Softening
...becoming who you already are
“Find somewhere you feel safe
and complete, and at peace,
and enough.
Then keep returning
until you understand that
this place is already inside you:
the destination you are drawn to
is simply bringing your true self
back to the surface.(You are already whole.)”
Softening by April Green
A song I’m currently enjoying:
I’m dedicating this blog post to my new book, which is released on 1 December. It’s a shorter blog, but I told myself last weeks blog would be a shorter one and it was the longest I’ve written since I started using this beautiful space 7 weeks ago.
Softening
I love the title of my next book (1 December): “Softening – poetry and notes on becoming who you already are” because it says everything about about the process I’ve gone through to return to myself. The true Self, the essential Self – the one with a capital S.
If you have read my previous blog posts you will know that my spiritual practice has shifted significantly over the last couple of years. I have discovered a more heart aligned, a more soul aligned, and more truth aligned way to live. And this way, the right way I believe, is bringing me more clarity, more spontaneity, and more moments of joy and contentment than I could ever wish for.
I didn’t find wholeness, I didn’t step into wholeness – it’s not something I reached, or attained:
I softened into it. I softened into it because it was already surrounding me. And in the process of allowing it to enfold me I discovered that it was the bondage of a limited self – the self who carries all the pain, and all the feelings of never being enough, and never being satisfied – that was blocking the view. It was covering the texture of life, the way a jumper covers the skin – it is needed for protection, but it starts to feel uncomfortable after a while.
I have discovered that I get more protection and strength from knowing who I truly am beneath the jumper.
You are already here
We are already whole. And we are already free to allow that wholeness to spill out of us and fill our lives to overflowing and beyond.
However, one of the many barriers to seeing this is that we want to know it. We want to feel the journey, the process, the struggle, and receive some kind of validation that we have arrived at the end of it. But we are already here. And when we stop our apparent movement towards an outcome, where we already are opens up and becomes an abundant piece of earth that we have failed to notice. The ordinary changes to the extraordinary.
It was only when I saw this clearly, truly saw it, that the walls I had inadvertently been building around myself collapsed. I realised that it was me who had been holding myself back from allowing the inner wholeness to expand outwardly. It was me who was holding myself back from being boundless. I was identifying with a limited self and allowing that self to direct my life.
You are enough as you are.
If you turn away from yourself
in order to taste any kind of
external validation,
you risk falling out of alignment
with who you are,
and the journey back will be
a painful one.Stay in your own energy field.
The right people will meet you there.
Everyone is searching for the same thing
We are all looking for ourselves. It often looks as though everyone is searching for different things, but I think we are all looking for wholeness, completeness, and contentment. I think the discomfort I felt for many years was ultimately caused by the desire to feel more like myself – the desire to be myself without the weight of pain, and the shadow of fear. I now understand that the pain, the fear, the love, the light, and everything in between, is all part of the wholeness – it’s all appearing as oneness. But we want the love, and the happiness, and the light, and we will do anything to hold onto it in order to avoid the pain.
When I softened into the whole of the wholeness, and accepted life exactly as it was, I watched all the pain dissolve into light.
One
When you find everything beautiful within you,
everything outside of you starts to reflect this.When you find softness within you,
everything coming towards you reaches you
gently.When you find love, peace, and contentment
within you
everything becomes one.The dark seasons pass by
and you see them as part of the beauty.The light comes
Softening excerpt from section two – softening in your heart
and you watch it entering you
and flowing out of you at the
same time.
Beauty, love, and perfection
We can live in wholeness and still feel sad. We can live in wholeness and still want to experience more. We can live in wholeness and still let go of the things that are no longer serving us. We can live in wholeness and still reach, and stretch and grow. The problems arise when we search for wholeness. For when we search for wholeness, we are identifying with the limited self (ego), which is the part of us which will never know wholeness because it is the energy of lack.
It is the limited self (ego) that gives everything that arises meaning. It is the limited self that gives everything that hasn’t yet arisen meaning. The limited self flits between the past and the illusions of the future, and nearly always misses the reality of what is.
And what is, is quite simply beauty, love, and perfection appearing in wholeness. And sadness can arise here. Unhappiness can arise here. Pain can arise here. But nothing can reach into and affect the very essence of who you are when you are anchored in the belief that you are already whole, and already enough.
