Episode 81
Have you ever had an experience that opened up a whole new way of seeing something…
Only to discover that, somewhere along the way, that new understanding had become another way of limiting what you could experience?
I had something like this happen with two trees. And it reminded me that moving beyond labels isn't necessarily about finding a more expansive way to define something.
It might actually be about remaining open to discovering what we haven't seen yet.
So, if you're ready to join me for what happened after I recorded last week's episode, and explore how this might be impacting you, too, then pull up a comfy chair, invite in your soul, and be open to receive exactly what you need to live, be, and thrive as the embodied soul you are.
So, let me explain. After recording the first Beyond Labels episode last week, I went back to connect with two trees I'd connected with before.
And as I had shared, these two trees had each seemed to have their own particular way of expressing themselves to me.
With one, I would experience this really strong vibration around my heart centre.
And with the other, it was more like these threads of light coming out from the tree and interacting..
Now, these were the ways I'd come to recognize my connection with each of them.
So, after I recorded the last episode and shared it with you all, when I went back, I was expecting to experience those same things again.
Except… I didn't.
I didn’t feel that strong heart-centre vibration in the way I had before. And I wasn't experiencing those threads of light, either.
Now, I could still feel energy moving around and through my body, but the experience itself was different. And I found myself questioning….
What’s going on here?
Am I still connecting with them?
Where’d they go?
And what I sensed in response to my questions was almost this laughter, as if they were asking me, Why do you think it's different?
And then as I allowed that question into my consciousness, I started to receive an answer.
Because here I was, exploring what it means to move beyond labels and the limitations they can create…and without even realizing it, I'd done something very similar.
I'd experienced something new. I'd found a way to describe it to you. And then, without consciously deciding to do so, I'd began to expect that experience to happen in that same way again and again.
I'd come to recognize one tree through that particular sensation, and the other through those threads of light. And although those experiences had been meaningful to me, had helped me understand and know my connection with them beyond how I’d known them before, I realized I had inadvertently turned the way I'd experienced them into a definition of how I expected them to be.
I had taken something that had opened up my perception… and then, in a way, narrowed it again.
Because what if those particular sensations were simply ways I'd experienced our connection in those moments?
What if they weren't the entirety of what could be experienced?
And what if the next time could be different?
Not because something had gone wrong. Not because the connection wasn't there. But because I was meeting that experience in a different moment, and perhaps there was something else to notice.
And that was such a wonderful reminder for me.
We can honour what an experience has taught us without requiring every future experience to confirm what we learned.
We can allow an experience to be what it was, without needing it to always be that same way.
And I started to think about how often we do this.
Not just with trees, or rocks, or the natural world around us like we’ve been practicing, but with ourselves. And with one another.
Think about the people in your life.
Our family, our friends, the people we've known for years.
How often do we meet someone and, without even realizing it, we're meeting the version of them that we already know?
We have an idea of who they are. How they think. How they feel. How they're going to respond to something.
Perhaps we've known someone since childhood, and we still see them through the lens of who they were back then.
Or perhaps we've had a particular experience with someone, and that experience has shaped how we expect them to behave in the future. Good or bad.
And sometimes, we're relating to someone through an understanding that was formed years ago.
But the question becomes are we actually allowing them to show us who they are now?
Because just as we're changing, growing, learning, and discovering new things about ourselves, so are they.
Maybe not in the same way, or at the same pace, but they're having their own experiences, too. And of course I’m not saying that, every pattern disappears just because time has passed.
But each of us is having our own experiences. We're responding to life, learning things, and perhaps seeing things differently than we did before.
And what about the reverse? How many people are still relating to an older version of you?
Someone you no longer entirely recognize yourself as?
Perhaps they still see you as the person you were ten, twenty, or thirty years ago.
Perhaps you've changed in ways they haven't yet had the opportunity to see.
And maybe, just maybe, we could give one another a little more room.
Not forgetting what we've experienced together. Not pretending that patterns don't exist. And certainly not ignoring that …things that matter to our wellbeing or our boundaries.
But allowing the person in front of us to show us something new.
What might we discover if we weren't so busy deciding that we already knew who they are?
And this brings me to something else I've been thinking about around holding labels loosely.
When we meet someone for the first time, we don't immediately know their entire story, do we?
We say hello. We introduce ourselves. We get a first impression.
And then, as we meet again, perhaps we share a little more. We discover something about them that we didn't know before. We begin to understand them in a different way.
And the next time, we might discover something else. Our understanding grows through the experience of knowing them.
But what if we allowed that same openness to exist beyond those first few meetings?
What if, even after knowing someone for years, we could remain curious about the parts of them we haven't yet met?
Because knowing someone isn't necessarily the same as knowing everything about them.
And I think this is an important distinction when it comes to labels.
Holding something loosely doesn't mean you can't name it. It means the name doesn't have to be the end of your exploration.
We need language. We use words to communicate, to share our experiences, and to help us understand the world around us. There's nothing wrong with that.
The limitation comes when we begin to treat the words we use to describe something as though they tell us everything there is to know about it.
And sometimes, we don't even realize we've done that.
We simply stop looking.
We stop asking questions.
We stop being curious.
Because we think we already know.
So, I'd love to offer you three ways you might work with this idea.
