I think I didn’t previously understand the entirety of what it meant to actually be awake.
Pre-July ’16 Lucy worked a 9-5pm, had a (theoretically) “stable” career path, a 5-year plan & a first class degree that I based almost my entire life around. I had a salary, a savings account, and a near-mortgage & was probably 70% content, 60% of the time. But that’s okay because, give-or-take, that’s the same as everyone, right? I believed I was wide-awake and, physically, I was.
Post-July, Post-Reiki attuned Lucy is actually awake. Or, comparatively awake. Physically, emotionally, mentally awake… and, it has been an entirely exhaustive but equally energising process that I am aware I have only just scratched the surface off of.
Most importantly, I’m now more aware. I have an undeniable, non-ignorable sense of feeling, seeing & understanding of myself, my life & how I want it to be or more so, not be (although, it definitely still lacks complete clarity).
The entire world seems different now; at the time of my Reiki attunement I felt like I had been through open brain surgery. Everything changed… but not at all in a negative way. When I rewind, my previous “world” seems like it was years ago, not 3 months. Post-Reiki, I feel like I stood on a springboard and have been launched onto an entirely different path; where everything formerly fundamental to me has now changed; location, career and relationships, particularly the relationship that I have with myself.
I don’t really even fully remember the commute that left me spending my time stuck in traffic trying to plan ways to t
urn my car around – was it or the job I was going to really that bad? No. Not to everyone. But, I am now accepting that the environment just wasn’t really me and elements of it worked against me. I wasn’t actually happy, I didn’t relate to the company or its morals and I definitely didn’t look forward to going in to the office every day. I remember reading that a goldfish will only grow proportionally to the size of its environment, I guess that’s relative.
I only now have an understanding of why I thought I had to live that life. Broadly speaking, my thinking was it’s “just what everyone does”. I had studied really hard, got a huge debt and so this is what I should do now because I had spent 1000 days studying & I was “lucky” to have then got my job.
I chose to excuse myself from expanding or shifting myself, solely because of a pre-empted fear of other people’s perceptions (and my own) that it could look like I had failed, or wasted my investment (financial/mental/time). I’m not even sure that was really even a conscious thought, I just did it. I saw my degree as my greatest asset and so I thought I had to run my career parallel with that. I thought my career defined me as a person and I also saw my salary as a form of validation & that stamp of success (or reward…or maybe, compensation). Realistically, personal success should not be defined by a collective voice and, just as much as people always want to add ‘great things’ to their life, it’s just as important to subtract and remove the ones that no longer work.
When I have those moments where I step back (physically & mentally) I subconsciously ignite a confusing & frustrating sense of “did you really waste an additional 2 years of your life doing that because otherwise you’d have wasted the initial 3 years?!” If time is one of your greatest investments, I’m not sure I can any longer rationalise wasting more of it because I have already wasted some. And, really, I guess it was never truly wasted in the first place, because now it is teaching me.
There’s a definite part of me that still feels an attachment to the mindset of pre-July (systemised) Lucy; that’s the part of me that currently feels like I am still living in-between two different worlds. When your mind is (subconsciously) attached to a belief system and then someone/something challenges that, it’s a struggle not to fight or resist it.
My current challenge is trying to figure out whatever it is this Lucy is actually doing and really wants to do. I sometimes think working for a “corp” in a 9-5pm office would be simple & safe and that not constantly trying to unearth how ‘XYZ’ makes me feel would be easier. But, simple, safe and easy are not necessarily better.
I know that I don’t want to be paid to ‘just exist’ and I don’t really want to care about how productive I am over how much I have actually, genuinely enjoyed my day. I now consider “working on myself” to be my current and most-applicable job-title and that, at some point, everyone should take some time for themselves to do that.
My new mind is learning to see and believe that your own ‘path’ is the only one that really matters and understanding which thoughts, feelings and emotions are really mine and where others root from. I guess the change from living outside-in to inside-out combined with a conscious effort to understand why I am making any decisions. Deliberate living.