This is a letter to you.
It might be just the thing. It might also not make sense right now. It might speak to a tiny seed for later.
You might think it’s not for you because of situations and circumstances, but actually it is for you.
It is a letter for Slightly Future You, but you can read it now.
It is a letter for a version of you, the one who will be there when you decide to maybe yes maybe yes yes yes yes go ahead and journey to the Playground.
The you who will set off on a Rally (Rally!). Or a play training. Or another adventure entirely.
The point is: this is for you. Eventually.
My dear,
My dear,
There is something I have to tell you. It is a wonderful and a hard something.
When you sign up for this experience, you are saying YES to our grand adventure together, as well as to all the possibilities that it holds. Or at least a YES to meeting those possibilities and getting to know them.
You are saying YES to the voyage.
And there are some hugely important things about saying YES to a voyage that no one ever really talks about. We need to talk about them.
1. Saying YES to a voyage can be pretty freaking terrifying.
This is normal and to be expected. There is a very good reason for this, trust me.
2. A voyage — especially a voyage like this one — changes you.
There’s really no good way around this.
It just does. It changes you.
3. Not in a bad way.
It’s not like you become someone else.
You’re still you. It’s just better.
You become more of yourself. Filled up with shining, radiant you-ness.
Almost as if you’re suddenly…more at ease with yourself. More there. More at home in your life, and more at home making conscious, loving changes in your life.
Congruent. Present is another good word.
4. But you know what? Change is scary.
Even the very best kinds of totally-good-for-you and desired change are scary. Even the changes that you have hungered after and wished for.
And this deep, powerful becoming-more-you identity change is extra-triple-quadruple scary.
Internal shifting. It’s hard stuff.
5. Because there are parts of you who are deeply invested in these changes not happening.
What do I mean by parts of you?
Old fear and old hurts.
Sad, scared, younger versions of you who forget that now is not then.
Grooves of patterns. Samskaras. Neurons running down their familiar pathways. Assumptions and habits. And Fuzzball monsters.
They don’t want you to have this experience. They don’t want to lose you.
And they suspect that once you do this, they won’t be able to keep you paralyzed with fear anymore.
6. Forces in motion. Equal and opposite reaction.
So in that moment of making a commitment to the forces of positive change, you’ve set something in motion.
And that something includes all the forces of resistance that DON’T want it. Ack! No motion! Make it stop!
You have invoked the wanting, and with it you have woken up all the aspects of you who are afraid of what will happen when you get it.
The desire is fighting with the fear of what is desired. And you might perceive this as: anxiety, stuckness, heart-palpitations, dread, paralysis, doom, oh-dear-lord-what-have-I-done?!
I repeat: all of this is normal. This is okay. The resistance is a sign that you really do want it. But yes, it is not fun.
7. And the experience has already begun.
You’ll think that the voyage is happening on the dates you’ve marked off on your calendar but that’s not true.
The adventure and all the trepidation/panic/excitement that goes along with it does not begin when you arrive at the Playground.
It’s happening from the moment you sign up.
It’s happening from the moment you decide.
It’s happening from the moment you know. Maybe even the moment before that.
Something has been set in motion.
8. I have to tell you something else.
Even if you’ve never done Shiva Nata (which is fine), I think you’ll understand this:
People who are not shivanauts think that they are their patterns.
“I’m sad. I’m scared. I’m anxious. I’m upset. I’m freaking out.”
As if: This is a truth about the universe that I have identified, and it is completely factual, and this experience is the entirety of my being. It defines me.
While people who do Shiva Nata know that everything is a pattern.
“Fear. This feels familiar. Oh, right. Pattern.
“This is information. This is useful. This is normal. This is interesting.
“So. How can I interact with this? What elements do I recognize? Where are the gaps?
“How can I lovingly, intentionally and creatively acknowledge and interrupt this pattern so it can be rewritten?”
You can decide to approach things that way too. Anything. That’s what this site and my six-year-old business and my entire life are all about.
9. Call it by name.
In that moment of anxiety about saying YES to the adventure, you can name it for what it is:
This is me, going through the normal thing that happens upon saying yes to the big adventure. And I get to interact with this experience. It’s not happening to me. I am approaching it.
10. Choose conscious entry.
Several years ago, I did a training in Israel with Dharma Mittra, and he said this beautiful thing about yoga poses.
Try to enter and exit a posture as you would want to be in it.
This concept made my brain explode and also I really did not like it.
I already had my grunt-and-struggle ways of getting in and out of things. All this attention to entry and exit seemed like just another thing to feel guilty/sad about.
But later I appreciated this. Conscious entry. Conscious exit. It’s what we practice at Rally (Rally!)
We do it here on too. In the Friday Chicken, the weekend VPAs, the saying Hello, Day or Hello, Month or Hello, Moon or Hello, Rain.
