Reality Over Regulation: A Project to Return Us to the Authority of our Own Lived Experience

The power to create a world of our imaginings begins with knowing how to create a life we desire for ourselves. The macro goal is difficult to imagine, too huge to see the edges of. But the micro goal is here right now. The ability to create a moment that we want to live in is available. The knowing of a body in the present moment is easy. I want to be here. This moment is safe. This moment is joy. We cannot imagine a world of safety and joy until we can routinely craft embodied moments of safety and joy.

It cannot be a false safety, that denies the reality around us in favor of forcing our body into activations that feel safe but are disconnected from truth. We must stay in step with reality and shape it so that our body agrees, ‘yes this is safe’. If we adapt our bodies to feel safe in unsafety we are leaning into oppression. Instead, we can stay close to reality and use our body as a thermostat of safety. Then we know when to stay, when to leave, when to say yes, no, more, stop, enough.

Adrienne Rich described the necessity of reconnecting with the truth of our own bodies to promote equality and societal solutions that are relevant to the embodied experiences of individuals usually left out of consideration. Rich (1995) discussed this from a feminist perspective and stated,

“The truth of our bodies and our minds have been mystified to us. We therefore have a primary obligation to each other, not to undermine each other’s sense of reality for the sake of expediency, not to gaslight each other. Women have often felt insane when cleaving to the truth of our experience. Our future depends on the sanity of each of us, and we have a profound stake, beyond the personal, in the project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can to each other.” (p. 190)

This need for a return to the truth of our lived embodied experience is needed for more than just women, it is needed for our species to navigate the social and environmental demands and crises of the present and future. Rich’s (1995) identification of the “project of describing our reality as candidly and fully as we can” is the embodied path towards solutions to many of the challenges we are facing. It is difficult to begin the project of solutions before we master the project of embodied truth telling.

We must learn to feel our truth and tell our truth in the present moment. As often as we can. Living this way is work. It’s a commitment to a life style of inner congruence that demands much sacrifice in the way of social norms and other people’s comfort. But this is the path to freedom that doesn’t leave the inconvenient people out.

We need to prefer honesty over peace. Not for the sake of speaking our opinions but for the sake of living in reality and rejecting delusions. For the sake of the truth of our bodies so our minds may be demystified to us.