Permission to Contradict Myself

Perhaps it’s about seeking something a little more mysterious…

I’m giving myself permission to contradict myself.

After training to become a somatic practitioner, I’m feeling the weight of believing my point of view always needs to be polished and clinically correct. I’m noticing how with every blog post idea, I’m putting myself into a box, neatly tied up with a ribbon on top, trying so hard to say the right thing.

The thing is, I’m a human first. And it seems that when I stop to notice and peer outside the lens of my conditioning, two things are almost always true, often in contrast to one another.

I can feel compassion and be completely pissed off all at once. Or I can feel empty and really proud of myself in the same moment.

I think the same goes for putting my process on paper. I’m never going to arrive at a final resolution. Everything I share is really just a snapshot of my ever-evolving process. And what’s relevant to my life in this season may not hold the same weight in another.

This is why I’m now giving myself permission to contradict myself… with intention.

Perhaps it’s about seeking something a little more mysterious rather than the perfectly formulated conclusion.

I know we talk about how important it is to find one’s truth, as though it is a tangible absolute. Something solid and immovable that we can build our lives on.

I grew up learning that truth just is. It is the black-and-white rules we live by, the right way, something that can’t be disputed.

But that understanding didn’t hold up in the thick of life. Something was missing. And it felt dangerous to notice that… Yet, the more I tried to ignore the niggling feeling, the more I felt betrayed by this paradigm.

So I started trusting my discernment. As I lived and learned through season after season, I began to see truth as wisdom.

I went from measuring my every instinct against something fixed and external, to listening inward, getting curious, and building a new relationship with truth.

When I began seeking wisdom this way, I could feel my body letting go of this idea that I needed a rigid line in the sand to live by.

And I fell in love with the nuance, the spaces in between where wisdom breathes and dances with my experience. There, I can gaze through the facets of life and witness how in that particular moment, the light is being reflected. It never looks the same from one vantage point to the next, but it all still feels related somehow.

Wisdom isn’t static. It moves and winds through the details, revealing itself in unexpected ways. Sometimes, what it shows me in one season can challenge what it showed me in another.

As a human, I am multifaceted and nuanced. So why wouldn’t my voice, the way I express myself, and how I articulate my story be too?

I don’t want to live in a neat little box. I want to make room for process, for wrestling things out, and for staying connected to my humanity.

When I allow for these contradictions, I create room for flexibility. I can oscillate between different thoughts and different parts of myself, each carrying their own ideas, depths, and lessons learned. I’m supposed to have that sort of complexity.

And you know what’s poetic about it all? This act of embracing all my humanity is creating a more secure sense of self. As I interact curiously with the shadows of my contradictions, I notice a path emerging between them, moving me toward something poignant: intuition, self-authorship, self-responsibility, and an ever-deepening wisdom.