The Freedom of Being True to Yourself

Sorry, I just put my hands in the soil a bit and now I've got dirty nails. I needed to feel the soil a bit to just remind me of nature that never performs and just ground myself. I've learned to trust the life that's inside of me and I can hear my own voice more and more. Sometimes it's a bit scary because you wonder, am I hearing right? Am I is this my gut? Is this my mind? It sometimes gets a bit confusing because it's a new path for me to learn to hear myself. I definitely have different sort of parts. It sounds a bit schizophrenic but it's not. I'll tell you about octopus. Octopus is sort of my ego. I was at a family gathering and when I went home I thought for myself, oh my goodness, I went into my default again. People-pleasing, over-explaining something. I was so mad at myself and I went to bed with a struggle in me. But how am I ever going to overcome this whole people-pleasing thing? How am I going to change even? So that morning when I woke up, I woke up with this picture in my mind of this cute little octopus on my head. And I suddenly realised, hello, this is octopus. It's my ego. Octopus is not bad. Octopus is very cute and people-pleasing and nice but I don't need octopus anymore because I want to be my authentic self. I don't need to please and run around and do everything for everybody and say yes all the time. Every now and then when I realise, oh octopus, you're busy running around again and I'll sort of come, octopus, I'm going to just make you fall asleep. So that octopus can sort of forget to perform. I think it's easier to get to know yourself better and to just be your authentic self when you get older. It's painful. It's painful to learn to lay down, put aside your old habits, make new boundaries that you never knew how to make a boundary. Now you have to say no in the face of somebody that you would normally cringe and say yes and you don't feel a yes inside. My friend wrote this beautiful poem about saying no but out of your whole being let it roar like no and that was always something that was very difficult for me to do. I had the other default to say yes thinking that would protect me but I realise now if I don't honour the no that's inside of me then I'm not authentic, then I'm not really myself and then I'm not loving myself. But also it comes at a cost, the cost of sometimes losing friends or people not thinking oh but she changed, she's not that likeable person anymore because she doesn't run around and do everything for everybody anymore. I really lost myself to such an extent that I'll explain it as a little flame that was still a little flame that was still burning there and when I realised I've been living my life thinking it was the real me but meantime it was this ego that I, you know, this persona that was formed through my life to to handle certain situations and to protect me. It's actually scripture in the bible about looking at the little flame until the morning, oh I'm gonna cry, looking at the flame like a candle until the morning star rises in your heart it's like a stirring in my inside. I can live my authentic life inside and the more I discover my beautiful authentic self that I think every person is made beautiful the more I can appreciate myself and love myself and the more I love myself I know the more I love other people and it's real. Nature is just unpretentious. She doesn't put up a show, she doesn't perform. Sometimes it's hot and dry and it looks a bit dead. It's still the same life that's in there and then she comes and she and the sun shines again and it's the same, just the same. It's the same life that flows through us. It's a sort of a unity of life and to recognise the life that's in in the plants and in myself that's connected and nature is just to be out in nature has got a new meaning for me. All the preconceived ideas we have about ourselves, about other people, all the judgments, all the the performance, everything I could just breathe it out or even the hardships, breathing out those worries and those burdens and those or all those things just When I'm in nature I don't, I don't have to perform. You can just feel the oneness of yourself with all of life without performing. It's a poem from Thich Nhat Hanh. Call me by my true names it's called. It makes me cry even if I think of it. I think it's also something I want to live, I want to live this right to the end of my life. Call me by my true names. Don't say that I will depart tomorrow even today I am still arriving. Look deeply every second I am arriving to be a bud on a spring branch to be a tiny bird with still fragile wings learning to sing in my new nest. I still arrive in order to laugh and to cry to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive. I am the child in Uganda all skin and bones and I am the arms merchant selling deadly weapons to Uganda. I'm the 12 year old girl refugee on a small boat who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate. I'm the sea pirate my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving. My pain is like a river of tears so so full it fills the four oceans. Please call me by my true names so I can hear all my cries and laughs at once so I can see that my joy and pain are one. Please call me by my true names so I can wake up and so the door of my heart can be left open the door of compassion. Nobody is born thinking I'm gonna be horrible and evil. Trauma is in all people's lives in the pirate and in the little girl. This poem doesn't justify injustice but to understand both parts to understand the traumas but to have compassion to recognize the same life in each other. We are all one and I want to learn that. My mother was a very good mother she did everything that we as her children could have what we needed to have. We were not very rich but she was she worked very very hard she worked hard. After my father passed away I felt it that was something I felt in my gut that I knew that I knew I have to move back and come stay close to her. So I fed her almost every day and then we normally go for a walk in the afternoon. To see a body of change and becoming more frail and more vulnerable I think that's an absolute honor to see her change like that and to you know getting older and older. My mom is becoming like a child again so we have to keep adapting and our love needs to grow because I need to love another part of her that I've never seen. The moments have changed from conversations to in a way for me just recognizing the life of my mother and the life that's still inside of her. When I feel her hands it's very special for me when I can just um it's it's one thing I miss of my father is his hands you know. So when I take my mom's hand and I just feel it's such soft skin and I really I realize what those hands have done and she will often say oh it's really not pretty hands. Leela Kahanda you know and I say no don't say that because those hands have as a child you know what your mother's hands have done for you. I can easily be in a hurry but I think I should every day just be quiet with her. As I take time with myself to see myself to recognize my authentic self I want to recognize her authentic self and just to make her feel without words without things to just see in her eyes that she knows what I feel and that I appreciate her. It's the life inside the life behind the eyes. I want to just look into her eyes every day and communicate from my spirit to her spirit through our eyes what I see you know and that I love her. Thanks for watching our film. 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