Monday Musings | A Conversation on Self Discovery
I KNOW it is Tuesday… but I wrote this yesterday and ran out of time to share, so here we are.
It has been way too long since I shared to Substack. The truth is, I haven’t been inspired to write in some time. I’m trying to come back, but most days I mirror the desert I inhabit—the wells are dry, yearning for the next storm to moisten the dirt.
In the meantime, I’m sharing in the only way I know how—spilling too much ink trying to navigate the spiral of thoughts, creating meaning out of everything and nothing.
How can I live in eternal sunshine And not long for the storm? Heavens cracking open in rage and sorrow. Did you miss me? I’ve been gone for so long, Appreciate me now.
A Conversation on Being
I started this conversation with a stranger on the internet… what transpired was too good not to share. Stay curious and open, my friends.
Contradiction is on my mind. I think innate purpose is found in being—to be alive is the significance of life, meaning is found in each breath. There is nothing more to do than to be. If I were to do nothing with my life and die tomorrow, I will have lived a full and purposeful life… and yet, I find myself dancing between doing and being because I desire to be an active participant, to take part in weaving the threads of my tapestry, no matter how fleeting and insignificant (in the grand scheme of the universe) because it is the most significant thing I’ll ever do (personal to the human emanation of me).
And I think that’s part of the beauty of the human experience (or just living experience, outside of the eternal). We get to experience separation, and make meaning out of everything and nothing. We are alive to experience it all—the highs and lows, all consuming emotion like the depths of grief and flashes of rage, great love and greater loss, glimpses of bliss and enlightenment, change and growth and even death of self many times over.
I think seeing the transcendental, ineffable beauty is one of the opportunities of life. As is evolution of self/Self and to experience the experiencing. Because if we never separated, we would already know where we’re going, omniscience is only exciting through the understanding of the limitation of our minds.
This worldview makes life feel innately poetic.
What is your approach?
Do you find balance, or maybe flow is a better word, between the study of higher concepts and the embodiment of living? I find the concepts to be a blueprint of truth, a remembrance of a path, yet, I must be fully living life and practicing what my mind comprehends to continue merging or evolving with source/creation. E.g., on this incarnated journey, self discovery is the first door to expanded consciousness.
Do you find yourself predominately seeing others or being seen?
In being seen, is it a witnessing of the humanness? Or the fullness of the entirety of You/I? Or maybe that is dependent on who is observing. And more personal, is the feeling of being truly seen a driving factor in sharing you (your voice, art, expression, etc.) with the world, or an outcome of genuine relating, vulnerability, and open heartedness? Or maybe each experience is unique in its expression, truly ephemeral in the interplay of the exchange.
What a gift it is to witness and be witnessed. I’ve had many moments of seeing others, always through the lens of love and total presence. Recent lovers and a couple of best friends come to mind. It’s the experience of how can I look at you and not love you for everything you are. Like all the heaviness and nuance of relating is stripped away to just see the essence of being. It’s so beautiful. And I can only find myself there when I’m fully present, raw, and authentic, transcending the mundane me.
I find that when I am sharing myself with the world, it is through the joy and love of my craft, yet it is also paired with the egoic desire of being seen in my craft. I think the craft is a doorway into me, but I must cultivate my own presence in one-on-one relating to let the fullness of me be seen. That can be an edgy one.
Authentic Sharing—Is There Balance?
I can deep dive esoteric topics all day and share wisdom/insight, but there are walls up when it comes to sharing me personally. Is everyone like this?
One of my biggest lessons in life is to de-armor myself and live with an open heart, and through this choice I was gifted with the opportunity to truly see people and let them see me, imperfectly. This choice is also what has enabled me to be a conduit of love, even when I’m grief stricken and heart broken (as it happens with depth in love, opposite side of the same coin). And, why the experiencing is important for my own integration of higher thought/energy/being. I’m a direct channel for source energy, so Wisdom and Knowing come easily but I’ve had to learn how to live, how to be a part of life.
And writing/sharing this sounds kind of funny to me, but I’ve realized that I’m very dualistic in being, there is a very human Madison and a very wise and old, outside-of-time soul self, and I get to dance with both in my living experience.
Life can be super overwhelming and challenging, and those are the times that I get to step into my humanness and learn what my edges are and who I really am. And sometimes it’s too much and I burn out and hermit, and must become solely a student again to regain footing. And that’s my life.
How do you view your dualistic nature?
We are just reflections of each other, and, how boring would it be if we were all the same. For me, the question and answer both lie in the opportunity of individuation. Individuation offers opportunity to dip our toes into beautiful and vast thought. It’s rare to come across someone who shares not only interest in ancient and transcendent wisdom but also has depth and breath of experience.
Which face do you wear?
I find the human condition fascinating, especially in regard to the many faces we wear. Ram Dass has a lovely and confronting talk titled The Many Faces of God that brought a more expanded perspective into my awareness. From a zoomed out perspective, everyone has a role to play, even when we personally deem it “bad” or “evil” (again, duality based on our personal morals, ethics, and world views of “good”).
