Evan Sanders's Blog, page 24

Breaking Ground

Dig.

Dig deep. There you will find the answers you’ve been seeking.

The more and more time I spend looking at the path I have taken the more I am able to see its lessons, victories, defeats and missteps. The more I see just how important it is to choose a good place to begin digging and keep at it as time rolls on.

There was one big piece missing for me when I started.

Vision.

As the years have gone on, I am much more aware of where I will head if I travel down a path, but when I began, I just started for the sake of it. I couldn’t see where all of this was headed. I couldn’t see the possibilities that lay before me. All I knew is that I loved to write and that it would probably be a good idea for me to process some of the things that were going on in my life.

But here I stand all these years later with one very important reality resting in my hands…

See as much of the end as you can possibly see that the adventures that may come up along the way.

If you know where you want to go in the end, its a lot easier to stay focused on the path. Who knows what will come up along the way? But what I do know for sure is the time and time again as I have traveled ahead into the unknown distractions and opportunities are infinite in their capacities to distract you from what you really want.

Now, more than ever, I am clear on what I really wish for in my life.

My ambitions, for the most part, lacked the steadfast disciplines that are necessary to bring all things into fruition.

I knew that my ability to work wasn’t something that I had to question. However, it was my ability to put things into day to day practice with precise consistency that caused a period of my life that I call The Big Stall. 

I had a lot of questions that I needed to get answered before I could head into the next moments of my life. Those questions, with a big shift in how I was showing up in the world, have since been answered.

There’s another piece to this though.

This year is only going to be different if you bring this relentless spirit out in you. Give me a “hell yes!” In the comments if you’re going after it in #2018

The Courage It Takes For That First Step

The courage it takes to make that first step into the unknown is great.

It calls you to trust. It asks of you to show your greatest self to the world. It demands of you a sense of faith that the way you are heading is destined for you. Most of all, it requires you drop what is in the past, the dead and gone, in order to step into what is new.

That takes something.

That takes invoking something deep inside.

But once you start making those steps, the fear begins to diminish and the excitement starts to arrive. Once you start working your way through the upcoming obstacles and gain the momentum necessary to see it all the way through, that’s when things become very very fun.

Most never get there.

Most never get through those first few steps because that’s where the fear lives. But if you can, you will find that it gets easier and easier as time goes on.

Sure you will be challenged.

Sure you will be tested.

But you will answer those tests with greater ability and courage each time because you begin to believe in yourself.

That, is priceless.

For me, I start walking on that path. In starting a new year, I start a new commitment towards something I’ve never actually done – writing every single day for a year.

My heart asks for adventure and wishes for me to pour out the words onto the paper more consistently again. I have seen from the hours of inner looking that it has always been the writing that has kept me in alignment and everything has stemmed from the way I put my journey down.

I am aware of the challenges that lay ahead of me. However, I’m committed. I’m committed to making some big changes this year and sticking with them come hell or high water.

I also know that I have the experience.

In setting my goals and dreams for this year, I’ve looked back upon what I have achieved in the past and remembered the moments that have made me. They have given me strength, wisdom, and insight into how I need to proceed forward and what I can truly accomplish.

This year for me is about roots.

For a few years now, I have allowed myself to expand in every way possible but have neglected to dig these roots deep deep down into the soil. I have run across the surface of the earth searching for things that were already here and now its time to connect with that reality.

These roots want to create a network of support. A net. Layers upon layers of energy that feed back and forth. They want to connect with all possibilities. They want to be nourished with deep unconditional love.

And, the rest of me is willing to accept that calling.

So I’m ready to step in. I’m willing to answer. I have belief in this path and love in my heart.

Here’s to a year I will never forget.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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As The Waves Turn Still

Within. Within. Within.

Diving deeper and deeper within. These silent moments. These quiet days. They have all offered me a gift that I hadn’t seen until now.

Insight.

