Where fear and yearning meet.

All fear comes from a forgetting of who we are- when we forget life isn’t happening to me, I’m creating it. When we forget I’m not a tiny powerless thing in the universe, the whole universe is in me! When we forget the darkness is here simply to help us remember, we get scared.

And when we remember life is here to make us conscious, not happy- we can again embrace the arising with the acceptance it needs. We can give our fearful inner friend the hug it needs- because what it needs, is to be seen and held.

What fears are holding you hostage from living your fullest expression in the world? What’s the risk you cannot afford not to take?

I just got off the phone with a dear friend facing the crisis of having outgrown her own cocoon. She knows it’s time to step into her dreams, and she’s afraid of facing the unknown and the potential disappointment of asking life for what she wants and not getting it.

She isn’t alone. Sound familiar?

As the spring comes into bloom, it brings new yearnings in our hearts- and each yearning must meet the fear that keeps it chained before it can be realized. This is natural- ever impulse to expand is met with its polarity, until we can integrate the two. That’s the beginning of wholness.

Yes- there is a space for fear and yearning to meet, to know eachother, and ultimately transform into ease and fluidity.

When I started Come to Center I had to sit with similar fears. And the truth is, as we meet our fears, they morph into newer ones. If you’re waiting to feel fearless before you take the next step in life, I want to remind you that every fear is a gift. It is an invitation into the next step of your evolution.

It’s the next dragon on your hero(ine)’s journey.

In fact, it’s something I help people through all the time now. Because I know it isn’t about not feeling afraid, it’s about learning to hold our fearful inner child with love and compassion, while growing it up. As Liz Gilbert says, fear gets to come on the ride, but it doesn’t get to drive the car.

All fear comes from a forgetting of who we are- when we forget life isn’t happening to me, I’m creating it. When we forget I’m not a tiny powerless thing in the universe, the whole universe is in me! When we forget the darkness is here simply to help us remember, we feel afraid.

And when we remember life is here to make us conscious, not happy- we can again embrace the arising with the acceptance it needs. We can give our fearful inner friend the hug it needs- because what it needs, is to be seen and held.

How can we turn fear into alertness? How can we meet it with open hearts when it’s busy shutting our heart down?

Consider this:

In our last session, I asked a high performing client who was feeling stuck with fear of a pending decision and who is basically a master at whatever she tries, to identify something “She sucks at” and go try learning it.

After fishing for a while, she decided she definitely couldn’t write songs and was shy of her singing voice. So naturally, I made that her experiment for the fortnight. 

Today, she came back for our next session, bubbling with excitement about “all the things I am just terrible at! Which are SO fun to try! I forgot how much fun learning is! I didn’t just try a song, I tried everything! I even tried juggling- and I suck at juggling but people were cheering for me saying how cool it was to see me approach it so fearlessly- and to see me improve as I went through the process.” 

And then, she sang the song she’d written.

By the time she was done singing it, we both had tears rolling down our faces. She had written the song about the fires she was facing in her own life and meeting the heartbreak and beauty of all that is unfolding. It was real. It touched my heart. It was her first song.

And she said, it’s been changing even as she sings it…isn’t that a metaphor for life? 

When we stop taking everything so seriously, when we stop avoiding, and rather embrace our fears, stare our imperfection in the face with love, it only brings us deeper wisdom, and love, and joy and connection. 

The pending decision was still daunting, but the fear could no longer debilitate her, because she’s experienced the beauty of fear paving the way for fluidity, all it takes is the willingness to meet it.

It is a privilege to do this work, with people willing to go into these places with me!

So, what’s the risk you can’t not afford to take?

What’s the fear stopping you from living your fullest expression?

How would it be to transform that fear into fluidity?

What could open up in that reality?

If you’d like to dig deeper and are curious about 1:1 work, let’s talk. All you need to get started is curiosity!

Design-in-self

What I sought to create, I found inside myself.

11 years ago (feels like lightyears), for my architectural thesis I designed CeSRON- the Center for Self Reflection, Otherness and Narcissism. A building designed to be a mirror for our inner space…in a culture where self-reflection has become obsolete, replaced by narcissistic self-indulgence, fueled by fear of examining our own shadows.

Little did I know I would go on to create Come to Center, a live mirror that does just that, or that I would end up being that mirror myself for others, down the line…

Little did I know the shadows I was pointing to in the culture have a name- collective trauma, and that it is so universal, it is personal.

This surreal project was a celebration of, in a very tongue n cheek way- the obsolescence of self-awareness- before I had heard of transformation, awakening, healing, or any of the work I do now- ALL of which begins with self-awareness.

The inward turn is where it begins- looking in the mirror of truth.

I was fascinated by the race riots in Detroit- and in studying, and considering what led to the violence and deep separation between people, I saw very clearly, how the inner division leads to outer conflict. I was just so curious about the moment at which a child looks in the mirror and says- “me”. 

I spent final year of architecture school studying Lacan and Jung and Heiddeger and falling in love with Gordon Matta Clark…. I had a hay day questioning everything in a way that ultimately led to transcending my discipline of design and architecture altogether, when staring at the face of human suffering. 

What supported this inquiry was a reflection from my professor- I had finally found one person who saw my hunger for the edges of knowledge, and encouraged me to go all out-wherever you are Rupinder Singh I am so deeply grateful for our time together spent in joyous explorations of the depths of art, architecture, meaning, connection and dissection of life itself! For hiding my keys to get me out of hiding in the bottomless pit that was opening up as I got closer to facing existential truths. You weren’t just a teacher, you were a healer to me.

I didn’t know it then, but the questions alive in all these drawings are: What is the root of separation?

How did we become people? What got made into a self? Who am I? What is this? I even labeled the diagrams things like (my favorite) “Labyrinthine search for self”, never suspecting any of this had to with Spirituality.

And the thing is, I knew then, that all this, is really the search for our center. I just hadn’t seen I was literally searching for my self and that the answers lay within me, and that I could trust all that which I knew, but couldn’t understand. 

That took time. It took living in inquiry and eventually turning inwards.

It took facing the pain of my own inner separation, seeing through the trap of needing to understand things that lay beyond the confines of the mind.

As they say, hindsight is 20-20! Of course it adds up. Having looked in the mirror long and hard, coming to face myself over the years, now I have become the mirror I once set out to design.

Everyday, I hold a mirror to reflect back the truth, power and wisdom that lies within my clients, their shadows, their light and everything in between. In deep inquiry, I appeal to something that lies beyond my clients’ intellects to allow them to step outside the confines of their minds- diving into their conditioning, their traumas to find freedom within.

The journey of personal healing paves the path for our collective transformation. 

I often say, everything is everything- all forms reflect the One. What appears to be separate, is a facet of difference, not separation.

From the outside it may seem like I am doing transformational work, business consulting, designing a building, painting a painting, writing a poem or telling a story… 

From the inside, it’s always been about one thing- falling ever more deeply into loving exploration of myself, and life itself!

embrace

transformation can only occur in embrace.

embracing I
am
become

love,

transforming holes into wholeness.

look-
where did    you      ever       find
a piece of the          whole
(a (small) wholeness)
less than,
that?

did you find shelter from your shadow in the womb of darkness?

in the great No thing
where Allness
hides

swallowing form
forgetting to remember
whence you came?
how will you know the shadows you carry?

without
ever turning to the Sun

in embrace

 

 

*photo by Nikki J.