3. Harvesting a rose.
More and more people have been viewing the website, which is awesome. It’s so nice to see that people from so many countries and continents are engaging with my work, and it’s only a few weeks old! This is incredibly encouraging, and it’s moments like this that make me really excited to have started this path. I also gave a personal reading this week that went over really well, and I hired a spiritual teacher/business coach, and it’s the first week of B-school, and in general I’m just receiving so much good energy around this platform. Just yesterday alone, I channeled a massive amount of content ideas, and even downloaded a plan for a live meditation program, down to when it will launch and how it will be priced. So really, there is no question that this is MY work. I belong to it, just as much as it belongs to me.
Knowing this intellectually and being surrounded by all of this evidence doesn’t make me invincible to how deeply painful it is to step into this new chapter. I know that I am every bit as much leaving a life behind as I am taking on a new one. As I kind of mentioned last week, a deep meditation led me to the realization that I’m not meant to be at MIT. “Meditation” is a euphemism for what google later taught me is called Reincarnation within the Same Body (RSB). Before I experienced this, I had never heard of it. There are lots of sites that explain this, and if you want to learn more, I think this is a great place to start. I promise to talk more about soul contracts and how I understand them on YouTube this week. But, I will go into a little bit of what I experienced a few weeks ago in this blog post, with the clear and explicit caveat that it is not—nor will it ever be—my intention to convince you to believe what I believe. That seems a little culty to be honest. I invite you to read this, and think your thoughts and feel your feelings as you do. With that, off we go.
On Friday, February 21st 2020, I completed one soul contract and started a new one. My old assignment had a lot to do with loving myself unconditionally and living from a place of knowing my inherent worth. It also had to do with learning to feel safe and protected wherever I go. Growing up the way I did, this was not an easy task, and it took a massive, consistent, and concerted effort on my part and on the part of countless individuals known and unknown for me to get to that place. But I got there. Or, rather, I got here. This is where I am right now and will always be. When I completed this assignment I was given the option to leave Earth, or to get a new assignment and stick around. I decided to stick around, and was given the assignment to live from a place of believing that everything in the universe, every cell, every space, every atom and subatomic particle, all matter and non-matter, was simultaneously vibrating for my success and the success of all things. Part two of this assignment was to help others realize this truth.
I had already started this website, and it became more clear than ever that I had to leave grad school and re-direct that energy towards growing into a spiritual teacher and healer. It is quite literally my soul’s purpose and my life’s work. I got my birth chart read by a professional, (something I had set up a few days before the RSB but which happened afterwards), and she confirmed that I was simultaneously a great student, a great teacher, and a healer for the collective. I believe I would’ve been an incredible academic who would have done groundbreaking work. It just wouldn’t have been MY work.
And so, I’m mourning. I’m mourning the letters that would have appeared after my name someday. I’m mourning the articles I would’ve published in academic journals, the research projects I would’ve worked on and eventually led, the university students I would’ve mentored. I’m mourning the look on my mom’s face when I graduated with a PhD, just like she did when I was thirteen. As I’m writing this, I’m mourning the bond we will never share. I’m mourning the example I will never set for what’s possible as a black, gender-bendy person born into a female body and raised in an abusive household. Those people don’t get PhDs. This person won’t either. I’m considering the possibility that that’s okay.
Grief is a tricky thing, especially when it’s for yourself. Especially when professors are begging you not to leave. Especially when your mom is telling you how unsettled she feels, telling you that you have so much potential, and trying really hard to not be as scared as she understandably is. It’s tricky when you’ve been telling yourself, consciously and subconsciously, that all of your trauma will be worth it once you’ve made something of your life. The metaphor of a rose growing through concrete is admittedly how I’ve been living my whole life. And I’ve always known that this rose would eventually be harvested and presented to my parents as an ironic peace offering. It would be my way of asking them to be at peace with me, with my existence, with my survival, with my queerness, with the way I took too long to learn subtraction in second grade, with the way asking too many questions made me disrespectful, with the way I never wanted to live if life meant living in constant fear. It would be my way of asking to be granted safety, of asking them to call me on my birthday, of asking them to pretty please see me, not just the idea of me. This rose would never stand a chance.
And I know that now. And I’m considering the possibility that that’s okay.
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