I just got back from Colombia. The first two days it took a bit of time to adjust. Mostly, I wasn’t sure if I’ll be safe wandering the hood alone as a woman. After all, it’s Medellin, known for its dangerous neighborhoods, the Medellín Cartel, Pablo Escobar, guerrillas, gangs, drug trafficking, etc.
But are we really safe anywhere?
If there is one thing I’ve learned, you ought to live your life. When time is up, it’s up. That’s just how it is. Dark humor aside, I’m not reckless. I have a good sense of street smarts. This was a personal referral, just like Cuba last October. I’m not just randomly picking remote areas off the internet.
Before I left, I purchased an Apple AirTag, and shared it with friends in LA. I wore it 24/7. They could trace me wherever I went. As for getting around, Uber is fully integrated — I had no bad experiences, and all my trips were trackable. As for walking the streets, the hood in my second place was much better. If you come to Medellin, use Hotel Casa Laureles as your reference point and book something in close proximity. There are ton’s of Airbnb’s. Stay away from major streets. Remember, this city is loud (like most major cities). Check the reviews, make sure you got AC and no open air slot panels in the windows!
Also, before I left, I researched local women’s groups for safety reasons. Joined their What’sApp group. It’s been invaluable for all kinds of resources, questions, and recommendations. Plus, you always run into American’s, Canadians, Europeans, who help you get acquainted.
And, totally unexpected, I ran into a man from the Los Angeles dance community. Small world. He too gave me pointers and recommendations.
As for the language, I did pretty well considering I never learned Spanish (to my own disappointment). But with my school French and Italian, I managed. I understand the general context, and respond in broken Spanish. Who cares.
In short, live your life.
Don’t sweat the small stuff, or even the big stuff (a.k.a. survival of toxic relationships). Choose wisely how long you want to tell the victim story. I’m not saying repress what happened. Of course you gotta do the healing work — and wake up to your own unique essence buried deep within (which in my opinion is the whole purpose of the human journey). Discovering who you really are via exploring what you are not — a.k.a., you are not your personality. And you are also not your emotions. More on that later.
However, some people choose to stay in victim mode. Some might graduate to survival mode. Regardless, you don’t want to remain stuck in either one. Both are a limited view from the perspective of your personality. And that directly dictates your degree of suffering.
Luckily, we aren’t our personality.
Most often it takes a deep crisis to reach that level of understanding — that you are not your personality. In reality, the personality is nothing more than the totality of initial adaptions — developed over a life time — that later on become maladaptations. And continuously living from there is in and of itself living a false, inauthentic life — hello midlife crisis! It’s like living from an outdated hard drive, still stuck in the past, that needs to update its perception and behaviors to the current circumstances. Like I said, we don’t comprehend that until a crisis strikes and we do the work to “wake up” — from the mask of the personality. The personality is essentially a learned “protective and safety “behavior that got hardwired in the brain. We always make ego and personality out to be the enemy. But in reality it’s an intelligent survival and protection system built inside our autonomic nervous system — to keep us safe. It’s the autonomic mechanism that helps us adapt (unconsciously) so as to cope or survive life’s situations presented. We should be thankful to our body for this intelligence. It’s always there to protect us.
Next, let’s talk about emotions.
Just like the personality, we mistake emotions as our absolute truth. I’m not saying they are not true, but somehow they are also linked to the human apparatus and its survival mechanism. Still exploring this. The key is, just like with the personality, we “identify” with “emotions”. Once I understood this, a whole other level of insights opened up. Robert Greene states that emotions are the product of a chemical process. Part of the nervous system. Brain reactions to stimuli. The feedback loop from the nervous system to relax or mobilize the body. It’s an ancient, evolutionary response system that kept the human safe out in the wild. Our reptilian brain. Here is a link to the podcast where he talks about it.
I guess we could say that emotions too are an adaption. Not fully sure. Personality and emotions both seem to simply be part of the mechanism of the human apparatus. After all, we are a living organism that happens to live on another living organism called planet Earth, and there is constant evolution and adaption needed — to survive.
Again, the key I think is detachment and developing the ability to regulate ourselves based on what we are experiencing, versus being at the mercy of it (identified with it). Seems to me once we get that, there is so much more freedom and power available to us. It’s a process of disidentification. From the observer’s eye (here comes your meditation practice), there’s no need to fall prey to personality or emotions. All there is to do is become aware. Conscious. Observe them. Acknowledge them. Be curious. But don’t “react” from them. It might just give us a bit more choice and agency.
Once I reached this point, it gave me the detachment needed to objectively see my personality and emotions as a separate entity. In turn, I could now look at my life like an outsider and recognize my self-sabotaging patterns across the board. How my personality literally ran my life. How my emotions took things so heavy and serious. I can see how my “unmet attachment needs” contributed to me staying so long in this toxic, unhealthy relationship. As the wise say, you ought to “detach” (from the personality and emotions), and start shifting and living from a different part within you — your true nature, or essence beyond personality. Perhaps with this backdrop in mind, my question makes more sense now:
Where have you (your personality) participated in choices and decisions that affected your life? Create a map of your life, and look at the choices you made along the way. Which part of you did so? And why?
Was it your personality and emotions that lead you to make those choices? And what was the consequences? Maybe now you too can start reflecting how you developed a people-pleasing personality to keep it peaceful. Or a perfectionist personality to feel valued. Or a workaholic personality to feel needed. Or an argumentative personality that always needs to be right to cover up your insecurity. Or dive into emotional eating to fill that void. Or fall prey to substance abuse to numb that pain, etc. I think you get the point. The personality simply tried to help you survive, and fill a void. It’s the human body’s intelligence system. Dr. Gabor Mate often talks about this.
Crisis is not a bad thing. Initially we experience it as a negative. Devastation. Destruction. When we experience a crisis, and take on the learning from it (the waking up), we become more authentic with ourselves, more in integrity with ourselves. We begin to live more in harmony with the self. That can only occur when we shed the people-pleasing persona we developed throughout life. It never was our real essence anyway, it just was a maladaptation. Now we can let go of the self-imposed resentment and simply say ‘no’. Disappointing people no longer incapacitates us, now it rejuvenates us.
I do hope my explanation of personality, emotions and its impact on creating a inauthentic life made sense. I’m incredibly fascinated learning more about the human process. I think we are just at the precipice of discovering what we humans truly are and how we actually tick.
So, going back to living to the fullest. There’s all kinds of people in this world. Stay away from the toxic ones, and focus on connecting with healthy and conscious ones. In the end, every experience is part of the human journey. Even the bad ones. Even your crisis. It’s simply a pointer to course correct your trajectory onto a path towards your own unique essence beyond the mechanisms of the personality and emotions.
Keep going, no matter what! You are doing great. You can do it!
👉 If you find my thinking helpful, kindly clap, comment, follow and or subscribe to my Vega profile on Medium so you will be notified and receive the latest posting.
👉 If you know someone who would find value in my articles, please share with those you feel could benefit.
👉 If you’d like to book a session with me, contact me via Medium to schedule a personal conversation.
>> Continue Reading- #29. Part 1-Creating Beauty and Healing in a World of Chaos