Not as things you need to get right, and not as exercises where you have to produce a particular experience.
Think of them as little experiments in noticing.
EXPERIMENT ONE: Meet It Again for the First Time
If you've already tried connecting with trees, a plant, a rock, or something else in nature, like you were invited to in the last episode, you might like to return to it.
And if you haven't, this is a lovely place to begin.
Choose something that interests you, and spend a little time with it.
Perhaps you've already had an experience with it. Perhaps you've developed a particular way of relating to it, or a certain feeling you associate with it.
This time, see what happens if you set those expectations aside.
You don't need to forget what happened before. You don't need to tell yourself that the next experience has to be different.
Simply allow yourself to meet it again, without trying to reproduce what happened last time.
Notice what's there.
Perhaps an image or a thought comes to mind.
That's actually what happened for me. When I wasn't experiencing the vibration of the tree in the same way, and I was wondering why not, I was briefly given the image of the tree in my mind. And I then knew immediately that this new and different energy was that same tree, expressing in a new way.
But perhaps you notice something about the shape, colour, texture, or movement that you'd never really paid attention to before.
Or perhaps you don't notice anything in particular. That's okay, too.
The point isn't to make something happen.
It's to notice what happens when you're no longer trying to make the present moment match a previous one.
You might even ask yourself:
What am I noticing when I'm not trying to recreate what I experienced before? …When I release my expectation of what or how it should be?
And simply see what unfolds.
EXPERIMENT TWO: Catch Yourself in a Fixed Definition
This one doesn't require trees, rocks, or any kind of special setting. It can happen in the middle of an ordinary day.
Begin to notice the labels you use for yourself and other people.
Things like…
I'm not good at that.
She's always like that.
He never listens.
I'm just the kind of person who…
Or even:
I already know how this is going to go.
Now, sometimes these statements come from real experiences. We may have seen a pattern repeated many times, and it's important that we don't dismiss what we've observed.
But there's a difference between recognizing a pattern and deciding that the pattern tells us everything that’s possible.
So, when you catch yourself making one of these statements, try pausing for a moment.
You don't have to argue with yourself or replace the thought with something more positive.
Just ask:
Is this what I've experienced so far… or have I decided this is all there is to know?
For example, perhaps you've always thought of yourself as someone who isn't creative. You may have had years of experiences that reinforced that idea.
But does that mean there's no room for you to discover a different way of expressing yourself?
Or perhaps you think you know exactly how someone will respond to something you want to share.
Could you leave just a little room for the possibility that this moment might unfold differently than you think?
Again, we're not trying to force a different outcome.
We're simply noticing where we might have closed a door without realizing it.
EXPERIMENT THREE: Leave Room for the Next Moment
And this is one you can take into almost anything you do.
Whether you're going for a walk, having a conversation, spending time with someone you love, working on something creative, or simply going about your day.
Before you begin, or when you notice yourself slipping into a familiar expectation, ask yourself:
I wonder what I might notice here that I haven't noticed before?
I wonder what might be new in my day today, my experience, in this interaction, in this circumstance?
That's all.
You don't need to go looking for something extraordinary.
You don't need to find a hidden meaning or have some profound realization.
You're simply inviting yourself to pay attention.
And when we begin to wonder, when we bring our attention to something, we often begin noticing aspects of it that might otherwise have passed us by.
Perhaps it's a little change in someone's expression.
Perhaps you hear something in a conversation that you've never really taken in before.
Perhaps you notice a detail in your surroundings, or recognize a response in yourself that you hadn't been aware of.
Or perhaps you simply experience something familiar, in a familiar way.
Any of those possibilities is fine. The question isn't whether you can make something new happen.
It's whether you can allow yourself to be present to what is happening, rather than experiencing the whole thing through the conclusions you've already formed.
And you might be surprised by what you notice. Or you might not.
Either way, you're practicing something valuable: leaving room for the moment to be more than your expectations of it.
And I think that's really what this comes down to for me.
Moving beyond labels doesn't mean we have to stop naming things, or that we need to question absolutely everything we think we know.
It isn’t about throwing away our experience, or pretending that what we've learned doesn't matter.
It's about recognizing that what we've experienced, and the words we use to describe it, are part of our understanding.
They don’t have to be the entirety of it.
Because we can know something about a person without knowing everything about them.
We can have a meaningful experience without requiring it to happen in the exact same way again and again.
And we can recognize a pattern without deciding that nothing else is possible.
Perhaps the invitation is simply to remain curious.
To meet ourselves, one another, and the world around us with a little more curiosity and little more room for what we haven't yet discovered.
And if you've been experimenting with connecting with trees, rocks, or other aspects of nature since the first episode, I'd really love to hear about your experiences.
What have you noticed?
And equally, if you've tried one of these experiments in your everyday life, I'd love to hear what came up for you.
Not because there’s a right experience to have, but because sharing what we discover can open up new possibilities for one another, too.
And perhaps that's a beautiful place to leave this.
We can honour everything an experience has taught us, without making that experience the limit of what we can discover next.
Until next time, keep exploring. Keep noticing.
And perhaps, every now and then, allow yourself to meet something you think you already know with fresh eyes.
I look forward to seeing you again next week on Embodied Soul.