Insight into an old path that lead me in a direction towards destruction. Insight into the truths that exist in this world without being misconstrued or deluded into something else. Insight into myself and despite having struggled to accept the truth over the past few months, I have arrived with willing hands.

Peace has arrived.

My body erupted in desire towards it’s old ways yet was quieted by my wiser self. I sat with the waves and quelled the storm. I chose differently. I decided upon a new way. A different way. As I sat in it all, I saw where I was headed. I saw the healing to come. I saw the peace to come. I saw the happiness bloom like a flowerbed of lotuses beneath me.

I touched this moment, not with inadequacy, but with love.

With that, everything transformed.

These struggles have led me here to help me understand not only myself but others. They have brought me a deep sense of understanding of what many others are going through. They have allowed me to touch my own pain and therefore touch the pain of others.

I can see now. 

I can see very clearly that all of this was not for nothing. I can see that those years and years of anguish and pain have come to a place of understanding and even at times laughter.

I can see that my work here is to write about these things in such a way that everyone can understand, feel, and experience. I also know that my journey is far from over.

There’s so much more peace to come.

I have a journey ahead of me that’s going to take a lot of my commitment and dedication. This one is about healing and rest. This one is about nourishing a body that has been hammered away at for years and has been at the receiving end of habits that have torn it down.

The calling was ill-received by me for some time. I didn’t want to take time off. I didn’t want to rest. I was constantly trying to get back to this place and reclaim this moment but my body was working against me. I now can see that there is another path that will lead me to a far greater place and that is the one I am going to travel.

I am ready for this.

I have been ready for this for quite some time.

I am ready to heal.

I am ready to take this to the next level.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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All There Was Left To Do

There’s a great struggle within me.

There are the things that afflict me – the fears, doubts, worries, anxieties of life…

And then there is my spirit – this pure, knowing, whole and effortless side…

My greatest struggle has been to allow myself to connect with my deeper wiser self and to acknowledge but put away those stories of old that have steered a great portion of my life.

I think in many degrees I succeeded in taking steps forward into being who I could really be. At the same time, I have failed in many regards. I have stalled, procrastinated, side-stepped and avoided making that trek to the top. I think I was scared of who I would become, but also who I would lose, if I made that climb.

I’m having this bizarre questioning of identity.

About 7 years ago, in having lost baseball because of an arm injury, I had the biggest identity crisis I have ever experienced. The sport I loved, that I played since I was 4 years old and committed my entire life to, was suddenly gone. It disappeared. I was left with hours and hours and hours of my day that were previously filled without anything else to really engage in.

I found the gym but it was never the same.

I didn’t feel the same.

Nevertheless, I poured endless amounts of time and energy into it and allowed myself to use that space as a way for me to process my pain. I suffered. I learned. I healed. I broke. Another injury to my knee came and I crashed again.

After making my way back, I grew and challenged myself and finally conquered what seemed to be the unconquerable only years ago. While that moment was filled with victory, it was also marked with tragedy.

And then, somewhere along the line after all of that, I lost myself.

I traveled. I wandered. I explored and saw many great things.

But, this feeling still existed…

As if traveling was never the grand adventure.

Somewhere, deep down, I knew that my greatest adventure would come from diving into myself and understanding what is truly there. I knew that walking the streets of Prague. I knew that staring up at the ceilings in Rome. There was this knowing and a deep understanding that I had a different calling in life.

The shallower side of myself started to bark up with the should or should nots.

Despite all of that resistance, the wisdom knew far too well that it didn’t matter what the world thought I should be doing, but rather what I knew deep within me. I knew that if I could trust that then I would be okay.

Fast forward to this past week and it has been reaffirmed time and time again. In working with my healer, it arrived. In meditation, it was there again. And there’s this word that keeps popping up as well – surrender.

I think I’ve had a lot of issues with that word in the past.

I thought surrender meant lay down and stop fighting.

But in this case, I believe that to surrender to the path means to effortlessly walk upon it with trust and faith.

The surrender refers to stop fighting what is right. 

