude, self-health, self-wealth, self-adventure. No external thing will. I will.