Congruence. Not a word I used to use very often or really even knew. But I have learned over the last couple of years that this is perhaps one of the most important terms in living the life we want.
I remember the first time I used the word ‘congruence’ in writing something. It just flowed out of me and I had to Google the word to check I had used it correctly because it wasn’t something I could ever recall saying before. I did have it correct in its meaning, which is to be in agreement or harmony. And I had used it in the correct context, which was whether my heart, mind and body were congruent with the direction I was intending to take in my life. I think in that instance, as it turned out, I wasn’t but what was most striking for me was that this word was thrown out of me and the importance of it on my life introduced to me for the first time.
I learned then that, in order to fully realise our dreams, we have to be congruent with the plan/goal/action we are considering taking. Otherwise, frankly, what we are about to do will not be a wholehearted success. If our mind is not congruent with our focus of attention, then that pesky internal negative chatter will essentially talk us into if not failure, then certainly not stunning success. If our heart is not congruent then we will spend a lot of time ‘doing’ rather than ‘being’ and any inspired actions will not come forth. Meaning that we might eke out a win but it will be difficult, hard fought, and with an outcome that doesn’t really fulfil us. And where does our body sit in all of this? Well, it feels the uneasiness of the lack of congruence. It doesn’t feel the requisite excitement or happiness at what we are doing, it just churns into a knot of anxiety which confirms to our mind and our heart that this isn’t something we’re fully on board with. This, in turn, affects the energy we put into whatever it is we are proposing to do and therefore the eventual outcome. It is much easier in life to pursue where we want to go if we are congruent. But how do we do that? How do we know?
I had not ignored the point about congruence, but I was certainly pushing forward in some areas of my life where I wasn’t congruent with either the direction or how I was going about things. Then I dreamt one night that I was standing by a beautiful stream. I could hear the water as it moved down a rocky mountain, I could feel the sun beating down on me in a pleasant way and the whole environment was happy and peaceful. Until I saw a boulder in the stream a bit further down. It was stopping the happy flow of water to the point where while some trickled around the outside of it, for the most part the water was halted. It was backed up and couldn’t move. Over time, it may have worn the boulder down but it would never move it completely out of the way and downstream was becoming dangerously arid. In my dream, my (deceased) brother was standing to the side of the boulder and told me in his ‘I have to school my little sister again’ way that this was obviously an allegory and it was of my life. That I had to remove the boulder in order for my life to move forward. I understood that, the problem was I didn’t know what the boulder actually represented. This is the tricky thing when you get allegorical messages I find. They make sense but only up to a point. The rest you have to figure out for yourself and it isn’t always easy. Eventually I figured out that I wasn’t completely congruent with fundamental aspects of my life.
I realised that while my soul knew everything in my life was going to work out well for me, my mind did not believe it. It was very firmly stuck in the 3D ‘I can’t see any evidence of that through my five senses, therefore it cannot be true’. And my body was responding to my mind’s lack of belief and the stress that lack was introducing. I was stuck in a negative cycle of internal chatter, so I wasn’t hearing any other messages, and I was stuck in fight, flight or freeze mode with all the sensations of stress and anxiety in the body that brings. In essence, my mind was the boulder. I realised that if I could remove the boulder by shifting the negative chatter into something positive to the point where my mind, body and soul were aligned in the knowledge that all was going to be well, then I would allow all the things I wanted into my life. And more. As if to reinforce the mind/body/soul connection, just before I had this epiphany, I was listening to an audiobook when I got a very insistent sense to turn the book OFF. My ego mind didn’t want to, so I continued listening for a while longer. Then, I got a sense of despondency to the point where the book just started to annoy me, so I switched it off. Then I received the download that spirit was insistently trying to send me.
Another example of when I was incongruent with myself was last summer when I was applying for a particular job. I remember my mind was completely on board with the process, I could see all the ways in which I could bring my skills and experience to the role, and all the things I could do to deliver for the employer. My soul, however, was screaming at me not to do it and my body was reacting to that. Whenever I spoke about it, I could feel something inside me shrivel up and recoil. I would physically feel incredibly uncomfortable until an anxiety would grip me, and I would have to stop talking about it. But, I carried on with the application regardless and though I came very close to getting it, ultimately I did not get offered the job. In the final interview, I could feel my internal resistance rear up again, and I know this impacted how I answered some of the questions. I had started off in a really strong flow then seemed, according to the feedback, to ‘run out of steam’. I couldn’t tell the headhunter that that was because my soul fundamentally knew it was the wrong job for me, and my body joined in on the campaign while my mind was frantically trying to sustain the same levels of engagement and passion in the process, though it was the truth. With hindsight, I have noticed that this has happened a few times to me in job interviews, usually with a 50/50 win/lose ratio of the jobs concerned. I remember being successful in a recruitment process for a job on the other side of the country, and while the pay was good, the location was beautiful, and the job itself good I just could not bring myself to take the job. I had said to myself in the recruitment process that I would see how I felt when I got to the city where the job was based for the interview, and at that point I hadn’t felt comfortable. Really, I should have withdrawn from the whole process but this was at a time in my life when I hadn’t begun my spiritual journey, so I didn’t really listen to what I was trying to tell myself. One thing that is always true, though, when I have a visceral reaction like this is that in the long-term it is very clearly the right thing that I didn’t get or take the role.
Now I know, when something doesn’t feel right, to check in with my body, to figure out how it is feeling, what’s going on. I check in with my internal chatter a lot more intently than I do normally to hear what it is saying. And I check in with my soul through meditation and ask the question. I have found since doing that, that if my soul isn’t congruent, there’s not much I can do to change it because invariably, it isn’t wrong. My body tends to follow my soul’s viewpoint unless my mind chatter is very loud and insistent. So, if my mind isn’t congruent, I know to dig deeper and identify if this is because of limiting beliefs holding me back (usually), so I can start a process of shifting that particular limiting belief, accepting that they’re like whack-a-mole, which will bring my body on board too.
I have been on a journey of shifting the internal negative chatter and moving that knot of anxiety away from me. It’s reinforced to me in meditation where I am told to love myself more, to stop being so hard on myself which is part of that negativity. To accept that perfection isn’t achievable because it doesn’t exist, including my own version of perfect. That I should take the time to rest and heal from past wounds that are at the heart of my negative chatter, but also to accept that keep going back there to pinpoint the exact time the limiting belief was created is not helpful. And to focus on what I truly want, being really specific about what that is.
When I feel that internal negative chatter I take deep breaths to calm my nervous system down. I repeat the mantra of affirmations that I have created to help shift how my mind is thinking, focusing on the positive visualisation of what I do want in my life and the emotions that elicits. I have also visualised picking that boulder up out of the stream and seeing the water flow freely and abundantly…and then crushing the boulder into dust in my arms.
I accept that this is a process, that it won’t happen overnight, but I am feeling the internal shift more and more. It’s an incremental process to the extent that I didn’t think at first that anything was really happening. But I persevered with it, and I started to notice huge shifts in myself. It’s no exaggeration to say that my mindset has now shifted significantly, that I see life in ways I never have before. That I see myself in ways I never have before, ways which mean I am learning to understand and accept who I really am. And love who I really am, not the person I am expected to be.
And now, finally, I am more and more congruent with myself.
Louisa Simpson 