Waves of Awareness

Some thoughts on the process of waking up

Healing is a beautiful and rewarding process, but it can also be frustrating. For me, one of the hardest parts has been its non-linear, wave-like quality. It can be really easy to want transformation and change all at once, and to want it to stick. However, in my experience, growth doesn’t work like this. Instead, waking up is a cycle of realizations and moments of awareness, followed by change, occasional lapses back into old patterns, and then renewed awakenings. This dance is the process of healing and growth and it is important to be gentle with ourselves as we engage with it.

Waking up from negative patterns/thought spirals is freeing. It’s almost like, all of a sudden, you take a pair of sunglasses off and you realize that the world is brighter and more colorful than you had imagined! I think that a lot of us walk around believing in a reality that we ourselves constructed, not understanding that there are other ways to engage with life.

When I awake out of these trances of thinking I often feel surprised, joyful, and much lighter. All of a sudden, I’m living in a completely different reality. This time is also marked by my pledge to never again get stuck in those negative stories that I was telling myself. But the truth is - usually I fall back into trance. Maybe my week was hard, or maybe I had a triggering experience. No matter the reason, I fall back into old patterns and I forget about my learnings and realizations. And to top it all off, I usually beat myself up about it. Which, is the least helpful thing I could possibly do when I’m feeling down.

In these moments, what I need most is a reminder that awareness and growth comes in waves. I think that meditation is a good analogy for this. We don’t meditate hoping to silence the voices in our head so that we can reach nirvana. We meditate so that we can strengthen our muscles of awareness, learning to bring ourselves back to this moment when we wander.

I think that healing is a lot like meditation in this way. I’m not sure there will be a time in my life where my fears and insecurities vanish, but I’ve learned how to engage with them in a loving way. I now listen to the different parts of myself and hold space for them, no matter how uncomfortable they may be. Plus, I practice calling myself back to my truth when I find myself spiralling out into stories.

I welcome my moments of awareness - be them minutes, hours, days, or weeks, but I’m also learning to welcome moments of grief, rage, and anxiety. I believe they all have something to teach us.