I have a past that I have yet to transform. What I find, to be so interesting about all of this is that I have it all written there for me to dive into. It was almost as if I knew 7 years ago that I would have to come back to bring as much light to it as possible.

It was no accident that my coach gave me this transformative narrative of The War Painter – a painter that goes into a war zone and paints these beautiful images of not so beautiful scenes. That beauty arrives from his inner filter and he allows it to pass through onto the canvas.

All of these things I’ve written. All of these moments and memories I’ve experienced are here waiting for me to bring light to them. Many are hidden in the dark. Many are covered up with so many layers of dirt you can’t even recognize them.

But that is my task.

My task is to go through this massive healing process and allow myself to see the light in all of this darkness.

It will not be an easy one. However, it will be worthwhile. I know this. I know I can create art with the life I have lived. I know there is light in these things that I have experienced. They have afflicted me along enough.

Time to change.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

 

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All Of This Time Meant Something

All of this time meant something.

The madness. The chaos. The stillness. The deep cracking sounds as my heart broke time and time again in countless ways.

It meant something.

Those lessons have been hard to understand. There have been many times throughout all of this that I have cursed the heavens and stood in disbelief as to why all of this was happening.

Why the pain?

Why the suffering?

Why the constant barrage of lessons without ever feeling like I could catch a break?

Why the personal struggles that seemed to increase in magnitude day by day.

The darkness raged on and consumed those pieces of me that were caught in the maelstrom of my emotions. I was a slave to my thoughts. I was without direction. Anxiety pooled within and flooded the gates of joy. There was only really one word to describe this time.

Fury.

A fury that burned so wild and hot it felt like my skin could hardly stay on.

So I screamed at the sky with tears in my eyes and never heard an answer back.

I stormed the earth with my head down building walls and fortifications to keep the perpetrators away.

I burned the bridges and watched as a lifetime of confusion and pain burned to the ground.

I didn’t care.

Nothing made sense.

There was no point to any of it but destruction.

I felt like a dead man walking. I had nothing to lose. I couldn’t see anything to gain. On went my crusade against life.

It was all noise.

And then there was silence.

…

I panicked in that silence. The stillness cause unrest. It was as if the crickets on a summer night suddenly came to a standstill and halted their orchestra. I couldn’t settle into that. There was still this desire to continue raging on and yet there was something else calling me.

Peace.

Nonetheless, conflict ensued.

Two sides of me tore at each end speaking of vastly different paths. My mind caught hold of the argument and found it impossible to sort out which way to go. Life came in, as it always does, and made some decisions for me. But all in all, there I stood, paralyzed, not able to decide.

Stuck.

So I drifted.

I drifted the land. I wandered. I experienced many places and saw many things. But none of it helped.

The beast still lay seething within.

When the night fell, it woke up and I crumbled in my attempts to face it. Courage tried to convince me to give a good fight but I didn’t have the energy for another battle. I was a victim to it. I was a slave. I was there by choice whether I wanted to admit that to myself or not.

I knew I had to find it somewhere inside of me to take a stand.

And that’s where I am today.

Learning to take a stand for what’s right and what’s true. Many wonderful things have happened in my life throughout the years. There are moments that make me smile and people who have marked my heart with their love.

Lately, there’s been an unsettled feeling deep within my stomach as I see time go by marked by failed attempts to make the stand I’ve always needed to make.

I’ve compromised.

Negotiated.

Procrastinated and protracted.

I’ve done everything in my ability to not step into the things that I know will bring me that peace.

Traveling around the world was never the end goal. As I see it now, with much clearer eyes, I’ve started to understand that the space and time that I took over this past year allowed me to see the reality of my life…

That I was meant for far more than anything that I am now and that I have so much more work to do. 

That is the reality.

A reality that I’m willing to take on and face.

As these words arrive on the page, I feel that beast arising once again. It’s waiting for me. It’s hungry and ready to feed on my fear once again. But this time, there will be no running. No exit plan. No wandering around the cave that needs to be entered. There is only through.

