What Does Returning to Your Source Mean?

Hello from rainy and not-so-warm Bristol, dear friend.

I've spent the past four days here with close family members. We came together from Trinidad, Vietnam, and Barcelona to celebrate a few occasions together, making this trip even more memorable than we had planned: my cousin graduated, my mum’s birthday is today, and my brother and his wife live here. We got truckloads of family time, in other words. Particularly nice when you live far apart.

Bristol was special to me much before this trip, though. I moved here from Lancaster after submitting my master's degree thesis in August 2016.

This city gets its colourful, artistic vibe from distinct neighbourhood cafes, graffiti, handmade gifts, and global cuisine. Students from all over the world, enrolled at the University of Bristol, contribute to the city's diversity, and academic research. You can call it a mixed essence, like we use in cakes.

Back in 2016, I wished I had studied here instead of all the way north in frozen, isolated, and quaint little Lancaster. But that place taught me the importance of honouring my essence. My foundation. My source. Where it all began.

Had it not been for Lancaster eg, I wouldn't have had a lecturer encouraging me to write. I wouldn't be sharing this newsletter with you nor writing my memoir as part of Cambridge's programme. I wouldn't have met my husband had I been elsewhere.

Be it our profession, beliefs, or family, everything has a source, an essence. A source that created us, a source that fed us, and a source that shaped us.

Dr. Wayne Dyer, whose work I love, has a quote about ‘source’ that explains how our universal source loves us beyond measure. In all his work, he emphasised how love is our source and that we must return to it to remember who we are.

This is easier said than done. My beliefs and thoughts had been stretched and curtailed by people, places, and experiences to the extent that I'd forgotten what my source was: it did not feel like love but duties, roles, expectations, and restrictions.

I believe we all have faced this dilemma to a certain degree. We have forgotten our essence. We experience confusion, sadness, anger, regret, and resentment, visible in the amount of crime, mental health issues, and wars/disputes in the world.

So what is the remedy? What will help us break free and go back to love, our infinite source?

The following three things have helped me gain renewed access to my source:

• Talking to people who were close to my grandparents: I asked an uncle who knew them closely about their character, behaviour, and experiences. I wanted to know what I meant to them. Did they love me? What did they see in me? What would they think of my hard experiences and the people who inflicted harm? This unusual exercise showed me love in its deepest sense. My grandparents cherished me and never wanted to see me hurt. They tried to protect me, safeguard me even. It was love beyond words, my origins before my origins. I saw myself through their eyes.

• Making art whenever I have free time: creative pursuits ground me. I know can calm racing thoughts and soothe feelings of uncertainty and pain through them. I learnt this in early childhood and had forgotten it in adulthood. So I make art again, however small, and with that, the beauty I want to see in life returns. It reminds me that creativity is a source, fulfilling and sustaining us in life. We contribute to beauty by creating it, just like we were created. Little pieces of us and our love float around this way. Forever.

• Connecting with the light in others: I grew up in a country where complimenting each other was uncommon, even considered fake. Over time though, I have unlearnt that belief. I give genuine compliments to women in the gym (the types you look at and wonder how they got in such good shape). I give them to employees at reception desks or in the supermarket, who help me out. It can be one tiny thing I notice — a beautiful necklace, help offered with a smile, a nice pair of shoes, pretty nail polish — anything meaningful, really. It usually brings them a smile or a sparkle to their eyes, and immense joy to me. They feel seen and I feel privileged to see them. To recognise what we overlook in a hurry or in ignorance. And I say thank you when someone compliments me rather than feeling awkward about it.

From all these three exercises, I learnt how love, beauty, recognition, and validation are tied together. We want to be seen and appreciated. We want to know that others value us and our efforts mean something.

If the world is in denial of our reality, our strength lies in being able to stand in front of the mirror and assert to ourselves that we matter. That we belong. And that we too, are loved because we wouldn't have been created otherwise.

That is how we return to our essence. Our source. By being and giving love.

With gratitude,

Raksha