I’ve been receiving numerous surprised reactions when in the midst of sharing, i go “I’ve been feeling lost”. Responses comes in the manner of “We never thought you’d be that way”. And i realize truly, how hard everyone is on themselves without realizing and how frequent it is that we project a certain image to people we want to become when we think in terms of “i’ll get there”. Whatever “there” is.

And so often, people suppress their emotions. They go “i shouldn’t be feeling this way, that’s not spiritual”. This in turn shows what their mental image of “being spiritual” is. People harbor an image that when they “get there”, all emotions will no longer affect them. They envision a permanent zen state, forever ecstatic. And because of this, they give themselves an extra hard time when they are feeling “unspiritual emotions”.

The question becomes “who says that you won’t be feeling all these emotions again?” The worst thing you could do to your body, mind and soul is suppressing your emotions and not moving through them. They build up and manifest as illness and in cases of prolonged extreme suppression, manifests as diseases such as cancer. Your physical body is the direct mirror of your inner self, whatever you do not face within, manifests outwards to get your attention.

Allowing yourself to feel your emotions, express them and moving through them is not a free pass to being a violent, agonizing person. Feeling them and moving through them is saying “It’s okay to be human. This is what i’m feeling.” And you feel it so fully, so acceptingly, so lovingly towards yourself that everything melts away. Everything gets carried away from your open, willing heart. It will hurt. It will claw, it will growl, it will yell. But your heart’s total openness will free you from the grasps of emotional turmoil.

Whatever you run from will return. Sure, it is a lot more entertaining and easy to distract ourselves with a show, food, person and exercise when emotions scratch at the surface. And we’d even somehow feel better after doing that. Sometimes it returns, sometimes it doesn’t (say, the clarity from the silence in exercising). When it does come back however, it’ll come back twice as hard.

Wear your heart on your sleeves and look at your own heart. It is okay to be human, feel. Being honest with yourself isn’t weak. It’s the direct opposite. And when you share honestly, without a shred of embarrassment and self-judgement with another soul who exists between you two, a safe space, then you create the same opportunity for release for him/her.

It’s okay to admit, we’re all at some point, feeling lost. And that’s the cycle of our humanness, we “find ourselves” and then we “lost it” again. And it goes on and one. Until the pendulum stops swinging. Until we realise we are not the swinging (insert miley cyrus wrecking ball joke), that we are at its very center, still, unwavering, watching.

The swinging happens until it no longer needs to happen. In the mean time, love yourself and live with an open heart.