Being a spiritual person does not mean being a doormat.
I have gotten some questions about this after standing up for myself recently on the blog (read yesterday’s blog post!) and wanted to clarify my point of view on spirituality and standing up for yourself.
In my opinion, there is a big difference between taking the high road and letting someone walk all over you.
Being a spiritual person means being in touch with your intuition, and your intuition never lies.
Being a spiritual person means acting from a place of ACTION rather than reaction.
And being a spiritual person means always being a pioneer for truth — the overall truth and your soul’s individual truth.
Standing up for yourself is practicing an important BOUNDARY, which is the pinnacle of spirituality and self-care in my opinion.
What I have found is that when I bite my tongue and refrain from sharing my truth, my soul gets restless. It feels like a bird stuck in a cage, or like a plant with no water. We came to this earth, to these human bodies, to express our SOULS. Our desires, our feelings, our emotions, our deepest and truest beliefs and longings.
This goes for large situations like the situation I was in with the media this past week, and smaller day to day situations with friends and family (or even strangers!).
Just a few months ago I was sitting on the beach with one of my dear friends and explaining to her that I was exhausted because another friend had been over the night before and I just couldn’t find it in me to tell that person I was ready for bed, emotionally and physically drained from the week, and wanted them to go home.
I told my friend all of the elaborate ways in which I tried to get this person to go home, including full on cleaning my kitchen, laying on the couch, and then going into the hallway with Hudson (my cat – hehe) for an extended period of time while my friend inside continued to have no idea what I was feeling.
Was I being immature and too timid to share my truth?
YES.
Why?
Because I didn’t want to hurt my friend’s feelings! I love him, and I didn’t want to have to tell him to go. I wanted him to pick up on my subtleties that I WANTED him to go. Lol, the complications of being human. (And being a Reflector at that a.k.a desperately needing to recharge alone.)
So as I recounted this story to my friend the next day, she said, “So you basically did everything except tell them to leave?”
And we burst out laughing. Because yes, I had avoided the obvious. I had avoided my own truth. I bit my tongue, choked it down, and acted MORE rude I am sure than it would have been to just tell my friend that I needed to go to bed and had had a really, really long week.
That was a huge learning lesson for me (even though I don’t think the friend I am referring to had any idea how I felt and I am glad — it wasn’t their issue at ALLLL, it was mine), and a huge turning point. After my soul sista on the beach reminded me that I was just being silly and refraining from sharing my truth, and reminded me that whenever we share our TRUTH we are shown the people who really matter to us anyway, I was re-empowered to not hide from my real feelings. And most especially, to not hide from sharing my real feelings.
Now I think there is a classy, graceful way to share your truth. I think that…
a) sharing your truth must always be rooted in your intuition (if your intuition tells you not to share, listen – it is not about sharing EVERYTHING, but rather sharing the things that really, truly matter)
b) make sure you are coming from a place of action rather than reaction, i.e. not responding to something that irks you RIGHT AWAY but rather giving yourself time to cool off, think about the situation, and act from a place of kindness
c) be mindful of other people’s feelings in the situation, i.e. don’t attack someone to simply get your feelings across, because your feelings about a situation are always going to be YOUR SIDE of the situation — keep in mind there is always another side too
d) ask yourself, “does sharing this truth make anyone’s life better?” if the answer is YES (even if the answer is just YOUR LIFE, but many times it will be more than that), then that is a good sign, and also ask yourself, “is this worth it?” i.e. if this might hurt another person’s feelings, is it certainly so important to you that you’re up for having a mindful dialogue about it?
e) how quickly can you MOVE ON and LET GO from what no longer serves you? Do not ever share your truth to cause drama or live in the dramatic / chaotic state of life that we sometimes crave due to previous life experiences — share your truth, and MOVE ON.
Usually it’s plain and simple. Tell the truth, before any situation escalates to your blood boiling because then you might just explode, OR you might just hold it in for a long time and then explode at something random (also not fun, at all, for anyone)!
A Course in Miracles (Chapter 31), the spiritual text that I study and created my course based off of, says this about the Self: “This aspect [a concept of the Self] can grow angry, for the world is wicked and unable to provide the love and shelter innocence deserves. And so this face is often wet with tears at the injustices the world accords to those who would be generous and good. This aspect never makes the first attack. But every day a hundred little things make small assaults upon its innocence, provoking it to irritation, and at last to open insult and abuse.”
I don’t think that the world itself is wicked . at all (I think it is a beautiful place) but I know that people can surely be mean and many things about this human experience are not fair, or fun, or just. And it is true that every day a hundred little things make “small assaults upon [our Soul’s] innocence,” and because of that it is so important to be mindful of how we are taking care of ourselves and expressing our souls.
Chapter 31 of A Course in Miracles ends with this: “The world can teach no images of you unless you want to learn them. There will come a time when images have all gone by, and you will see you know not what you are. It is to this unsealed and open mind that truth returns, unhindered and unbound. Where concepts of the self have been laid by is truth revealed exactly as it is.”
