What are you not letting yourself see as true?
Not the small stuff. The big one. The story you've believed about yourself for so long that it stopped looking like a story and started looking like a fact.
Hi lovely. This week I've been walking through the third eye, the place where illusion becomes clarity. And here's the illusion I finally saw through, after forty-three years: I believed I had no power.
I learned it young. I was hit if I didn't listen. And once, I've never forgotten it, I was told, "if you keep laughing, I'll hit you more." A little girl, punished for her joy. Do you know what a child learns from that? That her aliveness is dangerous. That the safest thing is to go quiet, go small, disappear a little. She learns she has no power, because every time she reached for it, it hurt.
It didn't stop in childhood. The message just changed its clothes. "You're fat and ugly. No one will marry you. Stop being fussy and just settle." I heard that as a grown woman, from the person who was supposed to see me most clearly of all. And for a long time I believed it. I believed I had to earn love, shrink to keep the peace, and take whatever was offered, because I wasn't worthy of choosing.
That's the illusion. That I was powerless. That my worth was someone else's to hand out.
Here's what I finally saw this year, and it changed everything: the powerlessness was never real. It was the glasses I'd been given. I always had the power. I'd just handed it out, piece by piece, to everyone whose approval I was chasing, starting with the very people who taught me I didn't have any to begin with.
The years in between were excavation. I dug through why things happened to me, turning over every stone, and for a while I dug so deep I nearly made a home down there. There is a version of searching for answers that is really just staying a prisoner to the external world, and I lived in it longer than I needed to.
But the digging gave me two truths, and they set me free.
The first: hurt people hurt people. The cruelty was never about me. Unhealed trauma doesn't speak with kindness or compassion. It speaks from lack, from blame, from pain. The words that shaped my whole life were never a verdict on my worth. They were a symptom of someone else's wound.
The second: over time, and with a lot of forgiveness, it has all become a blessing. Did it hurt? Absolutely, yes. But it is exactly why I do what I do now: helping women take the glasses off and come home to self-love, acceptance and care earlier in their lives than I did. I wish someone had handed me this in my twenties and thirties. I couldn't find her then, so I became her.
And power, lovely, doesn't live in the mind. It lives lower, in your solar plexus, the seat of your sovereignty. Clarity, the third eye, is simply what lets you finally see it was there the entire time. You cannot speak your truth as a mouse. You have to be the lion, and here's the wild part: you already are. The lion was never something you had to become. It was something you were taught to cage.
It's the Lions Gate season for a reason. So I'll ask you again, and I want you to really answer: what are you not letting yourself see as true? Where have you decided you're powerless, when the truth is you simply gave your power away?
The Third Eye · Ajna
💜 shadow: illusion, self-doubt, overthinking, the rose-coloured glasses. 💜 gift: clarity, intuition, discernment, trusting what you see even when it asks something of you.
When it's blocked, you overthink everything and trust none of it, waiting for someone else to confirm what you already know. When it's open, you trust the first quiet thing that rises before the noise.
💜 Goddess · Hakini · clarity, insight, the inner knowing 💜 Seed sound · OM (AUM) · the sound that opens the inner eye 💜 Element · light · illumination, the seeing itself 💜 Breath · trataka · soft, steady gazing 💜 Pose · balasana, child's pose · the third eye resting on the earth 💜 Oil · frankincense · the great oil of insight and stillness 💜 Herb · brahmi · for a clear, quiet mind 💜 Practice · viveka · discernment, telling the real from the illusion 💜 Affirmation · I trust what I already know.
Your cycle knows this chapter too: the days before you bleed, when the veil thins and you suddenly see what isn't working. That premenstrual clarity isn't hormones making you difficult. It's your third eye, wide open. Stop apologising for it.
A small practice. Tonight, ask one question: "What do I already know, that I've been pretending not to?" Don't answer with your head. Breathe low and slow, and let the knowing rise. It's almost always the first thing that comes, the thing you immediately want to dismiss. That flicker you want to argue with is the glasses coming off.
She's here
At the third eye you'll meet Indie, the part of you who sees clearly and trusts it. She lives in the In Her Rhythm © app, and she's live now. 💜
And this very week we're walking the free seven-day journey on Instagram, one companion a day until the Lions Gate opens on 8/8. Comment PORTAL on any post (@iamaradhanaarya) and I'll bring you into the community, wallpapers, meditations and all.
An invitation
The story that you're powerless was never true. It was a pair of glasses someone handed you a long time ago. You're allowed to take them off. You're allowed to see clearly. And you're allowed, finally, to own the power that was yours the entire time.
I spent forty-three years believing I had none. I was wrong. And so, I suspect, are you.
Take the glasses off, lovely. And roar.
With love, grace & gratitude, Aradhana x
P.S. Frankincense, the oil of this very chapter, has been finding me all week without my asking. First at a fire ceremony under the full moon, then again at today's sound bath. In my kinesiology book it marks the move from vulnerable to protected. When the chapter you're in starts leaving you notes, read them.