I am an audiophile.
Maybe this is one reason my intuition speaks to me through clairaudience.
Every day I love to listen to a morning meditation before I even get out of bed. Lately the Chani App is delivering an astrologically relevant one daily that’s ~9-12 minutes long. Sometimes I’ll also check out a favorite teacher on Insight Timer.
My favorite one of all time there is Sarah Blondin’s track “I Would Like to Give You Permission.” We come out from behind the curtain in our lives to be unapologetically ourselves. It is about dropping with the ego self, and getting in touch with the tender heart inside of us.
For years this was a challenge for me. But using this meditation, and truly absorbing its message helped me to come back to myself. Coming back to our intrinsic freedom is difficult, and yet, it feels lighter and less burdensome.
As someone who spent most of my life masking neurodiversity without knowing it, the practice of “being me” is not always easy. And yet I suspect being me actually serves more people. When I admit what’s difficult for me, others tend to show up with more courage also.
Lately I have been enjoying my friend Anthea’s new podcast, Finding Your Way Home: The Secrets to True Alignment. It was my companion on a long car trip to visit with my sister a month ago. What a lovely variety of practitioners and fascinating stories! I could listen the Anthea’s voice all day.
It is a fairly dramatic contrast to listening to football games on television with my husband in recent weekends. I have some tolerance for it, but commercial television always makes me a little jumpy. I crave snacks. I feel anxious. The noise bothers me. I lunge for the mute regularly when the volume seems to go up indiscriminately.
I love my husband, and while I don’t love football, sometimes I stretch my limits a bit out of a desire for closeness.
Stretching and expanding our capacity once in a while is a useful thing. And sometimes, we realize we’ve stretched too far. Tara McMullin had a beautiful podcast on this recently, where she asked: How Many Layers Are Too Many?
She gave language to something I’ve struggled to articulate for so long! I need a certain amount of stimulation to stay engaged. Boredom is really difficult for me and my Gemini Rising brain. Excruciating. I was the person who ALWAYS had a book with me in middle school and beyond. What if I was somewhere that I had to WAIT, for god’s sake?!
This was before smartphones, and before I understood more of the principles of mindfulness (or actually bodyfulness) and staying with my present moment experience. Now I understand this was a helpful escape mechanism for when the stimulation became unbearable. It was a way to check out, briefly, to step away from the discomfort for a moment. Getting lost in a book is still my favorite way to relax.
Podcasts started to do that for me in 2016. The news and campaigning became overwhelming for me. Literally every time the former harrasser-in-chief spoke, it felt like sandpaper to my soul. I’m still a member of NPR, because I believe in quality journalism, yet I almost never listen anymore.
Radio was a wonderful companion for many years during my commutes, and on long trips. When I switched to podcasts, and noticed many of my favorite shows were now available in podcast form, my agency increased. I didn’t have to settle for what was on right now. I could choose what I wanted to hear, what might nourish me appropriately.
This slight shift, while sometimes delaying the “breaking news” that most people know before I do, has given me much more space. Clear and open space to hear my thoughts, to feel into what resonates most, and to seek the kinds of conversations I want to have.
I’ve also had an Audible account since 2012, when I started doing a lot of travel for work. The comfort of hearing a story hasn’t left me from the years my mother read to my sister and me. I’ve become a connoisseur of voices, and some of them I seek again and again in times of distress.
Curiously, my own recorded voice seems to do this for me as well. Every Friday, recording my Letters from Love (per Liz Gilbert’s community and practice) is a balm for my weary soul.
Love never wants me to be anything but what I am right now, complete and whole. No matter how mean the inner critic (or societal norms) might be, I’m always enough.