For Christmas, I went to the Flinders Ranges to do some hiking in fan-forced, oven-like temperatures out in the wildness. I wanted to get closer to what life was calling me powerfully into for the coming year.
I knew the call was to dive into 2 things:
To somehow get out of all of my comfort zones I had held onto for years. Well, those that were left after the stripping back of 2020 (you all witnessed it happen for me).
To gain clarity about what my guiding themes and words would be for 2021.
So I packed my backpack, said a short prayer for safety and wellbeing out there, and walked into the outback to explore.
After five days of sweaty, dusty trekking, I found myself lying on a rock, under a river gum, in a dry river-bed, in the middle of nowhere, in 100-degree heat… When clarity washed through me. My word of the year was: trust.
Trust!
Of course. It is the only sensible and soulful response to the intensity of this calling to step up and out. Trust would be asked in every moment. This year, I would need to refine and explore trust, to cultivate more expertise in this state of being.
For trust is more than just an action; it is a state of “being.”
I feel like that’s what I’m being asked to do in so many ways in 2021: trust myself, life and spirit beyond anything ever before.
To trust this unique creature that I am and not be anything other than this liminal, edge-crossing unusual being! And to keep taking risks. To leap as this being and nothing else.
I’m good at trusting already, but it is not enough for the asks of 2021!
As part of building a new relationship with trust, I need to cultivate my capacity to trust until it is more efficient and more effortless.
Less questioning, less whispers and voicing of doubt. More leaning in without getting in the way.
2021 is asking me to become what I came here to be, fully and unapologetically.
This year I’m being asked to put my life and everything on the line — to put it all on the line and show up for it. And see what happens. No matter how scary.
This process has already started.
And crucially, in this process, I am being asked to trust that all of the roads of my life have led to this moment. Even the times when I felt not quite in the right spot, not quite in the right country, that this was still supportive.
Honoring everything that’s happened is part of what has contributed to this ability to play with life.
All of the mistakes, all of the good choices, all of the wins or loses, all of the sufferings… They all help. Including all of the times I felt completely off track.
Trusting that all of the tributaries of the river of my life have led to this, and trusting the timing of this, too. That all of the pain, suffering, and losses and wisdom-making from pain are why I am here at this juncture, with trust as my ally in 2021.
I must fully trust the circumstances of this life.
My sense is when we trust this deeply, we go into a state where we get to be free of the past. It’s a full leap into the future. It reminds me of the tarot card of the Fool.
Instead of a “trust fall,” it’s a trust leap.
By taking this leap, we let go of the constraining framework of “un-possibility” and open to what is truly possible. And meant to be.
In that moment of pure trust, I feel like I leap out of the constructs I’ve created from another more contracted level of awareness. In this new state of trust, everything is inflow. I/we are free from the influence of the past.
In this state, I/you are more in confluence of spirit and life. You are with the flow rather than being against the flow of your life.
I also honour how not trusting in my life has built discernment. The ongoing value of discerning what is trustworthy or not over the years now allows me to feel freer in my ability to flow with trust in 2021.
So, not trusting with awareness is also kind of a strange piece of the journey.
I’m realizing, also, that my trust could get more efficient.
It could get more immediate. I sometimes have all of these subtle delay strategies around trust.
They work like this: if I know that a true direction is there, I have these subtle ways of making the turning toward that direction slower. Maybe it’s to make me feel safe? But it takes up precious time. I stall, subtly, while still slowly moving toward the goal.
Instead, if I really tuned in more courageously, I could feel the rightness and just step straight into trust and keep right ongoing. Boom!
There is also a subtle holding back. There’s a part of me that knows that this big new direction in a moment is right, but then there’s a counterweight against it.
It’s like trust has a subtle quality of fear around it, but the fear feels old. Outdated. Protective rather than supportive.
To trust, in a way, is to take back.
When I am trusting in this way, I’m taking back my full authority. I reclaim more sovereignty.
To step into the purpose of my being in 2021, to create the spaces and experiences for more people to receive deep support along their journeys, I have to claim this new relationship with trust — and the full authority and freedom it grants me.
Because when we feel free, when we realize our precious sovereignty, that’s when we make MAGIC.
What is your word of the year?
What will inspire, uplift or remind you of your most central theme when life gets wild, flat or expansive?
What will keep you on your growing edges, falling in love with yourself or generating a revolution inside or beyond your being?
I will continue to share my reflections here on my blog and on Instagram as I muse and leap with trust into 2021. And I’ll report back to you from the air between leaping and finding new ground.
Thank you for sharing this journey with me.
Blessings to your awakening!
4 Comments
My theme this year is “Try, Try Again” as I have spent the last five years thinking I’ve cracked it only to find that not long after, something happens which knocks me down again and I feel weak and pathetic again. As my mother told me hundreds of times “you will amount to nothing!” It just comes back time and time again and I feel worthless.
I meditate every day, I see a psychologist regularly, I receive guidance and encouragement from my beautiful partner, my GP has been wonderful with me, I’ve seen two hypnotherapists, I have several customers who have the wisdom to help me and regularly sit down with me and try their best but yet I still return to square one regularly. Well I won’t give up, I’ll keep trying until I find peace.
Dearest Steph,
Thanks for your heart felt share and I love your phrase of the year. May we all rise to this. And rise again.
And may it transform the difficult and painful words and energy of your mother, so that they dissolve from your heart and being.
You are precious, and a gift and your resilience and courage amazes me as you move forward on your path. You lead beautifully.
With big love,
Myree x
I did an exercise earlier this year that revealed my word of 2021 as Peace. Inner peace and equanimity, which has always felt so near and native, but easily shrouded by the coarse textures and dramatic noise that I learned to tune into from an early age.
I so love how you foreground the sense of trust as a way of being. Attending to trust like this is how I began to feel lifted into a new destiny of transformation last year. Though I am early on this path, I resonate with what you say about stepping into trust as a way of reclaiming sovereignty. Letting go of the chords that attach us to familiar ground allows us to let go into our vision of what’s truly possible, and rebuild our sky from there, and then again. I especially love the image of reporting back ‘from the air between leaping and finding new ground’. I see you as a Sufi dancer, ribboning across the sky of starry possibility and showering your grateful community with the magic of your ways. Namaste rising star.
Dearest Shruti,
Than you for this exquisite sharing, I am so touched by this. And for sharing how trust has been a sacred wind that has uplifted your own beloved transformation.
Sending love across the oceans,
Myree