The Awakening

Hello friends! It’s been a long time since my last blog and I’m excited to be back.

I write often about awakening and transformation and knowing when it is time for change. It is evident when it’s time for a transformation of our physical space, but few of us ever see when it’s time for spiritual transformation. So often the need for change in our lives starts with a feeling of dis-ease or discomfort. It’s usually subtle enough that we can ignore it or easily obscure it by distraction. But soon, the tap on the shoulder returns, and we’re given the choice to look at something or stuff it back down. Look at it, or stuff it back down. Look at it, or stuff it back down.

I believe these taps come from our authentic internal selves, the real selves we are meant to be, and not the curated cardboard cutouts we parade around as. For many, we have been living as those cardboard cutouts for so long that we actually begin to believe that’s who we are. We assign our adjectives: hard-working, good mother, socialite, lawyer, upstanding citizen, confirmed bachelor, holy man, intellectual, addict- and a million more man-made constructs then we stick to them. These labels come with so many “rules” and “shoulds” and “shames” and “handcuffs” that many of us are petrified to go against convention and societal norms to ask if that’s our truth or a false belief programmed by someone else.

There are others among us that are such good actors and actresses (I know I would have given Meryl Streep a run for her money) that we have convinced the outside world, and fooled ourselves, into believing that’s who we really are. Yet we know deep down inside we’re not living our truth. Soon enough, we realize we are not living at all. Years of repetitive, unexamined behavior soon turn us into rote, labeled, unfeeling zombies going through the motions of living and suffering. We are spiritually dead and wasting the precious, ever-passing moments we have left.

I’ve had a lot of answering of my own tap, tap, taps in the past year or so. For years my truth about who I am internally didn’t match up to the exterior picture I presented. It was a blueprint drawn by others that I never bothered to ask if it suited me or not. It was an easier design for the outside world to digest and process so I stuck with it until that version of me was so ill-fitting that I could no longer walk around in it.

I have come to believe that the root of unhappiness, depression, and anxiety is shoving down our sh*t and living inauthentically. And if all the scripts for antidepressants that are written actually did any good we wouldn’t have the epidemic of misery that is sweeping the citizens of the planet. If there was an ability to measure the distance between the authentic self and the fake cardboard cutout self, I think we’d find a direct correlation between that distance and our own levels of happiness or unhappiness. The greater the distance from our truth, the less authentically we are living. The less authentically we are living - the more suffering in our story. One good place to start lessening that gap is by asking “Who are we faking it for anyway”?

For those of us who have had the courage to look behind that cutout and understand what our tap, tap, tap was asking us to look at, we have gotten the gift and the curse of spiritual awakening. That awakening is different for everyone. For me, I will be ever grateful that mine happened on my first trip to Greece. Traveling has always allowed me to slip outside of my known world to explore unknown ones and thus, see and feel parts of myself that daily life doesn’t allow space for. I remember distinctly lying on a paddle board with my hands cupping the beautiful blue water when a feeling of life force suddenly came over me. It shook straight through my body (kundalini energy, chi) and was so strong and so palpable that I remember saying to myself “Oh my god, I’m not dead”. It was this statement that shocked me because I realized I had not been feeling life for quite some time. So the decision had to be made - sweep everything back under the rug or start the uncomfortable process of discovering who I am.

This is definitely not a walk down a primrose path. Very often, we deny what we are starting to feel because that reflection in the mirror can sometimes be the most uncomfortable thing to face. And when we do finally understand what is happening we rarely have answers to questions like “Who am I?” or “What makes me happy.”

Those answers require us to decide if we’re going to be brave enough to deconstruct our lives to build new ones. Often that process of deconstruction is painful and can even dismantle families, marriages, and friendships. We come to understand that our cardboard cutouts, while they may have been killing us, may have in some way been serving others. I’ve heard it said that people don’t want you to be the best version of yourself. They want you to be the version that best serves them. The deconstruction process lays bare those truths too.

But the gifts come after the painful dark night of the soul period ends and they are abundant. There is a new clarity that allows us to hear our authentic internal voice (which has all the right answers and never steers us wrong) and see human dynamics, manipulations, and motivations clearer than ever before. Senses seem heightened as we are actually feeling our emotions and fully participating in our lives. For me, I can feel myself constantly vibrating at a much higher frequency than before. My intuition, powers of manifestation, and synchronicities with the universe are so heightened that its magic delights me. I feel happiness that I never knew was possible and some days (after I do a Snoopy dance of joy) I could cry with gratitude that I get to live this way from now on. I get to be this version of Kim - one I built and I actually like. And I have total belief that a beautiful future, full of love and adventure, is waiting for me.

I share this personal story because I never knew that rejuvenation of the body, mind, and soul was so possible. My work going forward is to encourage and guide others who are suffering because they’re standing in cement and don’t know how to get out. IT IS POSSIBLE and I am living proof that life can be unimaginably happy and joyful in a very short amount of time if we do the hard work. It just takes a lot of courage, a lot of time, a lot of feeling your way through the dark, and a lot of belief that there is something better - even if others want to keep us small and tell us there isn’t.

Tap, tap, tap…

Thank you for reading The Awakening.
The Interior Design Shrink is transforming and evolving.
Stay tuned for the next chapter.