Through the to the other side.

Only through.

Only through.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

 

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Finding My Way Back Home

Nothing to avoid.

No skipping steps. No moving in other directions. No circling around the main issues and doing all of the cleaner work. I have to step in. Right in. Cannonball into the mud. I have to head straight into what has scared me for so long and illuminate it with who I am.

Because if I don’t…those deeper layers that don’t serve me will continue to thrive under the surface.

They will continue to take root, tangle themselves in my depths and strangle the other seeds that are seeking refuge in the upper levels of light.

There’s no hiding from these things.

There’s no avoiding them really anymore.

At some point in time you just look yourself in the mirror and go, “Are you actually going to take care of this? Because it’s not going away and if you want the next 5 years to look like the last 5 years then all you have to do is keep turning your back.”

I don’t want that to happen.

I want the next 5 years to look drastically different than these.

Why?

Because I know I was meant for more. I know that I am capable of far far more than what I have sown. I can see that very clearly. I also understand that all of this is my responsibility. Everything that has grown in these gardens is due to my decisions in the past to plant those seeds.

Time to till and renew the soil.

Time to plant something drastically different.

For a long time, I felt like I was drifting farther and farther away from who I really was. All of these things happened in my life that made me restrict, tighten up, bend and at times break. I had to take all of those pieces and create something new with them again.

That took so much work and I felt absolutely exhausted after a while.

I kept on trying for more and more and more but my body and spirit just wanted a break. They needed time to just sink back and do nothing. They needed time to just connect with being here again and not always trying to get to this different place.

As much as I tried to build something new, I still felt that pieces of me were lost. I felt like I had traveled on these journeys to discover more about who I was but what I really needed was just dead silence for a good amount of time. When I finally stepped into that, a lot changed.

I started to hear those whispers again telling me which way I needed to go to come back home.

Home to me was never a person, place, or thing. Home to me was a feeling. A feeling that in that moment, wherever I was, I belonged.

What I discovered was that allowing myself to actually claim who I really was gave me the greatest sense of belonging.

It helped me understand that I didn’t need to continue building myself into this other person that represented something…but rather come back to my natural sense of who I was in the first place and that would yield me unbelievable amounts of happiness.

It seems as time goes on that the only thing that really gets in my way of being happy are the stories I listen to about how I should be doing things.

Sometimes those stories come from me.

Sometimes they come from others.

Most of the time they come from the narrative we all live in on the day to day.

All of those stories are powerful and in their own way cause me to drift once again from who I really am. But when I come back to that sense of stillness and just take a moment to listen, I’m reminded of who I really am and what I’m supposed to be doing on this planet.

There’s great beauty in coming back to who you really are.

Sometimes it takes years or even a lifetime. But that feeling you get when you arrive back home…well, it’s irreplaceable.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

 

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And That’s What Faith Is To Me

So you stand looking, deeply, at the painting in front of you and see a world spilled onto the canvas.

Each stroke tells a story. A world has poured through the artist’s filter. What you see is a gift.

But if you walk in closer and closer and closer to that painting…

And you stick your eye right up to it as close as you can get it…

You won’t see much.

You’ll see a splotch of color and that’s it.

In creeps the fear.

I thought I was supposed to be seeing something amazing?

But you’re far too close to see anything.

You’re consumed by that one little bit of color and can’t see anything else. There’s nothing but what’s quite literally right in front of you.

You’re blind.

You have to step back to regain that view. You have to step back to see the beauty. You have to step back to see that intention this wonderful piece was painted with.

That’s called perspective.

And, with perspective, comes sight.

But faith is something different entirely.

Faith is taking so many steps back that you don’t see much at all. You don’t see the painting, the room, the people in the room, the building…

You just keep stepping farther and farther and farther back.

And all you’re left with is a feeling. You’re left with this knowing that there is a painting there…but you just can’t quite see it yet. You know there’s beauty there, you just have to walk closer and closer to it to discover it.

