What does stability mean to you?

Most of us equate money with stability. Do you?

I’m working now to uncover unconscious and limiting beliefs. The mind is a tricky bugger, and life often shows us what we get to heal through our circumstances. I was specifically working through money and emotions when I was challenged by a trusted advisor to look at my relationship with money and stability.

She observed my behavior in a difficult personal situation and said, “You seem stable to me. That has nothing to do with money. I wonder what would happen if you disconnected stability and money in your mind?”

And so I’m now living in that wonder…

But more interesting than that is the fact that I am emotionally stable. If you’ve ever been through trauma, you know that it rocks your world. I felt insane for years. I struggled to understand my feelings and moods. I believed people when they labeled my feelings as “too much” or “too little.” In fact, I took those labels to heart and though I was “too much” or “too little.” But that’s another story for another day.

After that conversation I started thinking about what stability means to me. Is it being stoic in the face of tragedy? Is it being “appropriate” with my responses? Is it having a narrow range because “spiritual people” are always calm and collected? None of those really work for me. Here’s what I decided (after all, nothing has meaning but the meaning you give it):

Stability is about being able to be with myself in all my emotions, to self-soothe and self-regulate, to handle myself with grace, and to honor and accept where I am as I am real with others. Stability is about being with the totality of experience, choosing my responses, and staying rooted in the present. It’s about being true to who I am and how I want to be.

I struggle still with sexual trauma’s effects. I find myself doing presence exercises when the sensations surrounding physical intimacy become too much for me. I haven’t integrated these memories yet. And that’s OK. That doesn’t make me unstable; it makes me human. My wounds don’t make me unstable; my inability to deal with them does. The capacity to handle life’s hurts has been built over time and with practice. Yoga, meditation, and breath work have all helped me tremendously. And those practices have led me to other healers and other healing modalities when I needed them.

Stability, my loves, is GOD. It’s the connection to the truth of who you are. It’s the rooting of your human experience into your soul. It’s choosing to act from the Higher Self - and when you don’t, forgiving yourself and practicing some more. There’s always another chance to bring God or Spirit or Soul to the party.

What do you connect with stability? And if you shifted your definition of stability to be more aligned with your Soul, what might open up for you?