Trust the process

I was recently taken back in time by a blog by Didde Sanddorff, who wrote a poem about her frustration at the pace of her recovery and how she just wants to get on with her life.

I know exactly what it feels like to feel your life is passing by and you’re just sitting there watching it happen. People you know get married, have children, die, get divorced, buy houses, travel, do triathlon, study;  and you are seemingly not moving an inch. But you are getting fairly good at meditation, but that seems somewhat pointless if you are just going to have to sit still most of the time. It makes sense if you are heading for guruhood, but that wasn’t quite what I had in mind.

I know what I want to do. It became really clear to me after I hit my head and wondered for a split second or two if I was going to be linked to a bed for the rest of my life. That’s when I knew I had to change my life around and that happiness means so much more than money and conforming to the A4 society. I knew exactly what I need to do and what my greatest dreams in life are.

Knowing what you really need to do and not being able to do it and then just watch the days, weeks, months and years pass, does take a toll once in a while.

Not being able to pursue that dream, yet, makes me wonder what is the point of where I am now? And I wonder; when will I be able to carry through that dream? Because there is one dream that I just have to do and not put off anymore.

As much as I love visualisation and use that to make my dreams come true, I also know that sometimes you have to apply patience, wait and trust the process. As Didde makes it clear in her blog post, this is not easy. But the more you start trusting the process, the easier it becomes, because you see how as if by magic, something comes to you just in the right moment. That is when you know you are in alignment. This cannot be forced.

The past month, I have made the error of trying to solve my future and figure out the process in my rational mind, but instead of helping me, it created chaos. Because the mind sets limitations; A has to happen before B, and then C happens. But once you trust the process, suddenly K happens first. And afterwards, you realise that was the perfect order.

This happened to me recently. A year ago, I looked for a compost, but nothing seemed right and I decided to let go and trust that the right compost would fall into my head without me actively wasting my energy pursuing it by doing lots of research. Fast forward, a year later, a compost system that suited all my criteria perfectly appeared in articles two days in a row. This came just days after I had been offered a garden space to cultivate herbs with the help of an experienced farmer. So the compost came at the right time.

And similarly, I would like to believe recovery comes just at the right time too, even though my impatient self thinks it is way overdue.

So I tried looking for signs that I was on the right path. Despite leading a slow life that’s seemingly not going anywhere soon, I have learnt skills and achieved goals that were high on my list; such as giving up alcohol and TV, eating less meat and more veggies, to mention some. The concussion made that really easy; the desire to drink alcohol vanished as the brain was in a mind fog, and that same head was in no state to watch TV either. Being at home most of the time made it easier to change my diet.

So in some sense, I see a meaning in my stillness. It almost forced me to learn meditation, which is absolutely crucial to recover from post concussion, and it led me to discover how incredibly powerful kundalini yoga is. Had I not been so fatigued when I started doing it, I would not have learnt how it differed from normal yoga. I would not have experienced how effectively it impacted on my brain and insomnia either. So, again it came just at the right time.

What’s more, it’s helping me trust the process, as it facilitates decision-making and it makes me see my life and everything in it more clearly. So whenever I get frustrated, overwhelmed and start over thinking, thinking I am smarter than the process of life, then I take a step back, breathe, visualise, wait and then I act when every inch of my body feels this is right.

(And just maybe, I may do a kundalini yoga meditation for trust)