Speaking Truth

In October last year I wrote a journal entry with the title ‘ A glimpse into the life of Jess 2021’. I wrote about 2 pages of dot points about the kind of things I hope to be doing in 2021 and most of them have come true. For example, I’ll share a few:

• ˜ Working in a remote community – Yes tick

• ˜ Learning language- Yo Manymak

• ˜ Formed close relationships with community, Indigenous and non-Indigneous- Yes tick

• ˜ Spending weekend/holidays in Darwin with family- not quite close enough for weekends but holidays, yes

• ˜ Well liked respected teacher- I like to think so

• ˜ Speaking my truth- we will come back to this one

And plus a bunch of personal routine ones like reading a lot, exercising in the morning and meditating everyday which I’ve managed to stick to.

So I literally asked for this life and then took action to make it a reality. I’m going to use the M word. I manifested my current situation. If you were lucky enough to spend time with me last year it’s all I ever banged on about. I had a vision and I was obsessed with making it happen. My intuition told me that this is what I had to do this year, I just knew. I was so desperate to get away from mainstream schools, fast pace society and the rat race. I thought by getting away from all that and stepping into really meaningful work, my perfectionism tendencies would vanish. Surely if you follow your intuition and step into your ‘purpose’ and it’s going to feel good and easy? Sunshine, rainbows, love and light? Right?

I won’t spend too many words having a whinge because it just adds fuel to the fire. But, long story short, this year has been really fucking hard and I haven’t felt at ease or awesome at all. And because it feels so hard, I’ve felt ashamed and embarrassed. I have no one to blame but myself because I CHOSE to be here doing this. This big thing that I manifested doesn’t not feel like what I imagined it to. Classic Piscean move, dreaming up a fantasy land and getting hit hard with the reality stick. It’s like all the hard lessons that you normally learn slowly over many years have flooded in at once. It hasn’t been fun.

I know feeling shame about this year not feeling as I expected is silly, but I believe you have to be honest with the way you’re feeling to be able move past it. It is also the reason I have been reluctant to share any writing or much at all on social media this year. Back to the point about speaking my truth. How could I share any inspirational stories if I was a crumbling mess myself trying to hold it together? How could I share photos of happy highlights when in reality my stress wakes me up before my alarm most mornings? Committing to speaking my truth means sharing my whole story. The ups and downs and everything in between. No sugar coating. When I wrote down ‘speaking my truth’ in my journal last year I wasn’t actually sure how to go about it and also why I wrote it, it just intuitively made its way onto the page. Now I know this platform that I share my writing on, is the how, and you reading this are the why.

There was a certain kind of relief when I realised the emotions that were holding back my voice. This relief and realisation inspired me to share this story. I’m sure I’m not the only human that has felt this way. The disappointment of unmet expectations. Turns out following your intuition and living your life is not always easy. Maybe being a crumbling mess and sharing every part of it authentically is inspirational? (I hope so because that’s kind of the point of this blog.)

I know most of my struggle comes from my ego kicking up a stink. I am my own worst enemy. Egos (small mind/self) craves safety, security, comfort, predictability, power, control, all the things that I don’t consistently have living and working here. Letting go of all those things and leaning into the discomfort scares the fuck out of the ego, because it means the grip the ego holds on you loosens.

A few quotes from Eckhart Tolle from his book A New Earth, as he explains all this so well.

“ The ego says, “ I shouldn’t suffer” and that thought makes you suffer so much more…The truth is you need to say yes to suffering before you can transcend it."

“Suffering destroys the ego- but not until you suffer consciously”

“Suffering has a noble purpose: the evolution of consciousness and the burning up of the ego”

A thought came to me while I was walking through the bush recently. You know how the Aussie bush needs to be burnt to get rid of the dead stuff and stimulate new growth. A really extreme death and rebirth cycle. Well this year it’s like I’m the bush, and all the challenges I’m facing are the fire. I’m on fire and I’m going to assume being on fire isn’t fun. It’s painful, almost unbearable but its necessary to make way for new growth. The fire is burning my old patterns of thinking and being and also cracking open new parts of myself I have never experience before. I’m definitely still on fire (suffering consciously) so I’m yet to experience all the growth that comes after. When I do emerge from the fire, I hope I will be able to look back and be proud of myself for enduring all the hardship to get that place.

Although, now I know this job, place or teaching in schools anywhere is not my purpose, I still see the purpose in this whole experience. As shit as the general feeling has been this year, I do still believe I came out here for a reason and that was NOT to feel at ease, as I naively expected, but to feel uncomfortable and to be forced to face my demons.

I’ll add the Hero’s journey below (think Harry Potter or the Hobbit) as it gives me the bigger picture of all the steps that are necessary to ‘return’ truly changed, which is my goal. I’ve realised I can’t just skip to the good stuff and magically become a changed person without experiencing the challenges and stages in between. I think I’m somewhere between the trials and failure and growth/new skills. Who knows when I will ‘return’ and who I will be then. That’s the exciting part.

Jess

5/9/2021