So in this moment of YES to a voyage: what if you entered as you wanted to be in it?
If you want to feel calm, peaceful, energized and sparkly-excited at Rally, call on those qualities when you press the YES button.
11. Like this:
What if you intentionally made space for the fear and the worry?
You can make safe rooms for yourself.
You can find out why now is different than then.
You can call for a negotiator or use metaphor mouse or color in a monster or listen to my Emergency Calming The Hell Down audio.
You can experiment and play. Without diving into the hard and the scary, acknowledging its existence. Interacting with its existence. Staying at the edges.
You can get grounded and centered for the YES, knowing the fluttery butterflies are part of adventuring.
You can know that you are loved and adored. You are welcome and you belong. I do not expect anything of you except for what is already there.
You are ready. And the adventure will happen as it needs to happen.
That was my love letter. And here’s the blanket-fort comment zen.
Working on your stuff is hard. I’ve been doing pretty much nothing but this for the past nearly seven years and it’s still hard. Less hard. But still.
It’s a practice. It takes time and repetition. We make room for the hard and painful parts. We give ourselves and each other spaciousness and permission. We take responsibility for our experience.
We don’t tell each other what to do or how to feel. We pause (paws!) and breathe. We bring the hard parts to the fountain.
Follow
You know when you’ve been knowing something to be true for a few days or weeks or months, and then someone comes along and names it and you say, “Yes. That’s it.”? Well, that’s me, now. I feel like this post has just hugged me in a way that says: It’s okay. You’re not wrong. The experience is here to hold you.
Mmm.
Thanks Havi, this was FREAKILY EXACTLY what I needed about something not related to going to the Playground at all. *hug*
You wrote this with, like, me in mind, right? You wrote this for me?
How could it be otherwise?
I just shed a tear.
This is beautiful and so perfect for me today. Thank you.
Wow.
I will now go do that thing that I have been putting off. That I really should have done months ago. But that I am somehow terrified of. Because it’s okay to be terrified/anxious/scared. Because I have just learned how to make space for it.
Thank you.
This is perfect as I nervously/excitedly get ready for next week’s Rally (Rally!)
I’ve had different adventures like this before but they were only for a couple or three hours, near home. So this is a little more intimidating. The What If monster is hiding but close by, muttering annoying but silly things about a longer adventure with people I don’t know in a town I’ve never visited; or doing Shiva Nata in a group when I’ve barely learned the basic positions; or whatever! I am ignoring these for the most part because I know what this monster is up to.
But I also have so many projects/parts of me I want to work on, I’m afraid I’ll forget some of them or forget what questions I want to ask them. This is the part of the What If monster’s narrative that can get my attention.
Still, I’m also soooo looking forward to the interactions with my selves, and with whatever questions and projects actually announce themselves, and my fellow Rallions. And Havi and Selma and the Schmoppet. And getting to BE in the Playground.
Woo hoo! How could it not be wonderful?!!!
I’m kind of overwhelmed by how lovely this love letter is.
I had some more meaningful stuff to say, but mostly I want to say thank-you, Havi.
And now I shall return to interacting with my stuff.
xoxo
kim
I have been stuck on some things related, not to the adventure that is Rally but, to the adventure that is to follow. This was so good, a reminder, a different way to think.
Thank you.
Oh, and the reminder to use safe rooms which reminded me about working on your project by not working on your project and other helpful ways to approach this.
Thank you thank you thank you, Havi! 🙂
This is exactly how I felt when I signed up for that workshop in NC… and it’s exactly how I feel now that I’m organizing a secret thing for my business. Soon to become less than secret, I hope!
Thank you. Oh how I want to make it back to PDX for a visit. I miss home.
This was extraordinary. I had to give myself a time-out-in-the-corner to just cry and be happy about crying. In the scared is excited and in the excited is happy and in the happy is a simple wish to bloom.
Thank you for the love letter, no matter which part of me it was for.
Thanks so much for the reminder that what I’ve been feeling lately is likely backlash against the big, bold step I just took, and not evidence that I’ve made the wrong decision (as the backlash likes to try to get me to believe so I’ll stop taking these damn big steps forward)!
Oh, right. All these feelings. Of anxiety & depression & …. And the rising voices of the Critic Choir. Yeah, I recognize you. You like to show up at just as I’m on the brink of some new Unfolding or Becoming. OK, well, hang out if you like, I’ll make a space for you here, next to me.
But you can’t have the reins.
This is happening. It is coming. Change. Growth. Scary things. Good things.
Thank you for this letter for us all, no matter where we are in our journeys. The love you give others is such a gift.
Thank you.
A love letter for meeeeeeeee!
Yes, of course, for many others as well, but also for meeeeeee!
