Deepening Self-Sovereignty
How three months in the forest taught me that connection flows most freely when you stop grasping for it
When I went back into the room, I froze. She was curled up with another guy. My stomach was tight. After months of feeling joyful, confident and free to bring my authentic self to this forest community, jealousy hit me. Wild how these feelings can feel like someone actually punching you in the stomach. I immediately knew I needed to look at what was happening inside me more closely than I had for a long time.
The last months had been some of the best of my life; creative, in flow, deepening into beautiful friendships, some fun little romances that ended with as much warmth as they began, all immersed in nature. And free to just bring my most expressive self over and over like the time I spontaneously serenaded a hot tub of 16 naked people before jumping in leading a singalong from the middle.
But the old patterns were still there, underneath. That feeling that I have to be wanted by another and that not being wanted is a catastrophe. These moments of “This is not OK and I must have this thing that I cannot have” constrict everything. They collapse thoughts into a hole with a single, unreachable fixation.
The last six years since my longest relationship ended broke me through more layers of blindness to my emotional and relational patterns than I can count. This lead me into the greatest growth of my life, each year more transformative and healing than the last. Yet I was still able to be rocked so hard by something outside of myself.
Something cracked inside me. It was one of those moments when I knew I had to stop the pattern, to try something totally different than I’d done before. As much as anytime in my life, I chose to go inward. From years of studying, facilitating and spending time with great teachers, this time I had better tools to examine my mental patterns with a deeper, forensic awareness of what might be going on with me than ever before. I was able to understand my patterns in new ways, build intuitions around attunement and connection, and use mindfulness to see my experience with a clarity that was previously unavailable to me.
I’d been living in the forest for three months
20 acres of trees with a lake, huge boulders, cool, weird art pieces, and, across that time, a few hundred humans. Dancers, musicians, artists, psychonauts, entrepreneurs, weirdos, and seekers. Israelis, Palestinians and dozens of other nationalities scattered through my experience. An overflow of talented facilitators, creators and people exploring a different way of being than many in these times.
Each left a mark, subtly or not so subtly, chiselling shape to my ever evolving form
Some were permanent fixtures, some lightning bolts coming then gone. Like Miriam, who shared as we wept at her stories of life in a war zone. Where nobody knows what the future might hold. “That’s why I dance. To feel and move the emotions. So I can continue to live, even as the horror continues”. I still think of the feeling of that afternoon we spent together.
Those twelve weeks were the culmination of six years of rebuilding myself and my orientation to everything. Securing my attachment to myself. Finding autonomy with consistency. Yes, there’s no doubt the journey never ends, but this does seem to be a new epoch.
My time in the forest was also a bootcamp to level up the interpersonal attunement I’ve been trying to hone for over a decade. To find the alignment and harmony with others that emerges when there is a calibrated flow into what each specific connection of two people needs. I didn’t find this with everyone.
Sometimes people come into each other's space too fast and bounce away just as quickly. Like when you try to push two magnets together the wrong way, there's that force pushing in the opposite direction. And sometimes there’s a crash, like two planets smashing into each other. But even when orbits don’t sync in the beginning, there are second chances. One of the beautiful things about living in community is the second — and third — chances for trying a connection that can drop in your lap.
In that moment of jealousy I found the opportunity that always comes with pain
To have the fuel to transform powerfully and permanently. I spent most of the next few days alone, head down, earbuds in; relearning and locking-in through realisation and experience that “I am the one I’ve been looking for”. That when I can feel excitement to spend time with myself, I don’t need anyone. And that in that state I am free to give myself, with overflowing love to all, without expectation of anything in return. A fearlessness emerges out of not needing anything from anyone. And, somewhat ironically, through that deep lack of need flows the authenticity that attracts others.
Since last summer, making friends and finding intimate connection has never felt easier. I still have patterns of strong desire for connections with certain people. But what has surprised me is that I can still express it with full force while simultaneously being free from the need for an outcome. There are moments like before — of grasping, of hoping someone will reciprocate what I’m offering — that now rapidly become an object in awareness that I don’t attach to. Now I catch that sprinkle of desperation, detatch from it knowing it is not me but just something I can notice. Through that shift, ease emerges. Then I’m freed to align my action with what I actually want: to share my full self.
After six years — and six plus months since these days of self re-discovery — the shift has changed my life. There’s a deeper freedom, an instinct in my bones, to allow life to flow without overthinking every decision. There’s a freedom to nourish myself, my skills and my being without the FOMO that suffused so much of my life.
I’ve felt less lonely this last year than almost any previous year. There’s a companionship that doesn't depend on another's presence but can still be nourished by it. One part is choosing a life where I more frequently have humans to connect to and co-create with with depth, openness and vulnerability. And just as significantly, another part of the okayness has grown from finding depth, vulnerability and nourishment in my connection to myself.
These relationship patterns still show up all the time: when I'm dating or just hanging out with friends. But now when I notice myself getting that clingy feeling or that fear of missing out, I can almost smile at it like, “Oh hey, there you are again. Good to see you”. That jealousy moment in the forest was a gift. Six months later, I feel deeply grateful for it.
Those were some of the most powerful, important hours of my life. I managed to look closely rather than sooth or avoid. The power of that moment pushed me to finally get something profound at a deeper level: that the companionship I’ve spent so long looking for in other people is always available inside me.
And weirdly, once I stopped needing people to make me feel okay, connecting with them became so much easier. Not because I was trying to get something from them, but because I was finally free to just enjoy them exactly as they are.
A final note to self: In every dynamic lies the opportunity to see again that you are the one you need, and through not needing anything from another, you give yourself the freedom to show yourself and thus, be welcomed fully, by yourself and anyone else who cares to welcome you.