8 years ago, in the midst of a meaning crisis, I had a major epiphany. I had been living in a state of constant questioning. After being a dancer for 8 years, spending several years with a teacher, traveling Europe to give workshops, and immersing myself in a movement practice I had seen as my second profession next to dancing, all of these things suddenly came into question.
My body had been in pain after several injuries, and I had lost the want to be on stage.
The relationships I had built were not stable, nor were my jobs.
And I started wondering if I would stay a dancer, and if not, who I was?
What was my life about? Was it about anything? WTF is life? Is there any meaning to it?
I started looking for answers, but none of them satisfied me. I could find holes in every explanation. This drove me deeper into the crisis I was in.
Months went by, and I grew increasingly dissatisfied with life; everything seemed empty to me.
Until a night out with friends, in the middle of a conversation, I had a moment that completely shifted how I related to these questions.
I had been living as the conversation in my head (aka thinking to myself), and I had been identified with every feeling traveling through my body.
Yet what I experienced in this moment opened another possibility for me to be.
In one moment, I was the conversation I had; in the next, I saw the conversation I had. It was as if I stepped out of myself, or who I thought myself to be, to realize that who I was was not disturbed by the chatter I had identified with.
In this moment, several things became clear at once. I was not living in the world; I was living in my interpretation of the world; I was living in my conversation about the world, and I saw how, given the conversation I had been having, I could not have "felt" any different from how I was feeling.
The other thing that became clear was that I could start thinking different thoughts, and that the only thing keeping me from doing it was believing the thoughts I had.
I realized that I was the ultimate authority in my world, and that I was the one giving meaning to all and all. Without my giving you authority, you had none over me. Without saying "this is the purpose of my life," whatever this was wasn't.
I realized that I was living in a world of my own making to an extent I had never considered possible, and that, from now on, I had a choice.
The choice to identify with a thought, create that experience, or let it üass by and wait for another.
And I realized that if I was my ultimate authority, then you are yours.