Consent…
Yes…such a simple word. A word that is filled with so much power and so much weight. A word that has the ability to allow in a world of change and growth and pain and celebration, all in one simple but deeply profound “invitation” - as it were - to the self. Toward access to desires that may live in the deepest parts of you, not yet even explored by consideration, let alone consent. So then, what is consent? Is it a flip of a word off your tongue? A slip of a word that essentially invites in all the things that can feed your soul or rip your energy bodies of their sense of value and worth.
When is the last time you asked for consent from another? When is the last time you gave consent to another? When is the last time you considered the energetic of consent and what it *actually* means to you? When was the last time YOU gave YOURSELF consent to bring yourself on whatever journey you were inviting by allowing the word YES to slip from your mouth into the collective consciousness?
I know that I, myself, have acted without my own consent on many pivotal occasions. I have given myself to someone or something that did not resonate with my deepest and highest self. Nor did I, in some cases, even take a moment to consider if the yes was something that I desired. Was it to quiet the voices? Was it to avoid the fight? Was it to gain the affection of someone based on what I perceived they wanted from me? Perhaps it has been all these things and so many more. Perhaps that staircase is deeper and wider than I could have ever imagined it to be.
SO, what then IS consent and how should it be explored and garnered and given? Should it not start with what your inner body – my inner body – truly wants and desires? How can I give consent to another being if I do not even honor the privilege of being able – shit, responsible – to give it to MYSELF, first and foremost? I do not know all the answers, but I do know that I have held myself hostage to inauthentic yeses on more occasions than I even feel comfortable to consider, let alone count. I know I have received a yes from another being knowing in full embodiment that the energetic of consent - at its deepest root - did not exist in that yes. Rather I held that yes like a freshly stolen and forged permission slip. A slip designed, in part, to sidestep the responsibility that I have to myself and others to receive their permission…to receive MY permission…before acting on an impulse.
This ideology of consent goes so much deeper than “just” sex or physical contact. It dives into the deep waters of receiving consent of information sharing, energy sharing, sharing a meal or sharing a moment. Consent from the deepest self before the fear body throws the hot shrapnel of your thoughts and words and actions into the face of someone whose only sin was holding up a mirror to you in an effort to help you grow, even if they did not know that mirror existed. So, what then IS consent? Do you not owe it to yourself – do I not owe it to myself – to get clear on that inside the only venue in which we have full access…from inside OUR own hearts, bodies, minds and spirits?
I am still digging for the answers for myself…I invite you to do the same. I love you with all that I am!
