Courageous New Beginnings

When leaving it all isn’t the answer

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

The subject of quitting seemed to strike a chord for a lot of you, judging by the number of responses I received. Job dissatisfaction, relationship distress, the busy pace of modern life—so much isn’t working these days. Sometimes we’re not ready to throw in the towel completely though, and yet we can hardly bear staying stuck any longer. In these situations, it’s important to remember the other possibilities for change.

Here in Austin, we’ve been having intermittent storms come through. One day it’s sunny, and the birds are chirping; the next day, torrential rains are flooding the streets. On a neighborhood walk between storms last week, I marveled at the large branches scattered about the road. To look up at the healthy green canopy on a sunny day, it’s hard to imagine the trees carrying that extra weight for as long as they did. But they stood there tall and intact until nature’s momentum was strong enough to release their weaker limbs.

Counseling people over the years, I’ve heard a lot of stories, and I’ve seen how most of us struggle making decisions using the mind and the sheer force of willpower. Usually the options seem pretty dualistic, such as: should I stay, or should I go? Like the branches broken off in the storm, sometimes we can let go of the parts that are weakening, instead of uprooting everything. Examples are all around if you look for them. The parents who live separately but continue family traditions with their children together. The new mom who shifts from working full-time to being part-time and remote. The couple who lets go of monogamy and invites in other partners, while still loving, communicating, and respecting one another. Traditional structures are falling apart; they’re just not working for everyone anymore. What will survive the massive changes is what still has strength, vitality, and the ability to grow. When we embrace right timing to let go of the parts that no longer bear fruit, we may actually grow stronger once the storm passes. 

In this athletic, competitive culture, we’re taught well how to push through resistance, lean in to challenges, and manifest success. We don’t learn much about patience, adapting, and letting go. Most of us need some re-education, or better yet, de-education, in how to let nature take its course and remove what it will. When you know what’s not working, one way to respond is to grab a chainsaw and cut off that part of your life. Another way is to hold that grief with honesty and tenderness until, eventually, smaller breaks begin to occur. When the various unseen forces come together, the momentum will remove parts that aren’t serving their former purpose. Does any of this happen painlessly? No way! We need more love, not less, throughout the whole process, for the gentle light of compassion is the salve. 

Regardless of how it occurs, change happens by us, to us, and for us. It is the earth life we came here for. May you find courage through it all, and trust no matter what. 

Much love,

Julia Aziz

PS— Insight is easy, but how to actually live this stuff in the everyday is where the real work is. If you or someone you know is struggling with change, whether you need one-time or ongoing support, please reach out and ask. Or if you’d just like to stay in touch a bit more, sign up for my mailing list here.

Is it quitting time?

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

This past fall, I started a PhD at the California Institute of Integral Studies. The program in integral and transpersonal psychology seemed to encompass all the areas of mystical experience and spiritual and emotional healing that I’ve been studying on my own for the past 20 years. I could delve into intuitive self-healing, death and dying, traditional indigenous medicine (sometimes also called shamanism), and building compassionate communities all under one program. I went to the first weeklong residency and met the most fascinating people from all over the world. But in the course of that week, I realized that while I feel allied with the research they are doing, it is not what I am here to do. 

Have you ever needed to let go of something that didn’t feel right without knowing what would come to take its place? Often there’s a job or a relationship that needs to be released before you have enough emotional space for a new one to come along. As hard as you might try to make a smooth transition from one safe step to the next, it’s not always possible, and it’s not always what’s best for the soul. Quitting is a life skill. You have to be willing to face the uncomfortable truth, feel all kinds of emotions, and trust that something new will show up in the right time.

It took me about a week after that first intensive to drop out of the PhD program. I listened to this song every morning on my walk while I was still vacillating over what to do. When I stayed present to my experience and “followed the sun,” it was pretty obvious: fear kept saying to stay, but my intuition said to go. I didn’t yet know what the next step was; all I knew was what the next step wasn’t. I was definitely committed to a much deeper dive into my work as a healer and a teacher, but academic research was too removed for what I truly needed to embody and offer. A few weeks later, after daily emotional release and prayer, I happened to see a flyer for a program in traditional healing with an Apache medicine woman in town. When I first saw a picture of Marika Alvarado from Of the Earth Healing, I knew I had found the next step in my education. So while I may be the fastest PhD dropout ever, I am grateful to that experience for schooling me in how to let Life design my curriculum.  

Is there something that doesn’t feel right to you but you’re not sure what to do? Like the song says,

“So which way is the wind blowing,
and what does your heart say?”

I won’t pretend it’s easy. The process of leaving things can send you straight into heavy darkness. This is the birth canal that needs to be passed through. So I send you blessings for courage. May you trust your resilience and the miraculous ways that new paths open for you. And remember, if you need support, ask for it. Support is always there somewhere, and it’s here too. You don’t need to struggle alone.

All my love,

Julia Aziz

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Support for Change: Willpower and the Power of Being Willing

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I love the forward momentum of this time of year. People are making changes and trying new things, taking action on goals that have often been incubating for quite a while. I look around and see motivation and willpower. The new direction can even feel easy at first. We may wonder why it took so long to make these changes that clearly needed to happen. It feels empowering, right? 

