Today I want to take you through an essential exercise in self awareness and intimacy.
I want you to get comfortable somewhere that makes you happy, and I want you to have a mirror or computer or phone in front of you; some way to be able to see yourself.
When you work through this exercise, I want you to focus on self-love and self-inquiry. I want you to consider this as taking a break. Perhaps even light a candle near you because you’re going to be in an intimate conversation with yourself. And I really want you to honor that. It’s like going on a date, only you’re going on a date with your spirit. The reason why I’m positioning it like this is I want you to be so focused on yourself because we don’t do this often enough. Every week I say to you, “Go in your closet and play. Make sure that you pull everything out and make sure that you’re having fun.” This week, I want you to make sure that you pay attention to YOU. And I know that I’m always asking you to do that, but this is asking you to do it in a different way.
Today we are going to focus on what it is that you see in the mirror or camera lens.
You can see where your curves are. You can see where life has given you the gift of presence and imprints from smiling. Notice your freckles and your eyebrows: Are they curved? Are they straight? What’s happening to your jawline? I want you to “braille” yourself with open eyes. What does that mean? It means I want you to notice, not just with your eyes, notice with your own touch. Notice, with the feeling and the sensation of your own hands, your own face.
Imagine this: You’re standing with your eyes closed and there are five people in front of you. One of them is actually you. You’re asked to reach your hands out and identify these people solely by touching their faces. Would you recognize yourself?
So with this imaginary scenario in mind, I want you to move your fingers along and around your own face, noting the details. Now imagine you had to pick out your lover or your children solely by touching their faces. Would you be able to braille their faces and say: This is my lover. Would you know every little detail, every scar? Would you know what their ears feel like? Would you know what the base of their chin feels like? Would you know that they have a little tiny mole along their jawline?
So why is this concept so important?
Every piece of knowledge and wisdom about your own body and about someone else’s body and their life is part and parcel of mindfulness. So the more you are present with yourself, with the person in the conversation, you are able to contextualize whatever is there. So much of our lives is about noticing. Before my hair went completely silver I used to look at myself and say, “Wow! There’s a little black hair there. Everything else is silver. Look at that. Oh, but there’s some black in there. There’s some black growing right here out of the middle of my head. There’s black streaks in the back and everything in the front is silver. The whites of my eyes are like the silver in my hair. I have moles. I have little sun blotches. I have…”
So I want you to be with, and make love to, what’s there in the mirror or camera. I want you to become intimate. Intimacy is “into-me-you-see.” You become intimate with you, with the blessings of you. So much so that through intimacy, you gain a certain reverence and an honoring for this beautiful MASTERPIECE that your spirit gets to live in. And then, once all of your proportions are okay and you can see them and feel them and touch them and smell them and taste them, you can go to the next exercise, which we’re not going to do today, but I’m just going to give you a little bit of a teaser. You can start putting on earrings and start noticing what happens to you when you start with the beautiful face that you have; your nose and eyes and ears and cheeks…What happens when you put on jewelry? Which style or color or shape looks best and why?
So for now, I’m just going to tell you how much I love you and how grateful I am that you’re in my life.
And I want to remind you to go play in your closet. Play, play, play! Clothes are supposed to be fun, like Jennifer Waller says, “Fun, have fun.” I love you, and I’m so grateful that you’re in my life and in my tribe and I’m here for you. If you have questions, keep in touch with us. Have a great week. Go out and make your MASTERPIECE be more brilliant.
In love and S.T.Y.L.E.,
P.S. I think you would enjoy watching a video of this blog post. Click the link below and enjoy!
