You’re going to need to choose your space

If all your energy is drained away to what you didn’t choose, there’s nothing left.

Nothing for your passion.

Nothing for your purpose.

Nothing for your soul calling.

In recent emails, I’ve been exploring this phenomenon of life sending all kinds of distractions your way right when you’re trying to make steps towards what you’re really here for.

And last week, I dove into how the victim mindset plays a part here: believe that life is hard and you don’t get to choose, and you’ll end up experiencing that.

Along a spiritual path, things like choosing might sound a bit like echoes of hustle culture and toxic effortful living. I see a lot of people who are stepping towards their inner alignment ditching efforting and settling into a more peaceful way of allowing what is.

And allowing is absolutely critical — the invitation to “relax and allow” is probably the #1 inner voice advice I’ve heard repeatedly from many tuning in to their inner wisdom.

But it’s easy for the mind to confuse allowing with acquiescence, and to even enact a shadow version that looks like letting other people’s whims and the natural happenings of the outside world pull you around in countless directions.

When that happens, you’re going to feel frazzled, misaligned, out of sorts, and you won’t have much time for the spiritual path that’s calling you.

The allowing that I’ve been called to is more active than that. It’s not fighting or resisting what’s occurring, but there’s an empowered stance within it. There’s a sense of letting things be while choosing what resonates. And when you develop this active, sovereign, empowered stance of accepting what is while choosing your way, magic happens.

Years ago, I discovered the magic of pairing surrendering and choosing, and living these both at once, over years, in countless ways, has led to amazing transformations and the ability to bring my true work into the world.

So last week when I was asking inner voice, “Why does life throw distractions your way when you choose to come to inner work?”, this is what came out:

‘When these [distractions] are let in through many open buckets, leaky ways, then they come in many forms.

‘When there is a true holding space for this work, it is indeed able to be held.

‘And this is what Eva has vastly experienced with some moments of these buckets' gaps, where it is seen that there is still not the financial necessities to have a truly private space while it is mothering, enough to fully bring the space that's needed during the summer months.

‘But as these many leaky leaks, we could say, in this dike have been filled and filled and filled, there is now an incredibly increased capacity to hold space for us and bring our work through. And this was even done to a more extreme measure during this retreat where it was chosen, and indeed very decisively chosen, to direct all of its capacity for work to our work. And this created this vast shift in its life growing up and availability to teach to others, and this we would recommend.

So yeah, I’ve experienced the benefits of filling up the “leaks” in the bucket. During a 4-month retreat, referenced here, I literally turned off my business, stopped holding conversations with external people aside from my daughter, and instead spent countless hours in my own inner voice process.

Bringing that incredible level of choosing that this is what I’m going to do caused tremendous results.

But it’s also not available to most people to turn off every other voice and spend months on your inner work, nor is that path sustainable long term over your life. And it’s actually easier to shut out the entire world then to set aside buckets of time just for your inner work during daily life, because when you’re literally doing nothing else, everything else becomes an automatic no.

So what I’m looking to understand and then teach is how do we create a sustainable empowered life that feels aligning and where there’s consistent space and time for what’s looking to emerge through you?

A few key elements are going to be critical for stopping up those leaks in your energy and consciously choosing your inner work:

• A firm decision. When your choice is wishy-washy, all kinds of other elements can make their way into it.
• A routine. Yeah I know that’s mundane, but setting up regular routines that this is just what I do at this time of the day or week makes a huge difference. I shared before how the mind can get in the way sometimes with effortful rule-making when we try to make a routine, so there’s some nuance here. But there can be persistent edging of your life towards the space you need without force or pressuring yourself around it.
• A definition. When you don’t know what inner work means, and it’s really vague, it’s hard to be persistent about it or defend the space. So a clear definition of what you’re choosing is critical.

So putting all this together, the invitation here is to define a container for your inner work, and set that up as a micro bubble of space in your life, whether that’s 5 minutes, 30 minutes, once a week, every day, whatever is available and that feels aligning and resonant for you now.

Maybe you already have this set up, and if so, I’d love to hear what’s working for you on bringing consistent time for your inner work?

From my inner voice:

'Declaring its space, reclaiming it, choosing it again and again and again, reaffirms to the world and the energy that this is so.