If I’m honest with you, my faith disintegrated as the years went on and only started to make its recovery. That relationship with what I believe is deeply personal, but here’s what I can tell you.

There is always something greater than ourselves.

The moment.

The energy.

The heavens.

The stars.

The universe.

There is far more than we can comprehend.

But faith…faith is knowing that while we do not currently comprehend it doesn’t mean that it’s impossible. That just because we cannot see it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.

Throughout time, what was once deemed impossible has been debunked over and over again. The great men and women of our history have taken it upon themselves to bring the ideas that once were just a whisper in their minds to life.

That took faith.

That took belief.

As I walk through this life, I’ve started to understand more and more than the future holds those great paintings that I’ve never even considered before. Each of them tells a story. Each holds an opportunity to explore something I have not before. What I have dreamed of and seen in my mind is possible. It’s possible with faith.

Now I just have to walk with belief.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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As I Walk Amongst The Diamonds

I’ve been following this treasure map for quite some time now and just recently arrived to the place I have been seeking all this time.

Funny thing about this map is, that place where the X marks the spot was beneath me the entire time.

There’s this interesting feeling you have when you are digging into the ground in anticipation of the shovel striking metal. At times, you dig in an area and come up with nothing.

Hmm, that’s not quite it. 

You know you’re close, but maybe not in the right spot so you continue on. You keep digging in another place. After a handful of tries, you finally feel it…

Clink

Then there’s this feeling, like slipping your hand in a perfectly shaped glove…

You know you’re there.

And for me…it was being here. 

Throughout most of my life I went on escapades and took on journeys seeking something. I was looking for something and never found it. I was scanning the earth aiming to find this place, or someone, or something that would finally soothe the anxiety that flowed through my soul.

But I never found it.

I never found it because it was never there. 

It was always here. 

It was always right within me, and the only thing I needed to do was turn within to finally understand that I wasn’t lacking anything. My greatest bliss, my paradise, was already here. But since I was looking there, I could never find it.

Turning within to discover what was inside has shown me more than anything else in this lifetime.

It was holding these moments with profound love and care that helped me heal, that soothed the raging fury that was burrowed deep within my bones and helped me become a much gentler, patient, loving man.

The wounds started to heal.

And then, the insights came.

I looked back on my life discovered that I had a different set of eyes and understanding for what had taken place. At times, sadness, pain, and anger would erupt from the ancient records of past trauma. But with time, those faded and exited from who I now was.

I was now walking amongst my own field of diamonds and could see them for the first time.

I could not understand that I didn’t have to change, manipulate, or control life to make it into what I wanted it to be. I could gently move in a new direction with an intention built from my heart and within an instant my entire world would change.

The profound realization that how I held this moment determined my entire life came to the front row and stared directly back at me. From then on, I was never the same.

In many ways, I have been brought back home to who I was always meant to be.

This anxious past movement around life drove my unhappiness.

But the settling, breathing, learning, and melting into life as the way it is now has soothed all of these desires to escape. There’s nothing to escape from.

No walls.

No cages.

There’s only the understanding that I create the experience and the experience plays back to me. I sow and reap. I am not only the paint, but the paintbrush and the canvas.

With this, I wish to spread my arms to heal not only myself but others.

I feel home.

Being here.

Perfectly sitting upon this moment.

Evan Sanders | The Better Man Project

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The Next Chapter

Where do I even begin?

There are so many things happening at once. Callings. Requests. Big changes.

There’s a huge blind spot of how things are going to look like around the bend. I haven’t wanted to let go of that old life I had created for myself. But now more than ever, I can see that living in that way was heading in a direction that was going to hurt me more than help me.

As time has gone on, the consequences have become clear.

But how do you let go of something that helped you survive? How do you let go of something that helped you build yourself into the person you are today and get through the worst times of life?

That’s what I have been struggling with. There’s this deep desire for the healing of my mind, body, and spirit and a conflicting old story that has been manipulating that request over and over again. Countless times it has come in and sabotaged the path I was heading.