“To be great, be whole;
Exclude nothing, exaggerate nothing that is not you.
Be whole in everything. Put all you are
Into the smallest thing you do.
So, in each lake, the moon shines with splendor
Because it blooms up above.”
― Fernando Pessoa,
A dance of solar opposites
When you observe the patterns that thought and feelings take—the way they rise and fall, whispering in opposites: sun and moon, earth and sky—you will begin to understand the flux and flow of life; the impermanence of it all.
When I got sober nearly 8 years ago, I started studying the spiritual law of polarity. And I realised that I could either identify as an addict and receive all the things that addiction brings with it, or I could turn away and identify as a sober woman and receive all the blessings that sobriety brings.
Within wholeness, there is a dance of polar energy, and both energies are needed to complete the whole. I needed addiction to know what sobriety was; just as we need the darkness in order to know the light. When you are fighting between the two sides, sitting in the middle is a destructive and soul destroying place to be. But when you have nothing to fight with, when you have surrendered, and softened into who you truly are, the middle ground becomes a safe place. You are balanced here; living in the centre, and doing the daily work* to remain here.
* daily work – the nourishing rituals, healthy living, journaling, self-awareness, self-care – because you love the daily work, rather than because you feel you need to (which is another barrier).
Once you anchor yourself into the centre, all it takes is a tiny shift in the direction of the light for your life to start becoming easier, softer, and more aligned. My dark season came, and I clung to it and identified with it for a little longer than I would have chosen to. But I can now see that I needed it to break something open and take me to a higher place.
The poetry and notes in my next book are an invitation for you to observe yourself. To learn more about yourself. And to see that your power lies in becoming who you already are, and then nurturing yourself from there.
I hope you love the cover of the book as much as I do.
“Softening
Poetry and notes on becoming who you already are”
Release date: 1 December 2022
Reminder:
“The simplicity of life—the magic, the movement, the sacred little inhales—is obscured by the expectation for life to become something else, something more, something we can grasp and hold onto.
But when we soften into reality—when we become available to observe everything that is already here—the simplicity of life expands like a wilderness, and we see just how miraculous and breath-taking life truly is.”
GIVEAWAY
I’m going to be giving away 3 of the books via this website only. Please leave a comment on this blog post – tell me what you think of the cover, or just say hi! I will put your names into a draw and announce the winners in a blog post on Sunday 27th November.
A snippet of my life:
Rewilding
One of the pieces in Softening is called “Rewilding” because when we become who we already are, we rewild. The desire to be who we are without fear or judgement (of ourselves sometimes) is to rewild. The desire to burst through the invisible barriers and shout and scream that you are here is to rewild. The urge to go to fear instead of allowing fear to come to you, is to rewild. The need to do something terrifying and uncomfortable and beautiful and divine is to rewild. To return to our natural state of being is to rewild.
My wild swim in the lake this morning was more incredible than the first time I ventured in.
A lesson I’ve been reflecting upon lately:
When you let go of the stories attached to your emotions, and just sit with the emotions – feel them, let them rise within – they start to take on a transparent quality. It is the fear of meeting these emotions that creates tension and pain in our hearts. But the blocked emotions also want to be free to express themselves and come into their own kind of bloom. Be kind to them ♡
A quote I really resonate with:
““Wisdom is knowing I am nothing,
Love is knowing I am everything,
and between the two my life moves.”
― Nisargadatta Maharaj
This week, I’ve been grateful for:
This week, I have have noticed how calm I have been in spite of finalising my book cover, ordering my ISBN, editing my book, and contemplating all the following stages in the process of self-publishing. This part used to be the toughest hurdle for me with my previous books. Fear is still arising, doubt is still arising, but faith really does outshine these two states, and I’m so grateful for my faith. Thank you for being here. Please leave a comment xxx
It’s an honor to be here sharing my words with you, and I am incredibly grateful for the time you have taken to read.
Thank you again for giving me the opportunity to expand and grow into this new space. For following along, for reading my work. Feel free to keep in touch: april@bloomforyourself.co.uk
Sending love and light always, April xxx