I was at a beach, the topaz blue waves gently lapping, when I happened to overhear a conversation between the two women next to me. “I’ve been so screwed up…something something… Mercury retrograde…something something…I just can’t figure things out,” said the younger woman, festive earrings dangling from her pretty but pinched face. Like a mantra, her energy said: I’m not okay. I’m not okay.
The next morning outside a coffee house, different people, similar conversation. “How are you?” asked a concerned looking friend of the waitress. “I’m really struggling…something something…having trouble adjusting.” The older person offered a healing or therapy session. There it is again, I thought. I’m not okay.
Lately I’d noticed how “I’m not okay” had been affecting me, which is probably why the energy of these particular people caught my attention. A visitor had come to town, someone I care about, and I observed how I felt in her presence. On paper everything was was beautiful, life was abundant. There was no emergency. So why was I feeling like there was? Because of the energy she emanated: things are not okay, creating a sort of energetic drama, a swirl of emotion and intensity surrounding mundane interactions.
I had noticed what was happening inside me. The moment I think someone is not okay, I’m buying into the story that they’re not, and then it’s easy to lose my center. When I believe someone is not okay, it activates concern, a sense of urgency in me, to help, to spin out in anxiety– which isn’t helpful to them, or to me.
So I had been working on a practice, grounding into “I’m okay.” Because I am okay, and so are you. Truly.
Here’s how to do “I’m okay”: ground, root, center and drop into your belly. Sit with whatever sensation you have, no matter how uncomfortable, without analyzing it. Now ask the question, Am I okay? And wait for the answer energetically. Don’t force it. Allow it to arise, from your Soul. (hint: there is one right answer, and if you’re receiving otherwise, it’s your mind talking). It’s subtle at first, and takes practice, but when I gently ask the question, a calm billowy energy arises and continues to expand. I try to sit with that a few minutes.
To be clear, feeling “not okay” is not the same as being not okay. 99.9% of the time when we tell our selves we’re not okay, it’s untrue. My husband recently got stuck in a coral reef nicknamed “the garden”, named such because surfers get stranded on their boards and the only way they can paddle out is by waiting for the tide to slowly push them out. Like being stuck on top of a garden. He told me about a stranded surfer, which is common, but it was serious this time. Friends yelled from a few hundred yards away, “are you okay?” He wasn’t. An ambulance was called, he needed stitches, his life was at risk. That’s “I’m not okay”.
Virgo season can amp up worry, anxiety, and habits of mentally analyzing things over and over in our minds. The mind is tricky. It is easy to convince our selves that someone else, or we, are not okay… and let fear have the driver seat. Yet if we want to be helpful toward others, and especially toward our self, we need to hold a larger perspective. To see our self and others as already whole and perfect is the most healing perspective we can hold. It is literally a decision that says: There is nothing wrong with them, even when they think there is. There is nothing wrong with us, even when we think there is!
Feel how that feels in your body. Feel the Yes!!! in this, the rightness of it, the faith in the perfection of life.
This is how we heal. This is how we move forward into uncertainty with ease and grace. This is how we really know and begin to trust, in our body, that there are no wrong decisions, no mistakes we can make, ever. We see our selves primarily as whole, first and foremost. Everything else is just life moving through us. Conditions that constantly change.
On an energetic level the moment I don’t think I’m okay, I’m not. The moment I decide I’m okay, I am. This is not an affirmation, not something you repeat to yourself in your head and feel disconnected from in your body. It is an energetic experience of one’s True Self, and faith in life’s ability to hold you through all of it…and that makes all the difference.
This is exactly what I’m realizing right now. It’s the essence of everything, in a way. Thank you so much for articulating it
Simple, but deeply profound philosophy. I’m going to use this with parenting my kids.
The moment I think someone is not okay, I’m buying into the story that they’re not, and then it’s easy to lose my center. Wow I do this, have done my whole life! Your words helpful as always Jessica. Thank you xx
So true and thank you.
Great article. Thanks!
Wow! Very wise piece! Thank you!