But that outstretched hand is there.

It wants to bring me into the light. It wants to help me through. It almost feels like it will pull me through I just have to let go and never turn back.

In ways, I started the process. Throughout my life however I know that I have had trouble answering these big callings. I always do but it takes some time. Maybe that’s one of the lessons I’m supposed to learn here – faith. Truth is, I struggled a great deal with that over the past handful of years. For many reasons, I lost my faith. I lost that sense that things were going to be okay when I was going through the thick of it.

All of this time has led me up to this point.

The next chapter.

Closing a book on how I showed up previously and opening up fresh new pages that need to be written as I move forward.

It’s only felt like this one time before and that’s when all of this started.

When the idea was unearthed.

Now it’s time for a different story.

How do I want it to be written?

Full of love and adventure.

I know, with that, that life will be pretty amazing.

So I just have to let go. That lesson continues to pop up over and over and over again. Let go to receive. Let go to become more.

In these final moments before closing the old book, I have to bow to it. It saved me. It pushed me. It helped me become more than I ever could have without it. I see all the moments that have taken place. I see all of the times I failed and got back up over and over again. I developed this relentless attitude to move through anything that life threw my way.

But now, I have to use that same willingness to heal.

I have to be relentless with my faith.

I was meant for more than this.

I can.

I must.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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As I Stand At The Edge Of The Garden

I spent a lot of time dreaming.

Thinking.

Pondering.

Wandering.

Wondering.

That came from my spirit. That came forth when a trapped soul was let loose. There were cages. Mental dungeons. Traps and ditches. I fell many time only to discover that the door keeping me under siege was unlocked the whole time. All I had to do was step through. All I had to do was decide.

When I walked through that door there was a freedom that I couldn’t explain.

It moved me but at the same time I didn’t know how to use it. It’s like I had this thing in my hands that I had spent so much time wishing for, and once I got it, I couldn’t find a way to work with it. Freedom, total freedom to do anything, go anywhere, and be anyone…paralyzed me.

I was looking for rules – there were none.

I was looking for help – no one could help me.

I looked around and the only thing that existed was big open spaces to create and build anything that I wanted.

So what do I want?

I had ideas…but the reality set in…

I really don’t know.

So I’ve wandered through the forest seeking that answer within. I climbed The Mountain and asked The Heavens for guidance. I thought that maybe if I just went back into the cage for a while and did the things I did there…that this would all figure itself out in time. But once you taste that freedom, you can never go back.

Your soul thirsts for it.

You have to step into it.

I tried to put things down on paper. I tried to map it out and say, “Okay let’s go this way now” But I realized that I took the bread out of the oven too early.

My seeking The Way wasn’t cooked yet. My understanding wasn’t done yet. There was much more to learn. There was much more to discover.

I rushed it in the past because I wasn’t comfortable with the silence. I wasn’t prepared for the “not knowing” and feelings that arose. They ate at me because I didn’t understand them for what they were. Instead of relaxing in the sound of silence that a flower makes when it slowly grows over time, I mistook it for the wrong way and then headed back into a place I didn’t want to go.

I understand this now.

I’ve corrected course.

In many ways, I was lead out of the forest and that saved me. Who I was years and years ago is far different than who I am today. I was completely blinded back then to many things and now I have arrived to this place that’s full of endless opportunity.

So that question stands…

What do you want to create?

What do you want to make in this world?

As I stare down at the handful of seeds I have in my hand, I start to understand just how important my intentions are in planting them. I start to see them unfold and grow in the future. My mind, the visual side of me that once haunted my life because of my past, now serves me more than anything.

I can see down the line.

I can contemplate what these actions will grow into.

And I can see the past few months…how this paralysis was a misunderstanding.

You have to be patient when you plant seeds. You have to be even more patient with yourself when you look at an empty field and imagine the garden you’re about to manifest.

-Evan Sanders, The Better Man Project

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