NicolePresents: Wellness

Our Dualistic Nature: A Journey to Finding Balance and Spirit
Written Dec 29 2010 (before my trip to Peru Jan 2011)

I’ve been living a life guided by the extreme nature of dualities on a journey to finding balance. Through it all, I have found my spirit and my center.

I started thinking about dualities when I had a conversation with a friend that mentioned a tattoo that he wanted with the symbols of Fire and Water, to him the concept of the dualistic nature of life, a structure of opposites. I began to recognize that my old worn tattoo from the age of 17 was a symbol of opposites as well, a Ying Yang comprised of two dolphins. This symbol in its whole represents peace and balance, something I guess I have been searching for my entire life.

As a kid I played the role of the intelligent, straight A, “goodie two shoes” student, trying to be perfect to gain the attention and admiration of my parents. In adolescence, I swung in the opposite direction on the pendulum – stealing cigarettes, drinking, partying and hanging out with boys, trying to fit in and not caring at all about what my parents thought.

Throughout college, I tried to balance the two but found myself still wanting to party more than study, but this is when I got my tattoo, probably a sign to myself to start to find this path of balance. After college, I moved to NYC and entered the workforce. I realized that I was a spoiled brat and how ungracious I was to my parents who had supported me all those years. I began to value the efforts my parents made to raise me. I decided to push the pendulum back in the other direction and get extreme to prove my worth. I worked hard. Working well over 60 hours a week or more trying to prove to my parents that I was a good kid and could be totally productive like I used to be. When my mom would say that I was working too hard, I would smile honorably. I would work, volunteer, take classes at night and do anything I could to work even more.

Around ‘99, I was tired! I was in physical pain all the time. My back hurt, my body ached. I felt restless and depressed. I saw a program on Oprah that talked of the mid-life crisis happening at a quarter century (25 – 30 years of age). This resonated with me. I had realized that I was going through this quarter century identity crisis. Was this my life or a life I’m living for my parents? What happened to my dreams of art school? How did I end up at Georgetown business school? Did I go there to please my father?

Knowing what I know now, all that pain and depression was a physical and emotional manifestation of the unhappiness that resided within. I was not honoring my desires and creating my own life. I was devoid of spirituality and direction. I was living a life completely out of balance.

I went extreme once again. This time at least I went to a healthy extreme for a little while! I quit drinking and partying and moved to exercise, supplements and Yoga. I also quit the whole advertising industry that I had been working in for 5 years and switched to the creative arts of acting, art, film and music. I was going to try everything I didn’t get to do while I was trying to please my parents. I used all of my savings to take graphic design classes, acting classes at ACT in SF, music production classes at Expression Center for New Media, join bands and acted in commercials, films and plays. It was definitely an extreme move.

Then two unexpected shifts happened in 2001. First, after being super excited to be accepted as the lead role in a play, I had to cancel my performance after the first show due to the death of my father. Second, that fall, the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11th. That year played a significant role in many people’s lives. A major transformational energy shift happened for me. I realized the value of human life and how precious our time on this Earth is. I set foot on a journey of discovery of personal freedom and spirituality that has not stopped since. I wanted to find a sense of purpose, my dharma, and my path in life. I wanted to help human kind, not just myself.

I had a great energy in this journey. I felt like Jim Carrey in “Yes Man”. I said a big resounding “yes” to everything. I decided to travel and explore this world again. I had done a lot of traveling growing up, but hadn’t taken a trip since my graduation present to Europe in ‘94. It was time to set out on my own and discover so I left for four months to Nepal and Southeast Asia in 2002. I wanted to find that balance that I had been searching for my whole life. I went to Nepal to teach English to kids through a volunteer program for 6 weeks and taught the local villagers Yoga. It was an eye opening experience. There was so much poverty, yet such a happiness and brightness in people’s eyes. It was their strong sense of spirit that drove their lives with this light. I was in awe of the beauty around me in people and in the environment. I was in love with all their holidays and Deities. In Thailand it was the monks, monasteries and temples. I was definitely finding a peace and a balance in this Spirit life that I was being exposed to that I hadn’t discovered before.

Upon my return from this epic experience, I wanted to give back with this new found love of people. I offered my marketing experience to Room to Read, a volunteer organization that does amazing educational work in Nepal. I decided to throw a music event at a local bar that a friend owned from work. We fundraised over $12,000 to build a computer lab in Nepal and dedicated it to my father. This was one of the biggest and brightest moments of my life.

