Hello and welcome to The Light Letter by Ardas Chandra! If you’ve found your way over by some miracle but are not yet subscribed, here, let me help you with that:
“For centuries, we’ve been told to be good. What if we choose to be ourselves instead?”
What a great journaling prompt, right? Let’s meditate on this for a second.
How much of what you are actually doing, having, and being is actually what you truly want to be doing, having, and being?
June book club is Elise Loehnen’s new book, On Our Best Behaviour (published on May 23rd, 2023 — you can expect to see it everywhere on Instagram and in people’s beach bag this summer).
I can feel the book and the podcast interviews hold so much power — potential personal power for us to claim back — so much empowerment, and so much compassion. This feels like an important read for this new era / Earth we’re co-creating.
Are you familiar with Elise and her work? She is the host of Pulling The Thread (the podcast). She was the chief content officer of Goop, and she co-hosted the Good Podcast and the Goop lab on Netflix. She is also a mother and a wife, and lives in LA. I can tell you that I’m (not so secretly) dreaming of having her on my podcast. She feels like an incredibly resourceful woman, very wise and I like how her mind works.
I’m 10 pages into the book, and this is the one page that did it for me so far.
let me type it for you — and see how it lands for yourself (read it out loud for even more power!!! your own voice is the most powerful for yourself).
“When we overlimit ourselves, we become complicit in denying ourselves a full existence. We force ourselves to lead narrow lives. We fear crossing a line we can’t see. We don’t want to be perceived as wanting too much, or being too much; we equate “self-control” with worthiness.
In worrying about everything we do not want to be, in suppressing our instincts and impulses out of fear or shame, in attempting to be “good”, we’ve forgotten who we are — all special, all “divine” in our own individual ways. We’ve gone unconscious and, oddly, unnatural. We are so consumed with the doing — and the not doing — that we have forgotten how to be. We are so fixated on an authority “out there”, we’re missing the miracles inside, all the moments that illuminate our connection to something bigger within ourselves. We are giving away our power and accepting exhaustion, resentment, despair, and disconnection instead. We deny ourselves joy, our rightful inheritance. Meanwhile, the world needs us, just as we are.
The saddest part is that in accepting the restrictions of the Seven Deadly Sins — subconsciously or not — we’ve trained ourselves to separate our true nature (our first nature, the essence of who we are) from how we act in the world. We sever ourselves from the deepest parts of our souls, the pulse of life that feels right, resonant, and perhaps not ironically, a truer definition of good. We’ve become disconnected from our intuition, that inner knowing that many would identify as our connection to the divine. We have been led to believe that something primal and essential, our relationship to the universal force — God, nature, true self, whatever you want to call it — must be forced through the prism of an interpreter. And so we go there for approval, rather than trusting ourselves.”
Elise Loehnen, OOBB
I can’t wait to dive into this book, bring it with me in my upcoming travels, have it live with me for the next weeks, reflect, and connect with you.
The Creative Club is a safe space where we get to participate as much as we want to, some are just reading the messages, and some are actively sharing their reading process, and you get to join this incredible community for free right now.
I’m genuinely sharing what brings me light (it’s the Light Letter after all) and I’m happy to hold the space so that we get to expand our horizon, read more books and scroll less, together!
Don’t like reading? In the club, we also share podcasts and links around the book and meditation & journaling practices that can support our journey. If you prefer to immerse yourself in someone’s work via their voice, podcast interviews are a great way to join the conversation.
We have now 112 members in the club from all over the world, and it would be our pleasure to have you here.
This will lead you to our Telegram group chat — it’s free and open to all (must be open-minded and respectful of others!):
“When we tap into what we’re truly meant to do, we bring our own special magick to the table. Our desires, talents, and abilities are beautifully unique. Remember, what you want is different from what I want, and that’s what makes us shine.” Elise Loehnen
Those who are familiar with my work and philosophy will understand how much it resonates with my message. And hopefully, with you.
