Would you like smooth or rough? Flowing, soft or scaly, rigid and hard?
Which side of you do you show to others? Are you allowing their stuff to penetrate? Or does what they have to say, to think, to believe have to pause, intermesh and get stuck and icky in your bark?
This is not who you are. This is only a perception. A place where you see and form your identity. “This is who I am.” “This is all I can be now.”
Is it? Is it really? Can you feel how deep this goes inside of you? Do you know who and what you really are?
Is this bark, this show you put on, a defence you put up, all that you are?
Can you remember a time when this wasn’t the case?
A time when you felt joy, and happiness and peace?
Do you have to take on this? Does it have to integrate, and mesh with old ‘stuff’?
Old beliefs that no longer serve you but you hold onto them anyway.
This bark, this outer seemingly-protective layer has become so unnoticed, so familiar in your busy I’m-too-busy-to-sit-down-and-feel-this life that you forget it was ever a choice.
There are trees all around you. They all have their own experiences and, most importantly, their memories, their interpretations of these experiences.
How we see, hear and feel something. How we believe the situation. How we think we are at fault or at blame, or not, can have a huge impact on what we do with this in our subconscious. Where do we store it, how and why?
How should we link it, justify it, even play it out later? Who will trigger us? And this particular memory or belief, way of interpreting the world?
Will I show you my rough and sticky bark or my smooth I-don’t-care-what-you-think layer?
By don’t-care, I don’t mean that this comes from a place of defensiveness, but rather a sense of inner connection and self-acceptance that does not need anything, or anyone on the ‘outside’ to be any different.
Can you be who you are today? Can you observe your rough or smooth bark?
Can you feel, if only for a few moments, where the stickiness, the roughness is?
Is it possible to let that thought, that word, their comments to slide off or past?
Could you experiment with doing this?
“How am I responding, reacting to this person? To this situation? Can I allow anything to flow just now?” Here, in this moment, this one situation, can I let these thoughts and ideas just slide on past me?
Do I really need to pick up this and hold onto to it (react to it, let it irritate and get stuck) let it affect or disturb me right now?
Play with this for a day or two. See, listen and feel how you feel, how it is in each moment for you.
Then you will be getting closer to home. To that peace you have been searching for so long.
You are already home. You are already OK. Maybe you just forgot and were looking at the bark, instead of this beautiful inner tree?