The trouble is that willpower is like kindling in a fire: it can flare up fast and bright, but it won’t sustain the flame for long on its own. After an initial period of success with our best intentions, some kind of obstacle shows up. It can be an external obstacle, like a family emergency that throws everything off. Or the inner rebel busts through and says, “Hey, why do you have to be so “good” anyway? You don’t really need to be doing all this. You should back off, give yourself a break.” Wherever it comes from, something eventually challenges the will for its power. 

This is why, come February, all those new gym memberships start getting less use, diets are quit, and people start backsliding with exes. So how do we get out of this push forward/pull back dynamic? The whole process of purposeful change longs to be more gentle and natural, rather than aggressive and eventually running out of fuel. 

It has to do with respecting cycles and receiving support. We learn to balance the masculine energy of focus and action with the feminine energy of receptivity and going with the flow. Instead of relying on willpower, we learn to be willing. We can have less control yet be more in sync, and therefore more effective. 

Being proactive about support is key. When we surround ourselves with people and practices that encourage and strengthen us, we will be in much better condition when the obstacles show up. Whether we can meet in person or online, you are welcome to join me at one of our community events. I’m a big fan of doing inner work while in community. I also work with people individually and in the women’s group program. You’re welcome to look around on here!

May you be supported in the changes that serve the highest good within you, and may you find grace in the process as it unfolds.

All my love,

Julia Aziz

Here’s a few self-healing tools you can use on your own, anywhere, anytime 🙂

Feminine power

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

IMG_3882This photo was taken last spring when I performed with the Wandering Bindis bellydance troupe at a women’s heart health conference. I didn’t share it at the time because I was still stifled by the worn-out belief that a woman can’t be both feminine and professional.

A professional knows how to put everything else aside to be fully present for another. A professional knows how to stay calm and do what needs to be done in a crisis. A professional steps up, steps in, and competently uses the tools available. A woman can do all those things no matter what she is wearing or how she enjoys her free time.

Feminine power is not the female version of masculine power. It is strength in vulnerability, beauty in chaos, and stillness in change. Feminine power is fearlessly emotional, wild, creative, and loving, and it is a blazing fire when it encounters something no longer serving its purpose. It is accessible within all of us, regardless of gender.

I don’t need to pretend to be less or more or different than I am, and neither do you. We can be whole human beings, expressing all dimensions of ourselves. 

The paradigm is shifting, and it feels like an earthquake. I don’t want to live in a world where women dominate over men any more than I want to live in a world where men dominate over women, white people dominate over people of color, straight cisgender people dominate over everyone else, and so on. Let the current systems of external authority crumble. They haven’t been working for most of us for long enough. In the new vision, personal power serves the collective good. Lending a hand feels better than posturing, competing, or institutionalizing. We can do this when we do it together. LOVE is the greatest force ever known. 

–Julia Aziz

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Courage

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

A shift is underway. It is tumultuous, real, and necessary. A new authority figure is not going to tell us how to fix things or what to do. The leader is in you, and in me, and she rises like a phoenix out of these ashes. She is the whole that is much greater than the sum of her parts.

What can we do? We can stand up. We can speak from our hearts. We can do that hard thing we’ve been avoiding. We can step aside to let some new voices be heard, the voices of the ones who have stayed quiet, the ones who have been stepped on and marginalized for long enough. We can use what we have. We can be uncomfortable for the sake of listening.

We each have our own part to play in this shift. Only you know what your part is. That’s not for me or anyone else to tell you. But I know your part was made just for you, as mine was made for me. When we show up for ourselves, we show up for our community. We show up on behalf of a greater love. 

The time has come for us to know our own strength. Not the strength to take over, but the strength to do what we came here to do. The power has been there inside us all along.

The time has come to support our fellow humans who also work out of love, service, integrity, and truth. They falter sometimes too, and we can all use a hand up now and then.

I have faith in us. I hear stories every day of people who face their traumas and their fears. We surface with hearts scarred but open. We fall down, and we will get back up again. We have been brave, and we can be even braver together. Love is still here for us.

Reach for the light

Photo by Nacho Juárez

With love,

Julia Aziz

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The Blog begins…

/ Julia Aziz / Leave a comment

I’ve been letting loose into a creative whirlwind these past couple weeks, with five different journals full of project ideas. There’s one for dreams and random inspirations, one for program development, one for calendaring, one for essay writing, and one for stream-of-consciousness processing and poetry. Oh yeah, and there’s also the little notepad I keep in my purse in case an idea pops in when I’m talking to somebody.

I promise you right now, many of these ideas won’t make it off the page. I have come to terms with the reality that my mind enjoys creating AND my human body can only do so much in one lifetime. I have to respect the process of creativity. It starts with this free-for-all chaotic purge of ideas. It’s the madman step Betty Flowers talks about in a short article that guided me through my entire book-writing process. To begin something new, we have to purge all the ideas in whatever messy form they come out in. Structure comes later.

What has emerged out of this mess so far is a little whisper that has turned into a nudge and now a push.

“Start a blog,” it keeps saying.

I have resisted this idea for months, maybe even years. Now I’m saying yes. I’m choosing to follow inspiration where it leads, even if I don’t know the final destination.

Thank you for accompanying me on this ride, dear reader. I am wishing you too some real space and time to dream up your own dreams and the courage to let them come true.

writings

Thanks for reading along,

Julia Aziz

Even better than a blog post is receiving a reflection in your inbox, so you can read it when you’re ready. Sign up here for my mailing list and let’s stay in touch!