BodhiFlow

Connecting to Self

Connecting to yourself is like the comfort of coming home. Whether is through meditation, hypnotic journeys, walking meditation, vision quests, or just sitting quietly staring at the ocean, it is embracing a moment to listen to the steady rhythm of your own truth.

Listening quietly to your wisdom beneath the noise of expectations, fears, and distractions.

In that stillness, you discover that peace something you search for, it has always existed in you.

The more you embrace moments to connect with yourself, the more you discover your own authentic voice. You give yourself the permission to move through life with an integrity in your choices, relationships, and dreams, knowing that they arise from who you truly are rather than who you believe you should be.

The greatest of all fears
is not the silence of death,
but the silence that remains
when every mask has fallen.
We spend our days collecting names,
wearing identities like borrowed garments,
hoping the world will tell us who we are.
Yet beneath every story,
beneath every ambition,
beneath every wound and every triumph,
there is something that has never needed a name.
It simply is.
The mind trembles at the edge of this discovery.
For if we are not our memories,
our successes,
our failures,
our desires -
then who and what remains?
Like the river afraid of becoming the ocean,
we cling to our familiar banks,
never realizing we have always been water.
The journey home is not a path of becoming.
It is the quiet unravelling of everything
we believed ourselves to be.
Each fear released.
Each illusion surrendered.
Each layer falling like autumn leaves
returning to the earth.
Until nothing is left
but awareness—
vast as the sky,
still as the mountain,
endless as the sea.
And then we see,
the one we searched for
was the one who was searching.
The home we longed for
was the silence beneath every thought.
The freedom we desired
was never waiting at the end of the journey.
It was waiting at the end of our resistance.
Perhaps the greatest courage
is not to become someone.
It is to disappear into that which we have always been
the awareness through which life has been dreaming
itself.

I remembered today this poem that I came across years ago. Most people know it. But it’s a beautiful reminder from the past… and how it inspired me on a path towards exploring the authentic parts of me beyond other peoples expectations, rules and conditions. The me that ached to live with openness and integrity, facing joy, sorrow, vulnerability and embracing the beauty of it all

The Invitation
by Oriah Mountain Dreamer

It doesn't interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart's longing.

It doesn't interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life's betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn't interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
"Yes."

It doesn't interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair

weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn't interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn't interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

What do you see and feel, when you look at this picture?

*The thing about life*

The thing about life that trips us up is that we do not exist in isolation
Even when we often think we are alone
Nature shows us otherwise

But when the storms arrive,
we build fortresses upon the foundation of our silence.
We call it strength,
self-preservation,
or we lose ourselves in the crowd
where conversation replaces communion
where mingling breathes and bodies replaces connection

There is no right or wrong.
There is only that which nourishes the spirit,
and that which keeps its wings folded,
forgetting the endless sky it was born to soar

The thing about life that trips us up
is that we romanticize our solitude

We fall in love—
as friends, as lovers, as strangers finding home—
and then, so gently we scarcely notice,
we bury each other beneath expectation.

We stop seeing.
Or perhaps we never truly saw at all.

We looked through our borrowed beliefs,
through inherited values,
through the quiet filters of our own minds.

We believed we were the same
because our laughter echoed,
because our tastes aligned,
because our stories are similiar
But the essence of who we are was never meant to be measured by preferences.

The thing about life that trips us up
is that we think being alone is easier than showing up as ourselves

True meeting begins
the moment I lay down the need to remake you in my image.
The moment I allow you to arrive exactly as you are.
Without the veil of my judgments.
Without the gravity of my ego.
Without asking your spirit
to fit into the shape of my understanding.
Then I do not meet a personality.

I meet a universe.

A boundless presence
wearing, for a little while, the beautiful disguise of a human being.

Perhaps this is what living is…

Not simply to do.
Not merely to achieve.

But to witness.
To accept.
To embrace.

For doing fills our days.

But acceptance opens eternity.

And in that embrace,
neither of us walks alone.

www.bodhiflow.net

The journey of high self worth and self esteem!

Instagram.com/wildwomansisterhoodofficial

so beautiful

We often feel defined by life’s darkest moments, but the truth is they’re just one chapter.

We are shaped by every place we’ve been, every person we’ve loved, every book that changed our perspective, every conversation that stayed with us, every adventure that stretched us, every night beneath the moon, and even simple moments like a morning coffee.

I love the idea that we’ve been stitched together by all of these moments and memories, like a beautiful patchwork quilt or tapestry. It’s such a beautiful metaphor to view ourselves in this way.

•
The quote in the image below is by Brooke Hampton.
With love,
Fiona

Easily one of my favourite novels.

Through the Ondaatje, Rumi, Gibran, Shakespeare and life’s experiences, I have come to the conclusion that love, is not always soft or simple. It is the moment someone sees beyond the masks we wear and touches the deepest, most hidden parts of who we are.

Honest, powerful, unbending love awakens truth, no matter how messy it may feel sometimes.

It strips away pretence, dissolves old versions of ourselves, and asks us to be fully seen - vulnerable, raw, naked and alive. In that kind of connection, the heart no longer hides behind habit, rules, conditions or fear.

Perhaps the most powerful love stories are not about finding another person…but about discovering ourselves through the courage to truly feel.

A quiet descends upon us when we stop searching outside ourselves for what has always lived within.

No amount of success, approval, recognition, or possessions can fill and complete a soul that already knows it is perfect, whole and complete.

When we realise that nothing is lacking, life shifts from chasing to appreciating, from fear to trust, from scarcity to abundance. And suddenly, you know you belong, not as a part of just this world, but as an eternal child of the universe, with the whole of at your fingertips.