Drifting Along Like Alice on a Sea of Tears
(You Are Already Your Evolved Version)
Note: the above video contains the audio version of the written post.
Most of the summer, I allowed myself to rest more than usual. I didn’t rush to greet the sunrise as often, and enjoyed taking my time more than ever in my life. I took time away from doing any deeper work, and the break continued longer than I had planned. I looked long and hard at my mental patterns, habits, and the way I show up.
At some point, self-doubt crept in, and I found myself questioning whether or not I even have it in me to continue what I’ve started.
Some days, ideation consumes me.
Some days my mind runs rampant until I feel paralyzed.
Sometimes I feel uncertainty about which ideas are worth bringing to life.
Reminder: every idea is worth bringing to life. The ideas you choose to take action on are important because you’ve been moved enough to actually do something about your idea.
It’s time to get back to work.
The release which follows action
both heals us, and sustains us.
I’ve been thinking a lot about my self portrait era, back in the mid to late 2000’s, and how obsessed I was with making self portraits. I was in flow state for a long time, and I don’t really know what was even motivating me then. I went out on a limb, and it worked. It was natural. I wasn’t overthinking it. And people responded in a big way. Back then, perhaps my fuel was heartache, longing to know myself, navigating motherhood so young, or having absolutely no clue what I wanted to do aside from this fire inside to write and make art out of my photographs.
So what is fueling me now? What fuels anyone?
Is it the attention, the response? Or is it the inevitability of filtering our experiences into something we can see and interact with, for others to experience along with us?
It lives inside us all, in some form or another, evolving as we evolve. Sometimes the feeling goes dormant. We experience incredible amounts of suffering when we can’t seem to access that space inside… the home to those ideas which move us to act (that I like to refer to as the DreamField). So what causes the disconnect between ourselves and a fully activated DreamField, and how do we consistently activate the DreamField?
I believe the answer is so deeply personal, it can only be answered by you, carved out by your own experience, brought to life by your own soulful vision, guided by your evolved version.
I believe you already are the person you want to become.
Our natural state of being inspires true expression, and becomes a deeply sacred ritual. When we seek anything more than to carry out these most sacred rituals as an extension of who we are, it slowly severs us from ourselves. When we consume more than we create, it deactivates flow. When we compare ourselves to others, creation becomes superficial. We struggle to access DreamField. It becomes painful to continue. We forget that we are worthy to dream, to create, to be wholly ourselves.
When acceptance replaces expectation, our heart settles into the right frequency. Our anxieties and doubts wane because we stop trying to control the future, instead commanding our attention to the present and how we show up.
When we start to measure success with joy instead of outcomes, every step we take becomes intentional. Those are the steps which move us in the direction we are supposed to go, grounding us securely to ourselves.
Hey dreamer, you and your many worlds: those things that make you laugh, lean into them. Those things that force salty tears into pools that swell and drip, swell again, and drip into a whole sea — sink into them and drift along like Alice.
Where will they take you? What will they show you?
(They carried Alice home to who she already was).
. a poem .
You are a Multiverse
You are a multifaceted masterpiece,
Extending beyond the sum of your beliefs.
You are more than the career you think you need,
More than the work you do in 40 hours each week
You are swirls of energies
And streams of frequencies.
You are a multiverse.
You are parallel dimensions
Layered in visions,
You are more than whole.
May you witness the fullness
Of what it really means
To be bursting at the seams
When you live out your deepest dreams
Flowing forward, with the stream
Of your Evolved Version.
How mysterious,
That you already are
The person you seek
And she is guiding you home.
You are a multiverse
Of worlds, obscured
Of Universes infinitely secured
By self-realization.
— Bella.
Let’s take a quiet, moody walk.
Thank you for taking this ultra slowed-down journey with me today. I appreciate you so much for being here.
Next up, I have some exciting news. This is a big deal for me! For the longest time, I have put my work out there in hopes that it would inspire or help people stay grounded in their own journeys. I’ve shared everything from self portraits, to nature photography, to blog posts, to YouTube videos. Over the years I’ve removed a huge amount of that, and I’ve been hesitant to share anything substantial on most social media platforms due to the nature of their policies, and haven’t been super in alignment with social media aside from YouTube.
That is, until I joined Substack. I love what this platform is doing for artists and writers.
With that said, I’ve decided to turn on paid subscriptions for anyone who would like to see more posts from me. Paid subscribers will receive 1-2 posts per week. I’m so excited to be able to put some of my deeper work behind a paywall where I can have complete and total ownership and control of my content and who sees it.
Free Subscribers will continue to receive 1-2 free posts per month, as well as a substantial preview of the paid content :)
Thank you for your patience as I acclimate myself to this new format of sharing with you, and figuring out exactly what and how I will be sharing. Definitely still finding my rhythm. So here it is… your new option to become a paid subscriber!