The Edges Of A New Era: Reflections On Emergence

Dr. Rachel shares about her own powerful journey of awakening. She shares about the potent lessons she's learned, her solo travel to Bali, and the ways in which her emergence compels a strengthened and solidified process of surrender and faith. Dr. Rachel contemplates culture, spirit, and vitality. She shares the profound and meaningful ways she has learned to love herself and how that has allowed her to free herself to become a better, stronger, and more fulfilled being committed to honoring her soul's path.

Transcript

A month before I turned 35,

My thoughts buzzing in a blaze,

Emboldened by the shower steam with the soft and earthy smells of turmeric,

Tonka,

And banana oil scented conditioner,

I realize joyfully I am a woman.

I am a woman,

Actually.

The weight of this is welcomed.

I am a woman.

I decide for myself.

I listen to my own knowing and I trust its voice.

I feel into my intuitive guidance,

My accrued and innate wisdom,

And I honor my relentless inner work to heal and transform.

I use my healing as my compass because it is everything real,

Raw,

And right.

I need no one else's approval but my own.

I trust myself entirely.

I am on the edge of a new era of life,

Of my womanhood,

Of my purpose,

And along my sacred and deeply cherished path.

This is emergence and it is bustling with life.

I am a woman.

I care about those who love me and I welcome ideas,

Opinions,

And feedback from others in my life who have proven themselves to be trustworthy and I still decide.

I have choice.

In every moment,

I choose for myself.

I choose how I show up.

I choose how deeply I listen.

I choose how much I'm willing to explore myself within.

I choose how devoted I am to being in connection with myself,

How often I reach out for help.

I choose how I learn,

React,

Respond,

Nurture,

Soothe.

I choose to honor my authenticity.

I choose from my soul and my heart.

I choose.

I am always constantly using my power to choose.

I am a woman.

A woman awakened.

A woman achieved.

A woman deserved.

A woman authentic.

A woman emboldened.

A woman in purpose.

A woman of service.

A woman of light.

A woman of integrity.

A woman who heals.

A woman who loves.

A woman of depth.

A woman in honor of her soul.

A woman as real as the sun,

As dark as the moon,

As shiny as the stars,

With a heart as wide as the sky.

As a birthday present to myself,

To be in celebration of turning 35,

I committed to solo travel to Bali,

A long time coming in the making.

Before I left,

I set intentions,

Which is a beloved practice of showing up for myself aware and awake.

Bali was intended to be an exploration and deepening of my inner dive,

An adventure to discover the culture and what it wanted me to learn from it.

I'd intended for silent retreat,

Temples,

Art,

Meditation,

Yoga.

More than it all,

Bali became an unmistakable manifestation and culmination of years of healing work and all of the pain,

Anger,

Confusion,

And disconnect from myself that led me to it.

It was a declaration of a deep need for relief,

Restoration,

Gestation,

And the conditions necessary to gently and unmistakably support this process of burgeoning.

I have been on the cusp of a new era.

Been working in a role that I knew was no longer meant for me,

Feeling bogged down,

Knowing that what I wanted and who I was were still finding their way to the other side of the line I'd been tirelessly towing.

I was and still am,

Always will be,

Consciously participating in a process of transformation,

Step by step revealing itself to me in how I experience myself and by extension how my environment,

Work,

And relationships reflect that back to me.

I was still living the old life of who I was before I knew who I was.

So Bali was simultaneously a symbolic and literal embodiment of an enriched experience of consciousness that had undergone its awakening.

I traveled interested in spiritual enrichment and wisdom accrual.

I also knew I wanted and needed serious amounts of rest,

Freedom for fun,

Connection to myself and the great divine,

Adventure,

And just a heaping ton of calm.

I also sought clarity for what I needed to do,

Feel,

Or be to live out what has become increasingly the most important thing to me.

My connection to divinity and my soul's purpose here.

And more concretely,

As much as I cherish where I live in the San Francisco Bay Area,

I was increasingly oversaturated and suffocating from the stress throughout the culture,

Which is driven by technology's demand for faster,

Better,

Harder,

And longer,

And values still steeped in patriarchal and capitalist paradigms.

As a psychologist working in healthcare,

I'd become severely disillusioned by mainstream American culture.

I would treat people for ailments that were being reinforced and maintained by the broader collective.

And I'd started to really understand that the systems under which we live are crushing not just the vitality of our bodies,

But the life force of our spirits.