I will attend Rally next year. Most likely October, but September is a possibility. I don’t have the money to book it right now, mainly because of previous commitments this fall that need that money, but that is so not the point. I am committing. And I have every confidence that my spot will be ready for me when I am ready for it.
One of my favorite movie quotes is from The Mummy: “I may not be an explorer, or an adventurer, or a treasure seeker, or a gunfighter…but I am proud of what I am…I am a librarian.”
Well I am a librarian AND an adventurer. Dammit.
This is so beautiful and timely, I am speechless.
Thank you.
This is lovely! Taken as a whole, it reminds me quite a bit–in its patterns and its content–of Walt Whitman’s “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry,” a poem that keeps popping up for me lately, at moments Shivanautical and otherwise.
You are so insightful and poetic, Havi, and best of all, compassionate. Ever the juvenile, I can also giggle at the realization that Old fears + Old hurts = Old furts. Indeed they are.
Love you, kiddo.
R.
“You are loved and adored. You are welcome and you belong.”
Thank you for this. Again, and again, thank you for offering this, reminding me of this, modelling this, infusing every encounter with this.
I know that this is a truth everywhere, all the time.
I know that in my HEAD.
But one of the things I love best about hanging out on the Good Ship FS is that I FEEL that quality, not just ‘understand’ it. I get closer to grokking it, and each time I visit here and feel it I get to build new memories, new sanskaras, new neural pathways, new sense memories.
I get to PRACTICE feeling that feeling. Which is, of course, there for me to feel ALL THE TIME but I’m not very skilled at accessing it. YET. (For all sorts of perfectly reasonable reasons blah blah journey blah. What else am I gunna do here? I DO exist, I AM alive, and I think I may as well make the most of it!)
But I choose to come here and practice feeling that feeling of okay-ness and permitted-ness because you’re very skilled at invoking it, creating it, bringing it to the table.
So thanks Havi.
Much love. xx
I so needed to hear this. Especially a reminder about the patterns. I worked at a buddhist festival this summer and during a meeting, we were told that in English, we use the words of emotions after the verb of “to be”.
I AM sad, I AM angry.
This is me.
But one member of the circle told us about Spanish (it happens in other languages too, but this was the example given).. who say:
I HAVE sadness. I HAVE anger.
I’ve since tried to say “I feel X” rather than “I am X”, because shifting language can really shift feeling. I just wish I could remember this every-time I feel an emotion… thank you for the reminder within this letter.
Rose, that’s a fab idea! I tend to identify with my emotions far more than is good for me. I’m going to try saying ‘I feel sadness’ now, instead of ‘I’m sad’.
I love this love letter, but especially part 8 in which the repetition makes it blindingly clear what can be so … well, dangerous is the word I want to use … about statements like this.
I’m (I am) scared. I’m (I am) anxious. I’m (I am) upset.
Am I really? Am I that thing? Or is that thing really, only, something I feel?
I feel scared. I feel anxious. I feel upset.
But I AM NOT those things. I AM NOT any thing that I merely feel. A feeling is not a state of being. Or even a state of doing.
Rose hit on this too via Spanish. I have the feeling. It does not have me.
Thanks, Havi! This lovely love letter really got me thinking…
I’m seriously thinking about clearing out of my office closet now, to make space for my monster conversations. As a child I often found the back of my closet cosy and comforting, so I guess it still makes sense as a safe room (although these days I might need the whole closet, not just the back of it).
It’ll be decorated inside with post-it notes with positive things about myself (and maybe some about Tor as well), and I’ll sit in it and meet my fear and have some jolly conversations about now and then. There has to be a hanger for my headlight of course (closets are usually dark), a cup holder for my cacao mug and two blankets, one for me and one for Tor (he’s probably a eight cousin of Selma or something, exept he’s a horse, and green).
As soon as I’ve convinced my fellow Norwegians that monsters are there for a reason, and they all have good intentions, AND have my practice up and running to the amount that I can actually live from it (might happen now, if I spend some time in my new closet), I’d really love coming to Portland and join in on your fun!! In the meantime, I’ll have fun right here. Doing three dangling, and other good stuff..
This was for meeee, although I didn’t know why when I read this beautiful letter yesterday.
I’m completely overwhelmed by the synchronicity of it… Twelve hours after reading the letter, I’ve all of a sudden signed up for a course with Hiro I thought I could not afford, and as I was drifting off to sleep, smiling at how perfect it would be fore me, I remembered this letter.
Aha, that’s why it was for me!! Now I know.
This definitely came at the right time. Though I won’t be at the Playground this year (but I’ll definitely get there some day), this is totally THE RIGHT LETTER for another adventure that’s going to start soon in my life. For any adventure actually 🙂 Thanks Havi!