My interpretation of that is that we are not the self-righteous “Self” that we create in our minds. We are so much deeper, so much more powerful, we are so eternal and so strong, we are pure consciousness embodied.
When you look at it that way, it makes it even more clear that if we came here to be expressions of our souls, so YES it is important to speak our truth but also YES it is also important to remember that so much of what we experience here is fleeting, and temporary, and is for us to learn from.
That helps us learn how to ACT vs. REACT. With our partners, with our friends, with our families, with our selves.
In essence, I take from this passage of A Course in Miracles that we as humans have forgotten our true nature. We have forgotten our Oneness, our wholeness, our eternal peacefulness as sisters and brothers.
I include all of this because I want to remind us all (and remind myself) that when sharing our truth, it is abundantly important to be kind and come from a loving place. If we are all One (which I believe we are), then a part of why we share our truth is to bring everyone involved back to a state of ALIGNMENT and LOVE.
I think that mindfully standing up for yourself requires a delicate balance of sharing your truth in order to bring all parties back to alignment and love, while also not allowing yourself to be a fucking doormat.
I think it is spiritual AF to stand UP and tell your truth when you’ve been bullied or slighted. Because even if the person (or persons) who has/have bullied you isn’t exactly being brought back into alignment with your truth (not immediately at least because they clearly have a different point of view and their own lifelong wounds), you are standing up for all who have been silenced before you.
When a kid being bullied stands up for themself, they are standing up for all the kids they know who have been bullied. It is a ripple effect. When I stood up for myself this past week, I wasn’t doing it for me and me alone. Yes, my soul needed to express itself. It wasn’t a choice, it was a duty. But I was standing up for myself to stand up for all of the Lyme patients, AND chronically ill sufferers, who have been silenced.
It is simple as that.
One day when we remember we are all One, we won’t be in this same position of having to stand up for ourselves in the face of cruelty or bullying or injustice.
But for now, here on this earthly plane, standing up for injustice is a spiritual practice.
Also, turning the other cheek when it feels right in your intuition is a spiritual practice.
Staying silent and letting someone else share their truth that you don’t agree with, when it feels right, is a spiritual practice.
Can you see what I am saying here?
Every situation is different, and your intuition and STRENGTHENING your relationship with your intuition will help you determine how to act in any particular circumstance.
When you stand up for yourself whenever it feels intuitively right, you inspire others to do the same. You also give the message to the Universe: I am here, I am proud, I am in alignment with exactly who I am, and no one or no thing can bring me down. I am listening to my intuition, to the divine creator, and am here to carry out the messages that need to be shared!
You can even stand up for yourself in your own journal, without sharing it out loud or publicly. YOU get to decide what it looks like to draw boundaries and stand in YOUR truth.
Standing up for yourself is a boundary.
Boundaries = spiritual self-care.
It all goes hand in hand.
Am I sharing all of this assuming I come from a place of perfection? HELL NO! I am human, and I am learning every day.
Do I blow up at my fiancé a little too often? YES.
Do I blow up at my family a lot too often? YES.
Do I share my feelings on social media and my blog after my feelings have been hurt without always taking the TIME to act vs. react? Absolutely yes.
We are all humans in progress. Humans evolving.
But I will never apologize for doing what I know is right — and sometimes doing what we know is right is DEEPLY uncomfortable. I hate stepping on people’s toes or displeasing anyone. I mean, as you read earlier in this post, I couldn’t even tell my dear friend to leave my house when it was getting too late for me!
Leaning into the discomfort is where SOUL LEVEL growth happens.
Leaning into the discomfort is where we have the opportunity to shift the injustices in this world – by speaking up and sharing from the HEART.
So all in all… it all comes back to strengthening our intuition, being kind, and drawing boundaries.
P.S. if you’ve been really bullied, torn down, or really slighted by someone or a group of people, it’s okay to be mad, sad, enraged, devastated! It IS spiritual to be all of those things. You can be spiritual and get mad. You get be spiritual and deeply sad and devastated. It is so totally okay to be all of those things. And to express yourself accordingly. And then to stay in your high vibe lane and move the F on. Because after you share your truth, they deserve not one more ounce of your time.
Don’t let “spirituality” be another LABEL you live by. Receiving the few messages I did about “But you’re a spiritual person, why did you get upset over that article?” showed me that people still want to attach to the idea of spiritual people being ONE WAY. Just like not all vegans are one way, not all Jews are one way, not all Californians are one way, NOT ALL SPIRITUAL PEOPLE are one way.
Spiritual people can get mad, sad, drink alcohol, or be sober! They can share from the heart and be crusaders of truth or choose to live a life off the beaten path and largely in silence!
They get to decide who they are. Each and every one of us gets to decide who we are and how we express our souls wrapped in skin. 🙂
Also… being spiritual means feeling it ALL. I am so happy to be able to share my truth and then let go, let live, and move forward. Which is exactly what I am doing!
Love you guys. Heading into my cavitation surgery on TUESDAY ahhh I am so ready! Leave any questions about that or this post below. 🙂 XO