March

Photo by Alexandru Tudorache on Unsplash

Happy March!

It’s the month we usher in a new season often with a deep cleaning, a ritual rooted in age-old religious and cultural traditions. In the 1800’s, people used kerosene lamps and coal for light and heat, so homes were covered in a layer of soot that hung around until the weather warmed up. Here’s another bit of history for you, March is named for Mars, the Roman god of war, as the month marked the reprise of the Roman military season after a winter halt.

While I’m meeting March with the springy spirit of cleaning out, rather than resuming war, I’m waving a white flag and surrendering to the one I’ve been waging with myself.

This time last year, I was a brand consultant embracing a creative career as a writer. And while pandemic life put a pause on my plans, once I realized sharing my thoughts was a non-negotiable for my mental health, we hired a nanny and I was typing away with abandon. The writing felt right, but along with the knowing came a slew of questions. Despite having decided to spend my time creating vs consulting, I’d continue to entertain projects worried that if I didn’t, I’d no longer be successful, relevant or independent.

As I wrote essays and poetry, I pondered endlessly about if, when and how to share my work. Is the blog enough, or do I need to promote it via Instagram to get more readers? If I’m in the business of being and expressing myself, do I need a separate professional Instagram account? If and when I finish a book, will I be able to get a publisher if I don’t have thousands of fans or followers? Should I start another load of laundry? Is my time spent honing my craft and creating productive? Should I be playing, potty training or prepping dinner instead?

With my inability to answer each question, I became more frustrated with myself. The negative noise had gotten so bad that things felt dark. I decided to put a stop to the spinning, at least temporarily, by following my urge to clean out my closet while listening to an audible selection I’d yet to finish.

I picked up where I’d left off with Tosha Silver’s It’s Not Your Money as the spiritual advisor with a quirky vibe and soothing voice was urging me to clean out in an effort to make space for what is meant to come. I smiled and kept going feeling lighter with each piece purged.

I moved onto Gabrielle Bernstein’s Audible Original, You Are The Guru, in which she shares six messages to move you through difficult times. I picked up with # 4: In Stillness We Receive and almost immediately thought about a big, beautiful hawk who’d visited me the day before and who, like the many before it, I knew was sharing a message but was unsure of its meaning. I’d decided it was telling me to focus, but in that moment, I realized it was reminding me to soar.

Hawk outside my window

I’d been so busy trying to figure “it” all out with my head, that I couldn’t hear the answers from my own heart.

Silver, an expert in yogic philosophy, writes in her book Change Me Prayers: The Hidden Power of Spiritual Surrender, about Vairāgya, the idea of honoring the inner divine while letting attachment to everything else fall away. As one who can count the number of times I’ve done yoga on one hand and who thought the Yoga Sutras were pretzel-like poses, I wanted to dig a little deeper.

It turns out that the Yoga Sutras, written by Ptanjali, are a practical text book of sorts to guide our spiritual journeys. In it, he states that Abhyāsa (perseverance) and Vairāgya (detachment) represent the two essential aspects of spiritual life, working together like the wings of a bird. It was a concept that clicked for me.

Societal pressures and anxiety had me worried about success in the ways of the world. Most of us have been taught that achieving fame, fortune or at least a respectable, acceptable role others can aspire to be themselves, we win at the game of life. But what if these means of measuring success are all wrong? What if they are the very beliefs that prevent from ever really playing the game, the ones preventing us from learning and ultimately from soaring?

I saw and admired this on ethical apparel brand Wholesome Culture’s IG. Quote by David Orr, mural by @creativaty.

I don’t think we have to life a life void of material pleasures or that we should passively forgo hard work, rather I think it’s about practicing ways to quiet the mind, doing more of what lifts us and others up and spending less energy trying to control what is ultimately beyond our capacity to do so. It’s about surrendering to our soul’s truth.

We’ve been taught to never give up, but I think we’d be better off if we learned to never give up on ourselves.

This month, may we focus on the next step in front of us and not the entire stair case. May we follow the bread crumbs of curiosity, passion and joy which lead us to liberation. May we keep marching on with perseverance embracing who we’ve always been and without attachment to what the world has told us to become.

Maybe life’s mysteries aren’t meant to be solved through force of will rather through an admiration of the magic in the mystery, an acknowledgment that the same magic is inside of each of us and faith that we will bloom, wherever we’re planted, in divine timing.