When we see the web of interconnected life all around us, and also see that we are free within it, we see that nature wants back anything that is not ours to carry.All those layers, all those beliefs, all those barriers, in a way that I do not understand but can only feel, nature wants them back. Life wants them back. We heal each other. Greater integrity (wholeness) abounds.
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Nature. We can’t heal in the same toxic environment in which we absorbed and took on the disease. It’s like trying to stay sober at a St. Patrick’s Day party. There’s nothing to attach to. It’s simply a mismatch and we will continually be in conflict, never in flow. We must heal in an environment that supports healing, where we can hear our deepest truth. An environment that embodies the wholeness we are remembering, recreating, re-absorbing in ourselves. That speaks to our True Nature.
Nature. Coping techniques are places where we are deaf, where we have stopped listening to ourselves. Our awareness has left our bodies, it is in our heads (or elsewhere), and we are spinning. Activated energy has taken over.
Coping techniques are nothing more than acquired ways we learn to deal with pain in our culture. They are a product of cultural 'domestication,' the ways our culture teaches us to ignore the truth in our bodies and to believe a lie that goes against our wholeness. It is important to know that they are the product of the culture, they are not innate human qualities. (Different cultures have different ways of dealing with pain, and some indigenous cultures seem to have no coping techniques at all.) We learn our coping techniques, our patterns of leaving our bodies, in our families, in our cultures, we inherit them from our ancestors, or we learn them through trauma. The path of healing entails catching ourselves in our coping techniques, releasing the energetic pattern, and restoring our attention and awareness into our bodies. Into our divine True Nature. Our coping techniques show us where we give away our True Nature, our innate human power, in exchange for a perception of safety with an external value. This is a misperception, we are actually never safer when we leave our bodies, but this is how our culture deals with safety. Using coping techniques, and looking outside of ourselves for safety, is so ingrained in our culture that it is almost impossible to see it, until we leave our culture and experience another, so that we can see it for what it is. Our cultural domestication is predicated on the belief that we are responsible for the wellbeing of another - that we have the power to hurt another. We do not, but we are taught from the youngest of ages that we are. In truth, we are never responsible for the well-being of another sovereign being. Healing comes from seeing this, knowing this in our cells, and taking responsibility for our own well being. This entails growing up. It is particularly hard to see it, and to heal it, when we are immersed in the culture. We cannot find our wholeness when we are immersed in fractions. We must surround ourselves with true wholeness in order to heal our wholeness. And, as we heal it entails changing everything about how we engage with the culture. And this goes deeply against our ingrained assimilation programs. Embodying our power means we do things differently than we were taught to do it, which feels deeply uncomfortable. Here's one way we need to learn to free ourselves: We are under no obligation to engage with another person‘s coping technique. None. No one is entitled to our attention, our compassion, our coping technique, just because theirs is activated. True Power lies in seeing where we unconsciously respond with coping techniques, gathering ourselves, and embodying ourselves again. And only then responding. Or not. This means actively choosing and taking complete responsibility for what and who we give our attention to. Saying no. Letting things get awkward. "Disappointing" people that are still doing things the old way. Standing out. Anything that disturbs our peace is ours to heal.
Anything that disturbs our peace is a place where we leave our body, where we seek to control another, an agenda, an outcome. Where we employ a coping technique, a stress response, where we have stopped listening, where we are judging a situation/person/experience. When we leave our body we seek our safety outside of ourselves. We outsource our well-being to the fickle nature of those around us. We are free when we embody our bodies. We are victims when we do not. Never ask anyone to give to you what you are unwilling to give to yourself. That approval, that validation, that admiration. Nothing. Giving it to ourselves is sustainable. Requiring it from other physical human beings makes us a victim to the vagaries of another’s internal state. It makes us controllable. Disturbed peace shows us where we are not yet free. It is a call to greater freedom. Here’s how: Step 1: Barf all the hurt feelings, all the stories. Are there any that have more charge than the others? Make note of that. Simultaneously, feel the feelings inside the body that the stories and barfing elicit. Alternate back-and-forth barfing and feeling, narrate both. Simply be a journalist of what is happening in the body. And, the words are the fuel, the energy is the fire. Words fuel the fire, but the fire is the real action. Step 2: Turn it around. See where and how you do the exact same thing. To yourself, or to others. See if you can identify the place within the lineage where are you acquired this coping technique. Either by repeating what was seen or by reacting, as a response to another energy. Step 3: “This is not mine to carry.” See that this is not yours to carry. “When I carry this, I am unable to love the way I am meant to love.” See that when you carry this you are unable to love the way you are meant to love. Journal a Peace Power Path release. In my former life, I believed that in order to be “professional,” I had to hide parts of myself at work. And so for decades I hid parts of myself: my lifelong health challenges, my recurring illness, the pain in my heart. I told myself that if people knew how sick I really was they would judge my work through that lens, and they wouldn’t “trust” me.