This amazing turn of events and a new relationship to a DJ is what led me to event and party planning, which is what I have done for the last 7 years of my life. I am really great at planning events – it’s about people and having fun. Once again, I started to have just about too much fun (if that’s possible) and lost sight of myself in the process. In my excitement and energy of giving back and socializing, the pendulum started swinging again in the other direction. I said “yes” to everything that was in front of me. I lost sight of conscious choice and creation. I began to drink at every function, using drugs to stay awake, sleeping less, and barely doing my yoga practice. I was playing with this dualistic nature of light and dark and sadness and joy. I would go from extreme highs to extreme lows. One minute dancing at 4am with a huge smile on my face to the next morning crying uncontrollably in my pillow.

Luckily, 2007 was around the corner. Another major transformational shift occurred for me. My apartment burned down. I know now that we create everything in our lives and that everything happens for a reason. I think me and my whole groups of friends were asking for a way out of the madness and extremes that we had created. We weren’t accomplishing what we wanted; we were stuck in party mode, albeit we created amazing relationships and friendships, but we were self-destructive and way out of balance. I had been spending so much of my time trying to create value and fun for other people that I had lost myself again. I realized once again that I needed to seek balance.

This same year I was blessed to meet the man of my dreams, my partner, Rick. We had a year run of pure celebration, although during that time I started seeking the balance by starting up my Yoga practice again and shedding the really bad party habits.

Over the last several years, I’ve really teetered back and forth on this delicate line that we define as the center. As my Yoga, meditation and spiritual practices have grown my consciousness has grown. Yoga has been my rock, my neutral, for the past 4 years. Yoga has shown me parts of myself that I didn’t know existed – my ever-changing nature, emotions, subtle energy bodies, ethical codes, habits, mind, body and spirit. It gave me the ability to have self-compassion, more love and more balance. It gave me an outlet for my energy and an ability to help others in a very healthy way. I really owe everything to Yoga.

As the saying goes, history repeats itself, so I have no doubt that there will be more shifts for me. It is amazing when I look back to see the patterns that played out because I didn’t have a strong sense of self- identity, self-love and spirit. However, with each shift, more wisdom has come through and the extremes of the dualities have dampened. As I have found spirit and myself in the process, I have been able to manage dualities with more grace and ease. In fact, in this dimension, I’m beginning to accept dualities as friends and find a peace and oneness and balance within them.

In the Yoga Sutras of Pantanjali Sutra II.48 states, “Once the balance between opposites is achieved, thereafter one is undisturbed by the dualities.” Furthermore, “when you allow opposites to co-exist, rather than let one or the other end of the spectrum dominate the ultimate reward is the composure and equanimity that brings so many people to yoga.” This is one of my mantras – to achieve balance and to be undisturbed by dualities.

I’m really looking forward to understanding more about consciousness. I have been preparing myself for the last several years for the global shift in consciousness. I have a fascination with 2012 and what it represents for the planet and humankind. I know there will be a change of epic proportions and I want to be prepared. In looking at the concepts of light and dark I want to be a guardian of light since we have been in the dark for so long.

I turn 40 in 2012. Wow, I had actually never thought of that until now. It’s a shift on so many levels. I feel that I am at a point in my life where its time to take all of my experience, perspective, life lessons and intellect and take action for the greater good, while not losing myself in the process. I finally feel for the first time in my life that I can achieve this balance, as I have my center. I know and understand through trial and error that balance is one of the keys to a happy existence.

I am hearing a major calling to help heal the planet and raise our consciousness.. I am so incredibly thankful to have experienced the light and the dark and the ever-changing and extreme nature of dualities. I feel like I can stand on the line of neutrality in a warrior pose!

It is with this mindset that I take my journey to the Amazon on 1/1/11 for three months working with indigenous cultures and shaman healing in Peru to gain some additional spiritual perspective and to ground my spirituality in my daily life. I want to create a portrait of the Divine Feminine Goddess that I know I am and ensure that these next 40 years of my life are powerful and filled with the Love and service to humanity and the planet! I’ll let you know how it all goes when I return!

I wish you many blessings of balance and happiness on your journey in life.

Namaste.

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