We are all humans. We are all leaders.

Hello hello,

I hope your week has been filled with beautiful moments of presence, understanding, and growth. As always, wishing you patience and compassion with Self through this life journey.

I sometimes sing and scream to Alanis Morissette while driving to process residual anger. I ritualize drinking a glass of wine every once in awhile. Sometimes I eat a burger when my body needs red meat. I laugh at inappropriate moments and can talk too much when I get anxious. I'm still learning how to ask for support when I need it. I'm figuring out how to have better boundaries while remaining soft and open. I get stuck in the hell of my own mind just like the best of us. I've normalized sharing my struggles and the lessons they are teaching me in front of a room of people. I make a lot of "mistakes". My wisdom has come from being okay with making lots of "mistakes" and learning from them. I'm no monk and I have no desire to be. The shades of "love and light" I've experienced have come only after many moments of picking myself up off the bathroom floor and convincing my Self to keep going and that it all had a greater purpose. My biggest lessons were learned the hard way. I have dedicated my life to learning how to evolve, how to honor the soul, and how to be fully and completely human. I share what I can in the ways that I can at this developmental stage in my life. I do the best I can to be a decent human with the tools in my toolbox at the time. I'm also open to admitting when I need more tools. I am still developing as a human, I will always be still developing as a human. I reserve this for my Self as my divine right - to always be in process.

We all share what we have come to know through our direct experience.There are no separate standards for teaching on matters of soul, spirit, and heart. I never ever want to ever be put on a pedestal, I have no desire to be separate from others. I also have no desire to be a leader of others, just a leader of my own life. My classes, workshops, privates, and retreats are centered around different facets of reclaiming personal power by remembering the truth of who we are. I share this because I have spent much of my life forgetting who I am and attempting to remember and finding my power in that attempt. I happen to be in the front of the room occasionally, but I make a conscious effort to put myself in the back of the room where I can be the student most of the time. I am grateful to learn what I know nothing about, there are so many people who know so many things I don't know (thank goodness and wow! people are so amazing and there is so much to learn from everybody!!). I actually love being a student the most but, from my understanding, life requires us to complete the cycle and share what we've learned at some point, so here I am. I do know that I am becoming a better teacher because I am becoming a better student. I do know that we are all each others students and teachers. At this stage in my life, I finally recognize myself as the visionary that I am. But I also believe that we all are visionaries.

We are an extension of life itself, consciousness in human form, ever expanding. I am building the relationship with my Self that I also want to have with all life - since I am life. I've spent a lot of time cultivating this relationship, I've gained some tools along the way - sometimes I share them. Some of this relationship and my work involves the heart, spirit, and soul - which is what I spend most of my time educating myself on, integrating, and trying to embody what I've come to learn.

Every person in a room full of people has a different perception about everybody. There are perceptions about me as a human, me as a yoga instructor, and what this potentially means about how I live my life. We are different people to everyone based on the filter they are seeing through. I have my perceptions, I am constantly working to clear my filters of what is not based on truth. I know, for me, this is going to be a whole lifetime job. People may have conditioned beliefs about what it means to do the work of spirit - but I live by my own life and have my direct experience of what it means. I live by that, not by what others assume or expect it to mean. My relationship with spirit isn't textbook, it's been an intimate cultivation and connection that took years to establish and start to trust. I'm not seated in a lotus position every day for 5 hours repeating OM, I'm in the throws of it - falling down and attempting to get back up having learned something and hopefully becoming just slightly wiser because of it. I have "faults" and personal propensities that I'm confronted with every day that often keep me from moving through life gracefully. I'm not trying to "good girl" this spirituality stuff, I am a woman who is trying to allow her Self to be fully human in the muckiness and the beauty simultaneously. This is what feels real and honest, to me.

I'm responsible for my own definition and meaning of life which has been derived from my own direct experience. I'm not responsible for others definitions or projections of how and who I should be as a "human", as a "yoga instructor", as a "healer", as an "insert the blank" ....It's not my job to take on others projections, but it is my job to work on my own relationship with spirit, soul, and heart and to move from there. My life has been built by getting closer to my Self rather than farther away. I've learned to let everyone have their opinions about who, what, and how I should be and just continue to clean up my side of the street the best that I can. I know where my personal work is and I show up for it. This is how I stay in right relationship with my Self. If I don't have right relationship with my Self, I have nothing - personal integrity means everything to me.

I've attempted to create a life in which I can be entirely myself, define and redefine my Self based on the changing nature of life, and be fully human in the process. The people that inspire me and that I respect the most are the ones that share their humanity - not the perfectly curated facade, but the messy realness of it all. My life has been been one of stumbling and fumbling my way forward, forgetting and remembering, and somehow always coming through to the other side with a bit more appreciation for life.

The embodiment of truth and wisdom isn't one size fits all. We can do it in our own way. There are no pedestals. Inner authority is truth - the way forward is truly knowing oneself. Oneself as an extension of life - in order to know life, I choose to start with my Self. Oh how I wish I could be just spirit, but I am so very human - seemingly flawed but really just evolving - one step forward at a time, sometimes 5 steps back, but deeply committed to the journey regardless. I am undoubtedly spirit but I am also undeniably human and I give my Self full permission to be both. I'm definitely no "guru" and thank goodness. But what a sweet relief to realize that I don't even believe in gurus...that is, unless we all are.

Here's to the messiness and amazingness of being fully human!

Love you all.

Thanks for reading,

Bree

RECOMMENDATIONS

Read

"Until we get to the roof of the causes of our inner suffering, which are the foundational patterns put in the place in the earliest days of our lives, and mourn the situations that caused us to internalize them, the personal development or spiritual work we do can only reach a superficial level at best."

Discovering the Inner Mother by Bethany Webster

Listen

I'm honored to have been studying with Erin for about 5 years now. Grateful to call her one of my teachers. Here is a short talk she did on the relationship with Self recently.

I've also been in a shedding & redefining phase of what I want out of relationships (friends, partnerships, and otherwise) to be more intentional & conscious moving forward. If this resonates, I found this talk very useful. Convo starts at about about 12mins in if you want to skip the intro fluff.