No, I’m Not Mixed (2018)
All of 2018 has been about discovering my wings and testing flight. I’ve acknowledged their existence, and I’ve been experimenting with soaring, but I haven’t quite mastered all of the technical aspects. In other words, 2018 for me has been my year of empowerment. Learning how to be empowered. My journey has taken me out of a problem-focused outlook and into a solution-oriented one. One where a victim mentality is reinvented into a mindset of love and compassion in order to heal myself, the potential others involved, and to effectively nurture others in a similar position or state of mind. I’ve discovered so much about myself as a light being, but while doing so, I recognized my disconnect from myself as a human being. Empowerment encompasses self-acceptance- love for what’s true to you. More than that however, it’s using what’s true to you. Empowerment to me is confidence through your authenticity, which means finding and using the divinity through everything that makes you, you.
As somebody who has always been passionate about acting, the idea of reinventing myself has always been a concept I explored. I’d always looked passed the idea of having a set identity because of the fact that in being interconnected, in being everything and everyone, you are provided with the opportunity to express yourself in any way you choose. However, again, although we are one, we are still existing in human forms. That comes with the idea that we are born into lifestyles, beliefs, cultures, and bodies with certain, set characteristics. And although anything can be subject to change, what roots you down as a human being is imperative to be acknowledged.
Ethnic background. Coming from an area where I am truly the minority amongst the minority, I ended up blending into the cultures around me rather than immersing myself into my own. I have always rooted myself into pieces of Indian spirituality, so I figured if I embodied sacred concepts, I’m exhibiting culture. However, the core concepts I’ve taken from are universal, as I never really bought into beliefs which subscribe us to limiting belief systems.
I’ve struggled with how to incorporate culture into every moment, without being tied down to limiting labels. From my experience, there are so many aspects of the culture which can be very oppressive and degrading to women, which is why I don’t accept or live every norm. But for so long, this empowerment practice ran without one of my fundamental human truths of my ethnic identity. I cannot ever run away from my roots, because I’ll forever be on a quest to find that existential sense of a common lineage amidst people with a different breed of wings.
I’ve always preached that if a toxic situation presents itself, you don’t need to subject yourself to it. Nonetheless, I’ve always preached that if a conflict arises, you have the power to seek a solution that does not involve leaving, but changing the meaning, thus changing the patterns.
When it comes to culture and ethnic background, envision a family tree. Everything is passed down, but what people oversee is that everything includes every bit of energy people have held on to. Everything is vibration. When somebody experiences a trauma, it manifests in their energy body, their mental body, and their physical body. These vibratory disturbances get passed down. Child after child after child. Beliefs, subconscious and conscious oppression, habits… even if you are aware, even if you believe that you have left what you disagree with behind, that energy is still encoded in your DNA. Those limitations, those disturbances… they’re still with you until you physically and mentally focus on rewiring that.
As with anything, the first step is acceptance. For me, that means not being ignorant to the motherland and the history. To understand imbalances, to perhaps gain clarity as to why a culture may shift from a right-brain to a left-brain mind-state, you must not turn a blind eye to the history. The past is the past, but from an energetic standpoint there may be unresolved inner work. Understand the whats that affect the whys in patterns you see within yourself and your family.
Now to harmonize the internal and external conditions… The key is to stand firm in your own beliefs and identities, while not judging the cultural aspects of family that may not resonate. When you’re aligned, you do things with joy and authenticity. When you accept your authentic alignment of expression, it begins to shift the resonance of the people around you. You’re able to incorporate more joy while still partaking in tasks which normally do not align. Hence, you influence culture from the inside out.
As you stay true to yourself or operate from alignment, you’re full of love and compassion, and you cease to concede your opinions. You’re able to have compassion for the dissonance and the ignorance that you may come across. You become an empty vessel of love, in which you are unshakable. As a result, you’re able to honor the heritage in real time, but your resonance becomes a catalyst for what it will become. Through your authentic being, what you see possible begins to appear. Thus, your transcendence of ancestral programming begins.