And this terrified me. I feared I was a fraud, and that people would know it. I was in treatment for chronic Lyme disease for 15 years, taking massive amounts of antibiotics and dealing with difficult physical restrictions. Yet, I overrode my body’s needs, and separated myself into two beings: Work Norma and Home Norma. And Work Norma worked hard. She was driven, on time, reliable, and trustworthy. She performed at a high level, no matter how much it cost her body and her life. And, she used her head for everything. Everything was weighed and measured, analyzed, justified, rationalized, planned, and thought through relentlessly. She strove for as much certainty as could be had in a moment, speculated well beyond certainty, and documented everything. And it was exhausting. And… she was rewarded for this. Appreciated, respected, validated, and rewarded. Meanwhile, Home Norma recovered. Rested, recuperated, worried about maintaining the image, and feared being truly seen. Hiding. In hiding the totality of who I was, thinking people couldn’t handle it, I was living two lives. But I had internalized that it was what “professional people did,” and I was being “trustworthy.” (Spoiler alert: Trustworthy to who?!?!?!) At the age of 37, with all my beliefs and perceptions and coping techniques in place, I moved into international development work. This entailed spending up to a month a year in Ethiopia, predominantly in the rural field with local colleagues. And I noticed something amazing: they brought their whole selves to work. They didn’t have 2 separate personas, they didn’t deny what was happening in their bodies, they didn’t try to pretend that they didn't have personal needs, or, that they could do it all. They slept in the car, they were emotionally open and relatable, they didn’t weigh and measure the impression they wanted to make, they took the entire car along with them when they went for their prayers, and they laughed. They were emotionally available to the group, gave and took from the group generously, and participated. They didn’t have a “work persona,” and this blew my mind. _____________ And then, the crash. There came a day and time when I had used my work persona, and all of my other coping techniques, through to the bloody end, and I hit rock bottom. I was empty emotionally, spiritually, mentally, and physically, and I crashed. Turns out, the coat of armor that relied on being perceived as trustworthy and professional, that worked so freaking hard all the time, had not made me impenetrable after all, it had consumed me and spit me out. Ignoring the truth in my body, what my body really needed, hiding valuable and important parts of myself, and denying my truth for so long was unsustainable, and the gig was up. _____________ I collapsed on the couch, and spent a year staring into space, off-gassing all of the accumulated pressure that I had been holding. Turns out that bifurcating oneself, denying ones human needs, striving relentlessly, being “trustworthy,” and “professional,” and maintaining two separate personas was hard work. The reckoning came in waves; and I became painfully aware of all the ways that I had abandoned myself, denied my truth, hidden myself, and overridden the truth in my body for an external priority. And I deeply wanted to return to a new version of the old life. To “heal,” so that I could resume a “normal,” life. I judged myself as “weak,” for “failing,” and really didn’t want to face the possibility that me denying myself was the root of the problem. That maybe working in an office setting, with all of the rewards and security, just wasn't for me. That would mean being seen, giving up all of my coping techniques, trusting myself, and going off the beaten track. Terrifying to even consider. But healing was elusive, and wouldn’t budge if I wasn’t willing to change myself to meet it - and to see the root problem, which was that I was out of integrity with myself. Integrity can be a loaded word for some, however its original meaning is simply ‘wholeness.’ My body wanted me to choose wholeness, to honor my truth, and to express and communicate life from this deepest truth. Integrity. Over time, I came to understand healing is a call to change one’s relationship to life. All those former ways of relating to my life were out of integrity with myself. They were predicated on a deep distrust of myself, of my true nature. And these beliefs valued an external perception of who I “was,” over who I actually was. Perception over reality. I had believed that shaping and modifying and controlling how I behaved in the world made me “trustworthy,” but in truth, it made me controllable. Controllable to an external person’s (fickle) perception. And then I would twist myself into knots to be perceived a particular way, and mistrust my truth if it differed. It was this way of relating to my life that was making me so sick. Our western culture, our social conditioning, rewards us for doing this - for denying and suppressing ourselves, for shaping our behavior to manipulate others, all to maintain a place within the power structure. To be reliable and dependable and controllable and trustworthy - so as not to not be rejected or excluded, or judged. Put another way: the price of assimilation within the power structure is to be controllable by external perception. Because, when there is no room for our truth within the larger cultural/corporate/pan/agenda/goals, then we are being controlled. When we value an external perception of being right/wrong, or good/bad, at the expense of true/untrue, we are being controllable. When (we believe) the culture asks us to override *our* truth to drive toward an agenda that does not include our truth, we are being controllable