I would see patients and providers who were depressed,

Sick from stress,

Disconnected,

Lonely,

Angry,

Impatient,

Worried,

Fast,

And heavy.

And they'd wonder,

Why can't we sleep?

Why do we feel so tense?

And the medical system pedals out pills to treat symptoms that aren't going away.

And the root cause of it all,

A disconnect from heart and lack of time,

Attention,

And care given towards real healing.

There is a motivation behind keeping us sick,

And it is not coming from awareness of truth.

And I see so many desperately looking to blame everyone outside of themselves,

Expecting doctors to have answers to schisms within themselves that only they have the capacity to truly fix on both the personal and collective levels.

The complexity of the trauma that my patients were experiencing came from American lifestyle to be sure,

But also was heavily and obviously influenced by systemic and institutionalized racism,

Classism,

Ableism,

Sexism,

And the like.

Oppression is truly the heaviest of barriers.

And being privy in a new,

More aware way to this left me feeling weary.

I also traveled to Bali because I loved myself enough to.

Because I felt and responded to the pull.

Because I allowed myself to be guided.

Because I take risks to live fully.

Because I don't apologize for who I am anymore.

Because I don't hide who I am anymore.

Because I don't not know who I am anymore.

Because I listen,

Accept,

And embrace myself fiercely,

Radically.

I traveled to Bali because I'm on the edge of a new era and in a deeply spiritual stage of emerging into my realized womanhood.

Because all that she is,

Needs,

And knows was leading me there to experience the precise medicine for all that had yet to come.

Because that which has yet to be known needed my trust in it.

I have come to understand and embrace emergence as the expansion of self into previously unknown realms of possibility.

This has not just been a felt experience but a conscious intention.

I've committed myself to live from.

Its capacity to give me creative liberation has been shockingly supportive and graceful.

What I've learned through my own exploration of my own psyche,

My own embodied womanhood,

And through solo travel leading me to the precipice of the dawn of a new day is that the human condition needs space to be itself naturally.

We're masochistic in the West.

Delusion,

Power,

Capitalistic,

And patriarchal systems do disconnect us from ourselves.

They prolong nervous system arousal unnecessarily.

They make us sick,

Unhappy,

Tired,

Scared,

And lonely.

We've lost sight of ourselves.

I went to Bali because I wanted to alchemize,

Scared,

Into sacred.

As a woman with the powerful knowing that I get to choose for myself.

I chose my natural state with appreciation for modern movements but without getting lost in them.

I chose to dig deep for the answers that I knew would be revealed if only I listened long enough to hear them.

I chose connection,

Inclusivity,

Sensitivity,

And tender recognition of the massive capacity we have to offer ourselves and each other kindness and calm beyond our histories,

Biologies,

And subconscious programs.

I needed the conscious creativity and heart centered values that Bali offered.

I needed to feel spirit and faith reverberate and elevate throughout the air.

I needed to see people pray in public amidst their storefronts and along the streets as a proud declaration of priority.

I really needed to witness offerings to deities and smell incense everywhere.

I needed to feel implicit safety out in the world,

In the trust I gave another.

I needed to feel men's gentle and sweet strength.

I needed to feel the soft and special kindness among those who found themselves there.

I needed to see synergy on the road and to thrive off the extent of the people's patience.

I needed to experience an alive and vibrant culture full in the belief of magic and in alignment with how to cultivate it.

I needed to be in a place where healing is a practice well known and where actual health is taken seriously.

Where the culture listens to the earth,

Honors heart consciousness,

Reveres the body,

And nurtures sustainability.

Where there is aim to keep spirits,

Bodies,

And minds healthy,

Happy,

And energetic knowing this is a service to the soul.

I needed to be in a place that is awake to values that naturally uplift the human experience.

And so when considering the ubiquitous ailments of systemic and culturally imposed stress in the West,

The reprieve that Bali offered me was not just welcomed.

It was a drink of fresh water after time spent too long parched in a desert.

And it really made me wonder what is a life fulfilled by whose measure and what does it take to define it for ourselves.

And it's only when I slow down enough to be with myself to really listen that I discover my own guidance system.

My healing journey leading me home to my womanhood gave me space in Bali to practice all that it composes.

My womanhood feels like staying attuned to my body,

The flow of the divine,

And honoring each moment with faith and belief in the unfolding of the path.

My womanhood expresses herself through meditation with the sunrise and the sunset.

She gives space for aimless wandering,

Meandering with curious and soft awareness.

