Exploring the Wilderness of your Discomfort

By: Sarah Blondin

This 11/11 portal has hit us with much intensity, bringing up a lot of emotion and purging. It can feel very scary and we want to scream and run. However the power is in the facing of what is coming up, that we would prefer to deny, push away and run from. There is no more hiding from our shadows, they are looking for love, acceptance, forgiveness, embracing, recognizing each time they appear and letting go without judgement and attachment.

I listened to this and typed it out so I could share as it so deeply resonated with me and what I have experienced the last couple days in this portal ....

Exploring the Wilderness of your Discomfort

I’d like you to take a moment to consider all of the places or circumstances that you escape, that you flee into daydream or fantasy in order to not exist in the present moment with what you are feeling so uncomfortable with.

Long winter months, your feelings of loneliness, your discomfort in stillness and seemingly stagnant periods of being. These are all examples of places we often run from and avoid by spending hours in our minds attempting to bring about change faster or willing the summer sun to come sooner. We leave the present circumstance because we feel broody and trapped somehow. We have reached our breaking point and have entered into tremendous discomfort, we have crossed a line where we have decided we can no longer stand in this place, we must escape. There is the moment when we decide that we need to distract and run.

When we reach our limits in love, in the stillness of nature, in winter, what would it look like if we stepped one step closer into it, rather than, as we so habitually do, away. When we have reached our breaking point, what could these places of discomfort bring to us, if we chose instead to explore them further. There is richness there, hiding in our borders, hiding in the places we don’t care to look, avoid or feel our greatest challenge in facing with Grace, rather than resistance. If we could learn to wonder in, instead of away, if we crossed our road lines into the unknown territories that we have called too boring or uncomfortable, what could we find? What could it look like if we stayed put, felt into the borders, asked what it is we are turning from and resisting. What lurks around the corners of our usual ways with gifts that are hidden in the darkest cavern of winters lull, what lives beyond our borders.

Let this be our quest, to stay, to step one foot forward, to look into the face of what we usually turn from. For when we choose to turn away, when we choose not to explore, we rob ourselves of great discoveries. We rob ourselves of great wisdom and learning. We rob ourselves of the many different languages of the world, of others, of the forest, of the cold snow, of the quiet … All holds wisdom, dimensions, gifts. All holds a story worth learning, worth asking about, all holds value and meaning.

When habit comes to try and pull you out and away from those tight uncomfortable spots. When habit comes and tries to pull you away from the present and out of your centre into the land of far away, consider that maybe there is another hand being outstretched to you too, that at the same time habit comes, there too, from the place you are avoiding is and outstretched palm asking you to adventure into the wilderness of your own discomfort. So instead of bringing you discomfort it is in fact bringing you learning, love and the gift of being fully present to what is present for you right now. Without mapping out diversions, step forward to your edge and let whatever you have never never dared before, guide you into its world, carve out new roads, fall into the darkness of streets with no lampposts, get swallowed in stillness. When you want to leave, stay one moment longer. Feel around in the dark with senses you are not used to. Follow the heart first, hands second, ears third and then open your eyes. Bring light to the unchartered territories of your own life.

Let me remind you that you are an explorer, a collector of experience. Now venture out into what life is offering you, you are choosing to live life, one of two ways, you are either continuing down your well worn roads, living in your well worn patterns of behaviour, experiencing your predictable ways of acting and responding to certain things. You are waking and walking in your deeply worn redded roads or you are paving new roads each day you wake, you have discovered that living the latter is bringing you no real wealth, just predictability. You choose each day to go deeper into unknown places, you wake and walk where something calls you to, asks you to. You accept the challenge of discovery, when you fall back into your well-redded road you stop and choose the other way. When love brings you conflict in your heart, you choose not to run, but step forward into it with openness. You, when feel the desire to close, breathe yourself wide open. You, when wanting to deviate back to your well-worn road, pro-actively, fiercely choose to move back to the unknown instead. You do the opposite as best you can when you are given the choice, you see when you are at your edge, you greet it with intrigue and curiosity, you dive into he places you want to avoid and run from. You bring with you love, acceptance, growth, the intention to expand and learn. You bring with you the great desire to be the pioneer of your life. You choose exploration and love. You choose the discomfort for you know therein lies a jewel of understanding. You choose fear, for you know in there lies your liberation. You choose the forest and the stillness for you know there is a language of peace you wish to embody and it wishes to impart. You choose your aching heart in the face of conflict and miscommunication for you know therein lies your greatest love. You choose when the stillness gets too loud, to stand the most sure footed in it, for you know therein lies a shedding of the old. You choose to stay in the present, for you know therein lies your joy for life.

Close your eyes and land here in your beautiful, beautiful body. Greet the softness of yourself and feel the love here within you. When you close your eyes, there is a wide expanse of unknown territory, a playground of exploration awaits within you. There is nothing you can predict here, just discovery. The same is true for what the universe presents before you.

Try my dear one, to stay with your life. To stay present to all of the moments that are both comforting and not. Try my dear one to accept the offer that each moment brings. Don’t run away, there is something for you there, being given purposefully to you. A gift to unwrap. Try my dear one, go farther, dive deeper, breathe all the way down to the root.

All of these places we run from are the homes to our liberators, our sage warriors, our cups of Gold. Beyond our borders next to our well worn and redded roads, lives not habit or predictability, or avoidance of the as is, but rather never ending exploration. Run not any longer, choose to go one step closer to the fire that seems to be pushing you away and instead curl the corners of your mouth into a smile and accept the challenge. Walk into the heat with love, openness, presence, grace and gentle kindness. This is how you choose a new path. This is how you become free to live fully in the present moment without needing or wanting to run. This is where running stops and life begins to flourish under your feet.

Live Awake ~ Sarah Blondin