Controlled…by ourselves. Having our safety be dependent on the fickle perception of others is relentless, and it is unwinnable. It is unwinnable. It also buys into a mindset that says that some people are superior/inferior, some people matter more, etc - that we are inherently unequal. (Why would I consider another person's truth more true than my own?) And this cultural pressure goes up against our truth in myriad ways: our health, our knowledge, our truth, our gut. Being perceived as trustworthy was actually a means of being controlled. Healing has brought a new perspective: that we only, ever, need to be trustworthy to ourselves. Trustworthy to myself looks different than external control. True trustworthiness means living from my truth, and having a conversation about that truth. It does not care about an outcome, for it knows that no outcome is truly complete until all perspectives are incorporated, and that all we can ever know and do is the next right thing. It means I only, ever, have to speak my truth. And, anyone that does not honor and respect my truth is untrustworthy…not me. (Deeper truth: they are probably uncomfortable with honoring their own truth, so integrating my truth is deeply threatening.) True trustworthiness is an internal act of revolution. It is uncontrollable, it is free, and it is deeply healing. This is a moment in which we are called back into our homes. "Quarantine," is another word for embody. We are forced to embody our homes in order to live, to survive. And, in order to take care of one another.
And, as we have seen in the news, when we retreat and embody our homes, the earth heals. The earth recovers so quickly when we cease to live unsustainably on it. When we embody our homes, we live more sustainably, and that heals the planet. For some of us, more deeply embodying the home also brings the external unsustainability and disease and chaos inside there, too. If this is the case for you, this is a calling to an even deeper level, to more fully embody the physical body. Our first home is the body, and it is also our souls home. We must live sustainably here, too. Here, first. In a similar contraction, we will see tremendous healing within the home when we more fully embody our bodies. This is new for us. As a culture we have largely abandoned our bodies in favor of our heads, and have made living in our heads the default mode, to the point where we almost don't remember how to embody our bodies any more. And when things upset us, we immediately leave our bodies. We have an opportunity to heal even more deeply through regularly and intentionally embodying our bodies. To begin to live sustainably within *these* homes. We do not currently have robust models for intentionally living from our bodies. This is permission to change that. The key to this is listening to our bodies, to never abandoning ourselves again. And then, when the energy cycles, the disturbed peace begins, listening to the cycling energy, watching it, honoring it, and releasing it. Healing it. Do you see that when you seek approval from another, you are seeking permission?
And, when you seek permission, you are controllable. (Someone could refuse permission.) Approval and permission live in the land of right/wrong, good/bad. External perceptions, which cycle in the head. Our truth is deeper than that. It lives in the land of true/untrue, which lives in the body. If something is true, it is true. It is not malleable to the external winds. So when you find yourself doubting, seeking approval, seeking validation, sink deeper inside to the place where truth lives. And plug the holes to honoring that. A desire for external validation is a place where we do not yet trust ourselves. (That's all.)
When we take responsibility for trusting our truth, all need for anything from the outside poofs away. Freedom. The tree faithfully grows from the blueprint of the seed.
In other words: We cannot create on the outside What we do not embody on the inside. For what we create on the outside carries all of the traits that we embody on the inside. (All of them.) This means, if we want more peace in the world, we need to find more peace within ourselves first, and then bring it to the world. If we want more compassion on the outside, we must embody more compassion on the inside. If we want more health, equality, sustainability, and equilibrium on the outside, we must embody those qualities within ourselves first. And then bring them to the world. Because, we can't ask for someone else to give to us what we are unwilling to give to ourselves. The revolution starts within. Integrity (in the original sense of the word: wholeness) on the inside. In my experience, when we are willing to face the truth of this concept, we are ready to grow up. And, this is simpler than it sounds. In the timeless wisdom of Rumi (13th century mystic), "Our task is not to seek for love, but merely to find and remove all the barriers we hold to love." Our personal healing heals the world. And, we are all capable of, and responsible for, healing ourselves. And when we clean our own windshield, we need to control and change the outside a whole lot less. And we need a whole lot less from the world. We know our own answers, rather than look to the outside to tell us what to do. Inner Authority. Radical self-responsibility. Freedom on the inside. (And to be clear: this is not a path where you "follow" me, this is a framework for you to know and follow only yourself.) Are you sparking?! Everyone's path is different. And, I have spent the past 3 years walking this walk, and am ready to share my path with any for whom this resonates. But the truth is yours, and the next step is up to you. 💜 |
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