My womanhood smiles.

She takes deep breaths.

She checks in with the inner world often.

And she does the next right thing,

Trusting that the flow reveals itself one moment at a time.

My womanhood eliminates the distortion of force and she finds balance in flow and in taking inspired action.

My womanhood feels deep allegiance to self-knowing.

My womanhood holds my privilege as a white American,

English-speaking,

Formally educated,

Jewish woman in awareness,

Staying curious about how it shows up,

And never ceasing to be an advocate,

An ally for those on the downside.

My womanhood takes responsibility.

She journals,

Gives gratitude,

Lets go in a willing stance of surrender.

My womanhood uses therapy,

Seeks mentors,

Never stops learning.

She stretches outside of and into what is uncomfortable.

My womanhood speaks her truth.

My womanhood learns how to.

It is in and through these sacred moments I remind myself of myself and trust her there.

I have learned that there are so many different ways to live this life.

I have learned that the body possesses such innate and rich wisdom,

So trustworthy when I listen.

I've learned that without heart I am never going to heal myself or anyone else.

I've learned that the macro starts with the micro,

That the collective shifts when I do.

I've learned to wake up to what I'm choosing for myself and my life.

My womanhood asks me,

What foods do you choose to consume?

How much movement do you offer the body?

How are you interacting with your mind?

Do you take care of your spirit?

Are you kind?

Do you blame,

Shame,

And gossip?

What do you need and want and how can I honor that?

My womanhood says there is a way to achieving happiness and peace as a human.

And the more I come online to that path,

The more I shed myself of my own delusions and give my soul the longing it is crying out to experience.

And in all of these places I am free.

And then life opens.

It opens.

It guides me.

It takes me under its wing and it gently shows me the way.

And I get to float in the surrender of the path destined for me to walk along.

My womanhood gives the wisdom and discipline to know and honor my limits while giving enough space for enriched engagement with that which provides pleasure.

My womanhood gives permission to feel joy in pleasure.

My womanhood lets it feel good without blind hedonistic pursuits.

She cultivates courage to stay curious,

To always look within for answers and understanding and to find the supreme divine there.

My womanhood allows me to feed myself without shame,

Overindulgence or insufficiency.

My womanhood allows me to heal the history of oppressive imprints left on my body,

In my cells,

Deep in my bones,

All that which still starves from fear.

And I am allowed to heal there,

To know my body now,

To listen,

To feed enough but not more or less than that.

My womanhood allows me to let it feel good without needing it to never not.

My womanhood gives me courage to experience discomfort,

Always being reminded of the breath as a loving,

Reliable anchor.

On silent retreat the morning of my 35th birthday,

As I was heading out to be with the day,

I caught the attention of a cabin mate who was resting in her bed.

She turned to me as I walked by,

She caught my eye and broke her silence to ask,

Sister,

What's your magic?

What do you do?

Do you know what the magic is within you?

It is so strong.

To honor the silence of my own retreat and the last couple of hours there before I was heading to my next stop for time spent at the beach,

I offered her a wobbly hand from side to side as if to say,

The magic is still emerging,

Sister.

I'm in a process of becoming.

I'm in magic-laden gestation.

With tears in her eyes from the intensity of her connected eye gaze and the mutual knowing of the other,

She said,

As if almost disappointed I hadn't fully owned it yet.

When you're ready then,

She went back behind her mosquito-lined protected dorm bed to resume her own divine inner process of knowing and nurturing her magic.

I am a woman.

Before my realization in the shower that day,

I'd misunderstood how to use my own power.

My process of emergence is revealed through the graceful practice of freeing myself to be myself.

My womanhood is in its fullest when I am reminded that my simple and sole task is to honor myself and to practice offering compassion towards anything that makes that hard to do.

It's not always easy and some feelings hurt badly and suffering makes it real.

I am no longer my worst enemy,

No longer accepting separation from a heart to deepen the rift.

I have a soul and it loves my attention,

My healing,

My nurturance,

My gratitude,

My practice.

It loves when I put my ego in check,

When I get out of my own way,

When I heal my shadows and pains and make it all divinely sacred.

I am a woman.

A woman on the edge of a new era in the process of emerging into what it means next for me to be her.

Reviews

Wow this is incredibly empowering and uplifting while also having you reflect without judgement. Much gratitude ♥️✨

Straight from your soul. Thank you for sharing 🙏🏽

Amazing! So very moving to me! Much gratitude!!

Great reflection. Namaste