The months of March and April have been, in a very distinct way, a couple of the most challenging – and at the exact same time – transformational months of my life. Moment after moment, thing after thing, realization after realization arrived at the front door of my mind and I have been ticking in ways I never knew were possible. The best way to describe it is like this…

We are all like the back of a very intricate watch – hundreds of little gears that all depend on each other to turn. Our best stuff, our magic, comes when – and in my case it was my mentor coaches and life events – something or someone comes along and puts some oil on a few of those gears that were stuck. Then, with a little push, things start turning…and the rest of the watch begins to work as well. This is, by far, the best description I can possibly give you about what is going on in my life right now – and hopefully a description that allow you to understand the absolute importance of allowing others to help you when you feel stuck in life.

But I don’t just want to talk about the watch today, I want to tell you about an experience I had deep in meditation that echoes the quote pasted above…and experience that I will remember forever.

In a “nothing very eventful” session about 3/4 the way through…all of the sudden my entire body was in excruciating and almost overwhelming pain. It felt like every single cell in my body was screaming and naturally I became a little bit uncomfortable with the situation…but decided to stick with it and see what was happening. Breathing. Breathing. Breathing. The sensation then turned from pain, to the feeling of someone starting to pour concrete into my veins, and I could feel myself getting heavier and heavier as the seconds went on, completely connecting and sinking into the ground. Then, something happened I will never forget. All of the sudden, my perception and vision expanded drastically as I was able to view the Earth in its entirety…and all of the sudden big pairs of hands started to crunch the Earth down into a smaller and smaller size ball until it was the size of a pool ball…and as I snapped back into my place within the room…stuck that incredible dense ball – the size of the entire Earth – directly into my hearts center.

This process, the crunching down of the Earth, which seemed to take about half a minute or so, was choking the breath out of me. I couldn’t breathe. And when it was dropped into my solar plexus, and I felt it sink within me I gasped for air.

You are beginning to understand aren’t you? That the whole world is inside you: in your perspectives and in your heart. That to be able to find peace, you must be at peace with yourself first, and to truly enjoy life, you must enjoy who you are. At once you learn how to master this, you will be protected from everything that makes you feel like you can not go on, that with this gift of recognizing yourself, even when you are alone, you will never be lonely. – Unknown

I came out of that experience with a very very interesting feeling inside of me, and later when telling my coach about the experience he said that I am finding my solidity. There is this element of density to me that even months previously wasn’t there. One of my practices was to start taking Aikido classes because I am so excellent at resisting things instead of just letting them flow (the idea of Aikido in itself is to transfer energy)…but as the months went on, and I started digging into my reading and learning more and more about myself, I found out that it really wasn’t as much as me not being able to flow – trust me there are times when I am incredibly fluid – it was more about me finding my roots…my home…my scared ground.

Three not-so-very-small teachings have come into my life lately that have completely re-animated the way I look at and experience the world.

  1. Dark energy – I’ve written about it a few times before, but that type of energy inside of each of us that is pitch black, dark, thick and we feel like it can choke the light out of the entire world if we let it out. You must to begin to understand that this type of energy, if you can allow itself to be understood, can be transferred into something incredibly beautiful and positive. Your greatest pains, fears, and worries, can be painted into a beautiful picture.
  2. Masculine energy – Really, down to it’s core, what masculine energy is and what it means to be driven from your purpose and your mission in life…all the while being “the mountain” and witnessing the swirling aspects of life – thoughts, emotions, etc going on around you while never changing you. (this is a very brief description)
  3. Feminine energy – This, and really grasping this, has been probably tied with my understanding of the masculine in terms of how much I have changed lately. Being able to understand that the feminine of this world, is the world itself. It’s life itself. Everything that morphs and changes…the full array and spectrum of life and all it has to offer.

Why have these understandings changed me? In the ways I can actually describe what is happening – there are some things going on that are going to be be far to difficult to put down into words – understanding the dynamics of how the world works and how these energies work is perspective altering. I have been able to look back at my life and see that I have constantly been rocked out of my boat by the ocean (feminine) time after time and my purpose drowned with me. But I am convinced, allow purpose to develop in any man and give him the understanding that his inspiration can come from all that changes and what is feminine in this world, and he can show the world an unfolding masterpiece.

As tough as it has been at moments to learn these lessons, I would go through it all over again if I had to. Because now, there is a reclamation of heart going on and there is a complete understanding of that “home” is actually wherever I am. My entire life I would walk into rooms full of people I didn’t know and feel nervous, slightly intimidated, and off because I, myself, wasn’t nourished and at home. Now? I walk in with a smile and a full heart because I have nourished myself and my soul…and the world is a much friendlier place. If it’s a big room, I close my eyes for a second, imagine the room, and then try to visually wrap each and every single person with a blanket of understanding, friendship, interest, and love.

That, right there, has changed me drastically.

As a lover of having deep conversations in the past, I would naturally go there pretty quick because I felt like those were the only types of conversations that could “nourish” my heavy heart. That changed as well. Not that those conversations aren’t great, but now, I am far more interested in what other people are about, their stories, and where they want to go with their life than talking about specific subjects that fascinate me. I look back and I think about all of the amazing deep conversations I had, but in honest moments with myself, I can’t help but also recognize how much I drove those. Now, there’s this built in curiosity I have about other people, and it’s translated into the development of knowing 40 new people by first name in the past month, all budding friendships, and the starting of conversations about them.

What have I found?

That my joy, my deepest sense of joy, comes from the development of relationships and giving others encouragement. This thought had crossed my mind in a few different ways over the past few years, in terms of being motivating or inspiring…but I realized that encouragement is actually the word. We live in a world that can make people feel incredibly unimportant at times…devalued, worthless…the list goes on. I am here to do the exact opposite. Because people do matter – everyone matters…and they need to know and feel that.

Life is changing.

Drastically.

Good. 🙂

Evan Sanders
The Better Man Project