While it would be ideal if everyone was pure of heart and intention, would that create opportunities for conscious evolution of the collective and one? Maybe… maybe not. We are naturally dual because of our separation. Duality walks hand in hand with contrast. I love the analogy of the pendulum representing cosmic dao, the entire swing is the natural order of the universe, and personal dao hangs out somewhere within the swing depending on the person. Each person experiencing their own dance of contrast, a microcosm reflecting everything in existence.
I question why people deceive or have ulterior motive, and realize it’s not my place to judge, only discern—does this align with my standards/ethics/who I desire to be in the world? And then I get off my high horse and have a conversation with my ego, and try to send love from afar.
Ego is vital, and I think it’s silly that a lot of new age spirituality harps on transcending the ego (which leaves someone completely ungrounded), when the misunderstanding with “capital E” Ego is what is often spoken to. I love my ego, and because I choose to live in alignment, it can be easy to judge others who don’t. I don’t want to live in that energy, so it’s a gut check of my energy playing into the melodrama. I’ll discern all day long and decide if something is a “yes” or “no” for me, but when I fall into feeling better than or more divine or above someone because of knowledge or alignment or my yes/no, that’s not me living in the energy of coherence and it’s my responsibility to have the “lowercase e” ego conversation.
I don’t mean to imply inauthenticity, I was inviting in my own vulnerability in relating, but I recognize my own bluntness (as someone who also has predominate fire placements). The direction of my desired depth of connection is always asking me to be more open and frank.
Dimensional Experience & States of Existence
Are you familiar with holographic universe theory? I believe it in the limited capacity it explains existence and awareness (of course any language greatly limits the totality of conscious expression). In short, I believe that we have access to all states of awareness, in terms of physicality, we just need to create the neuroconnectivity to access the awareness.
For example, meditating or even sitting with plant medicine expands awareness to different frequencies, creating the opportunity to access “psychedelic” (I.e., different frequency of awareness) states in waking consciousness. The state is always there, we just have to tune our radio to the right frequency, so to say. And the multiverse exists on many levels (to simplify it to the way we experience both consciousness and time) whether it is unlimited possibly unfolding until we make a choice or all possibility existing simultaneously, to give basic examples.
We’re experiencing an interesting time. So much horror and pain and disembodiment and distraction… and the ending of a cycle. And on a bigger scale, a Kali Yuga, which feels unfair but we’re here now for a reason. I like to think it’s both the slow death and the gestation of a new age, contraction before birth. The world is playing in contrast as more people slowly awaken.
Extreme contrast comes at a time of testing the limits. Because of free will, I think it’s a personal duty to align with cosmic order, before we can rely on it being a collective duty. Or maybe it’s always been a collective duty, and it’s a slow remembering of individual alignment. I, too, wish we all lived in a more interconnected manner, and part of my vision for my life is to create that for my direct path of influence.
From a very 3D perspective, I found Ray Dalio’s Changing World Order fascinating and illuminating—it offered cyclic observation in a very tangible way, nation to nation. It not only broadened my view on linear cycles of nations, but came at a time when I was focusing on my cognitive ability to see the patterns between the lines. Very insightful! Everything is so interconnected, it just takes a little awareness to understand the cross section. Being in the stage of the fall feels scary, and yet, endings only lead to another beginning. I must have a little hope, or I’d be in liminal and existential dread all the time.
Discernment is key.
I love the masculine/feminine discussion. On the energetic side, I believe a part of personal evolution is bringing these aspects of self into coherence—uniting the vision with the action to get there, trusting both intuition and factual perception, mysticism and 3D reality, emotions and thoughts, etc. And, getting to experience both the shadow and evolved emanations of these energies. This is the divine union we often seek in others.
All these thoughts manifested in such a non-linear experience. With the existential, comes dissatisfaction with my own life—doing the most and what feels like nothing at all, subsequently coexistent.
I really love bass music and going dancing with friends. In choosing sobriety (most of the time), I’ve realized that you never lose that inner party girl—it doesn’t matter the substance or the environment, it’s the inner you that creates the scene.
The sunshine is my blue pill (I’ve swallowed too much red to find the cure in the distraction to be a man-made fix). And yet, I still spend way too much time scrolling on my phone.
My body is a finely tuned instrument of expression. I’ve started gymnastics classes, which have become a highlight of my week—pure joy in learning what my inner child always longed to do. And what I’ve known for a long time, movement is medicine = the more I move, the more I feel like myself.
The dating scene is weird, I won’t claim to be overdeveloped, but there is a loss of intrigue in most people—living a watered down experience, going through the motions of life, lack of curiosity, and intrinsically, self development.
I’m uninspired by the modern word. Our obsession with clean lines and lack of color is a mass-produced dystopian reality divorcing us from artistry. Give me curves and natural materials that take a lifetime of mastery to create.
I don’t want to work, I want to create and inspire.
All states of being are simultaneous.
Grief is a sly friend, Creeping in through noticing the shape of someone else’s nose Or the first cords of a forgotten song. I close my eyes And still see your freckles Dancing in the sunlight— Constellations memorized From my personal universe.
As always, the internal monologue never ceases. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading some of my recent half-baked thoughts, and found inspiration in seeking your own understanding of life.
With love,
Madison